Friday Fiction: William Kennedy
--by Hanje Richards
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William Joseph Kennedy (born January 16, 1928) is an American writer and journalist born and raised in Albany, New York. Many of his novels feature the interaction of members of the fictional Irish-American Phelan family and make use of incidents of Albany's history and the supernatural.
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Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game - Billy Phelan, small-time bookie, pool hustler, and poker player, becomes an unlikely go-between in the 1938 kidnapping of an Albany political boss' son.
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Flaming Corsage - The action moves back and forth in time as the drama of a stormy marriage unfolds and the truth of a murder is brought to light. Irish-American playwright Edward Daugherty woos and wins his beautiful, rich, upper-class love, Katrina Taylor, but the passion that brought them together cannot sustain them in the face of life's tragedies.
Flaming Corsage - The action moves back and forth in time as the drama of a stormy marriage unfolds and the truth of a murder is brought to light. Irish-American playwright Edward Daugherty woos and wins his beautiful, rich, upper-class love, Katrina Taylor, but the passion that brought them together cannot sustain them in the face of life's tragedies.
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The Ink Truck - Kennedy's first novel relates the story of a newspaper strike in a vividly evoked Albany, New York. Inspired by a real-life labor dispute at the Times-Union, the book follows the exploits of Bailey, a columnist embroiled in a newspaper strike. Working in a sardonic prose style, Kennedy was able to weave into the narrative many of his observations about Irish Catholic life in Albany.
.The Ink Truck - Kennedy's first novel relates the story of a newspaper strike in a vividly evoked Albany, New York. Inspired by a real-life labor dispute at the Times-Union, the book follows the exploits of Bailey, a columnist embroiled in a newspaper strike. Working in a sardonic prose style, Kennedy was able to weave into the narrative many of his observations about Irish Catholic life in Albany.
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Ironweed 
- The story of Francis Phelan, once a talented major league baseball player, husband, and father of three, who has fallen so far from grace that his home for the past twenty-two years has been the street. Francis' denigration of himself and his common-law wife, Helen, makes for a disturbing read, and yet the novel is ultimately uplifting. It begins not with Francis' fall from grace, but rather with the day on which he begins his journey towards redemption.
- The story of Francis Phelan, once a talented major league baseball player, husband, and father of three, who has fallen so far from grace that his home for the past twenty-two years has been the street. Francis' denigration of himself and his common-law wife, Helen, makes for a disturbing read, and yet the novel is ultimately uplifting. It begins not with Francis' fall from grace, but rather with the day on which he begins his journey towards redemption..
It is the night before Halloween in 1938, and Francis, who left his family for good back in 1916, is beginning to think about all that he's left...
It is the night before Halloween in 1938, and Francis, who left his family for good back in 1916, is beginning to think about all that he's left...
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Legs - A fictionalized narrative of the erratic, stylish life and deadly career of notorious ‘twenties gangster Legs Diamond, told with equivocal disbelief by his attorney, Marcus Gorman.
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Masakado Le
sson - Novel of secret computer skullduggery... Fueling the action is a race for computer supremacy, as American and Japanese groups each try to build the supercomputer that will signal domination. Led by an obsessed genius, the Japanese are on the verge of victory. Attempting to stymie their success is an appealing team: Toole, an ex-con who robs banks over computer lines, Karen Albert, a beautiful computer scientist, and mysterious Mr. Cobb, an apparent government agent with high connections. Their sabotage plan, involving poker, seduction, and sophisticated code-cracking, is turned upside down by deceit and double-dealing at every turn.
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sson - Novel of secret computer skullduggery... Fueling the action is a race for computer supremacy, as American and Japanese groups each try to build the supercomputer that will signal domination. Led by an obsessed genius, the Japanese are on the verge of victory. Attempting to stymie their success is an appealing team: Toole, an ex-con who robs banks over computer lines, Karen Albert, a beautiful computer scientist, and mysterious Mr. Cobb, an apparent government agent with high connections. Their sabotage plan, involving poker, seduction, and sophisticated code-cracking, is turned upside down by deceit and double-dealing at every turn..
.Quinn’s Book - Daniel Quinn, America's foremost Civil War reporter, recalls his adolescent years in and around Albany, New York, and his 15-year pursuit of the mysterious Maud Fallon, a theater star world-renowned for her nude interpretations of Byron and Keats. Quinn has a newsman's eye for detail, and history buffs will enjoy his accounts of the anti-draft riots, the Underground Railroad, and Saratoga racing in its heyday..
Riding the Yellow Trolly Car: Selected Nonfiction - The 86 pieces collected
here are broken into six sections that date from 1954 through 1992. They include early news columns, interviews, book reviews, book introductions, and life experiences. Much of the text concerns writing, and Kennedy examines his own masterful creations as well as the great works that touched him. He speaks admiringly of Doctorow, Mailer, Bellow, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and reverently of Joyce, Beckett, Hemingway, and Damon Runyon. Other pieces cover movies, sports, and, of course, Albany. Whether he's discussing his taste for oysters or the plight of the homeless, there's a touch of the poet about Kennedy, making his writing a great pleasure to read no matter what the subject.
here are broken into six sections that date from 1954 through 1992. They include early news columns, interviews, book reviews, book introductions, and life experiences. Much of the text concerns writing, and Kennedy examines his own masterful creations as well as the great works that touched him. He speaks admiringly of Doctorow, Mailer, Bellow, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and reverently of Joyce, Beckett, Hemingway, and Damon Runyon. Other pieces cover movies, sports, and, of course, Albany. Whether he's discussing his taste for oysters or the plight of the homeless, there's a touch of the poet about Kennedy, making his writing a great pleasure to read no matter what the subject..
Rosc
oe - It's V-J Day, the war is over, and Roscoe Conway, after twenty-six years as the second in command of Albany's notorious political machine, decides to quit politics forever. But there's no way out, and only his Machiavellian imagination can help him cope with the erupting disasters. Every step leads back to the past – to the early loss of his true love, the takeover of city hall, the machine's fight with FDR and Al Smith to elect a governor, and the methodical assassination of gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond.
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Rosc
oe - It's V-J Day, the war is over, and Roscoe Conway, after twenty-six years as the second in command of Albany's notorious political machine, decides to quit politics forever. But there's no way out, and only his Machiavellian imagination can help him cope with the erupting disasters. Every step leads back to the past – to the early loss of his true love, the takeover of city hall, the machine's fight with FDR and Al Smith to elect a governor, and the methodical assassination of gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond..
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Very Old 
Bones - Another episode in the saga of the Phelan family in a mix of surreal flourishes and gritty naturalism. It's written as a mock-memoir by Orson Purcell, “a bit of a magician,” who is the bastard son of Peter Phelan, older brother of Francis. Orson is attempting to put the humpty-dumpty of familial life together again during a climactic family gathering, in 1958, by chronicling his own life, his father's, and three past generations. Peter, a painter, returns to Albany (from a long exile in Greenwich Village) in 1954, and stays to document the family's history in paint and to care for brother Tommy, a sort of “holy moron.”
Bones - Another episode in the saga of the Phelan family in a mix of surreal flourishes and gritty naturalism. It's written as a mock-memoir by Orson Purcell, “a bit of a magician,” who is the bastard son of Peter Phelan, older brother of Francis. Orson is attempting to put the humpty-dumpty of familial life together again during a climactic family gathering, in 1958, by chronicling his own life, his father's, and three past generations. Peter, a painter, returns to Albany (from a long exile in Greenwich Village) in 1954, and stays to document the family's history in paint and to care for brother Tommy, a sort of “holy moron.”
posted by msbw @ 10:28 AM
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