I can't believe this is a serious question. Angela's Ashes is not an ancient book. It wasn't written in 1840. It was, and is, one of the most brilliant memoirs I've ever read. The writing is unbelievably good.
No one likes every opening, but this opening drew in millions, and still would today, all these centuries later. Once I read the first couple of sentences, I couldn't stop.
Two things are wrong with your nalysis of what the "experts" say. 1. McCourt most certainly did live an extraordinary life. 2. McCourt was an fantastic writer, a man who could get his life down on paper so well, so believably, so engagingly, that he could have written a phone book and had it published.
Nothing whatsoever has changed between then and now. Absolutely nothing. The experts said exactly the same things then as now, and they'll be saying the same thing a hundred years from now, and they're right.
Two thing always apply to those who are not some sort of celebrity, who are not, for one reason or another, famous. 1. That you have lived a life worth reading about. McCourt did. People loved reading about his life. 2. That you are an incredibly good writer, far above average, who can make that life so realistic that when a character spills a bowl of soup, the page gets wet. McCourt did this, as well.
Not everyone who isn't a celebrity has a life worth reading about. For ordinary people, a life worth reading about is, as one agent put it, about the journey from a bad there to a good here. This certainly fits McCourt.
But maybe one in a thousand, or one in ten thousand, who do have a life worth reading about have the talent and skill necessary to put that life down on paper as well as McCourt did, and being able to do this is essential.
At any rate, Angela's Ashes has an opening that did, and still does, draw readers in, it has a wonderful story, and it's written as well as anything I've ever read. And seriously, 1996 was yesterday, so asking if McCourt were here today has no meaning. He is here today.
