The 78-year-old "Angela's Ashes" author, who has been fighting skin cancer, is in a hospice and "his faculties (are) shutting down," said Malachy McCourt. "He is not expected to live." McCourt - a former city school teacher who won the Pulitzer Prize for his memoir - was being treated for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.

He was doing well enough that his doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center recently allowed him to return to his home in Connecticut. "He was out and about, being active, doing talks and so forth," said Malachy McCourt, also a writer. About two weeks ago, he contracted meningitis and his condition deteriorated rapidly.

Malachy McCourt said about one in 25 melanoma patients also wind up getting meningitis - "he was one of the unfortunate ones." "He's still conscious, but his hearing has gone and his eyesight is going," Malachy McCourt said. "He's speaking less."