William Kennedy

William Kennedy 1928-, American novelist, b. Albany, N.Y., grad. Siena College, 1949. Brought up in Albany, he worked as a journalist from 1949 to 1970, and began to concentrate on writing fiction in the early 1960s. In evocative prose, with vivid characterizations and acutely observed dialog, Kennedy's novels mingle history with myth, politics with the personal, and lyricism with squalor. His work is inextricably bound up with his hometown, which has provided rich subject matter for most of his fiction, including his best-known novel, Ironweed (1983; National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize; film, 1987), the tale of an alcoholic former major-league pitcher who ekes out an existence in the city's skid-row district in the 1930s. Kennedy's other Albany cycle novels are The Ink Truck (1969), Legs (1975), Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (1978), Quinn's Book (1988), The Flaming Corsage (1996), and Roscoe (2001). He has also written other novels, essays, some of which were collected in O Albany! (1983) and Riding the Yellow Trolley Car (1993), as well as a play, screenplays, and children's books. Kennedy has taught at the State Univ. of New York at Albany since 1973.

Kennedy, William (1928–), Albany-born novelist. Albany, New York, is the setting for all Kennedy's books, the most celebrated being Ironweed (1983, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize). In sharply evocative realistic prose it tells of the return to Albany in the 1930s of a onetime major league pitcher, Francis Phelan, now an alcoholic bum, and his episodes in and out of reality. Legs (1975) is a novelistic treatment of the gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond. Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (1978) is again about familiar characters in Depression Albany. Other novels in the Albany cycle are Quinn's Book (1988), set in the Civil War period; The Flaming Corsage (1996), which covers roughly four decades beginning in the 1880s; and Roscoe (2002), which stretches from the 1920s to the 1940s. The novel Very Old Bones (1992) digs into the author's own past and family history. Three essay and journalism collections are The Ink Truck (1969), O Albany! (1983), and Riding the Yellow Trolley Car: Selected Nonfiction (1993).

Kennedy, William. See GLASGOW BOYS.