SOURCE: "How a Rogue Turns Himself Into a Saint," in New York Times Book Review, Vol. 147, July 29, 1998, p. B1.

[In the following interview, McCourt and Witchel discuss the circumstances and consequences of McCourt's childhood, elaborating on passages from A Monk Swimming.]

Malachy McCourt says his railing days are over. "I find a murderous rage in my heart of Limerick, the humiliation of coming out of the slums," he says of his hometown in Ireland, the setting of his brother Frank McCourt's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir. Angela's Ashes. "It made you feel like nothing and there was no place to go but down. It was assumed we'd be low-class the rest of our lives. But who can you blame? Governments and churches that are gone now? It's useless. Let those things live rent-free in your head and you'll be a lunatic. Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the...