Pulitzer winner is his town's hero

By Hillel Italie
Associated Press

William Kennedy's novel "Roscoe" takes on political insiders who ruled in an era of "machine" politics. Associated Press

The 74-year-old Kennedy wrote his way into this room, notably a series of novels about his native Albany that proved local lore could be appreciated nationwide. He won the Pulitzer Prize for "Ironweed," and is also known for such fiction as "Legs" and "Billy Phelan's Greatest Game."

A slender man of average height, high forehead and tall, straight-backed bearing, Kennedy is distinct among American writers, especially ones of younger generations. He is uncynical, proud of his roots. He loves Albany, founded in the 17th century and now the state's capitol, and defensive about those who dismiss it as a small town north of New York City.

"The city still galvanizes me," he says. "For people to berate Albany, to deride it, mock it, is ignorance at work."

Kennedy comes from a generation that believed, that voted, and from a city where many got to vote more than once on the same day. The author may be sentimental, but he's not naive. His new novel, "Roscoe" is a wry take on political insiders who follow the rules — just not the ones that appear in the law books.

Kennedy spent years as a reporter covering Albany politics. Drawing on such leaders as Democratic machine boss Dan O'Connell and longtime mayor Erastus Corning, the author imagines the lives of those who ran the city in the first half of the 20th century.

"It ('Roscoe') is just one long look at what they did historically and how they might have thought when they were doing," Kennedy explains. "You know how they won elections, but what motivated them was the mystery to me."

Kennedy grew up around political people. His father was a deputy sheriff who worked in the Albany County Courthouse and "knew every judge, every lawyer." One great uncle was a ward leader, another a committeeman.

Kennedy describes himself as a "mainstream" Democrat, given to the occasional vote for a liberal Republican, but disdainful of third-party candidates such as Ralph Nader. In Albany, there's barely a second party. Democrats control the mayoralty and every seat on the 16-member City Council.

"We had a Republican, but he lost in 1931," jokes Democratic state assemblyman Jack McEneny, a friend of Kennedy's and an Albany historian.

"It's more open now, but also less colorful. It's not so personal anymore. You have less of the family dynasties and people finding jobs for their second cousins. The world that Kennedy writes about in 'Roscoe' isn't really around anymore."

It didn't take long for Kennedy to learn the undemocratic ways of machine politics, but he never lost hope that government could make a difference. No one can avoid playing the game, he insists, but some — Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt — can transcend it.

"Somebody runs the town, or runs the country, and it's very important who does that," he says.

"People say it doesn't matter who's in, that they're all the same. There's that feeling of powerlessness, that you don't have the power to change the world, but you do. You see how a few votes changed a national election" in 2000.

Improvising on failure

"Roscoe" demonstrates less how a few votes can change an election than how the right people can change a few votes. Set in Albany during the 1940s, it's structured like one of those gangster movies about the hood who longs to come clean but finds out that he's trapped in the business.

The title character is a political boss who wants to retire, only to have a close ally commit suicide amid allegations — almost certainly true — of corruption. Roscoe, as he has so often, fixes the problem.

Like the gangster Jack "Legs" Diamond of "Legs," the drifter Francis Phelan of "Ironweed" and so many Kennedy characters, Roscoe discovers that the ways of "straight" society don't work. He approaches his life like a novelist, creating a new reality more interesting than the old one.

"It's not an uncommon event in a lot of lives — to be forced to improvise," Kennedy says.

"Myself, for instance. I could have gone on to become a magazine editor and have a career in New York journalism at the finest level. But I didn't want it; I wanted out, like Roscoe. I had to improvise, to free-lance. It was totally unexpected, but very challenging. I was driven to it by ... the desire to write fiction."

Kennedy's home, a low-ceilinged farm house 12 miles outside of Albany, reflects a well-connected man. Wall photos show the author with Bill and Hillary Clinton, Fidel Castro and Nobel laureates Saul Bellow and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He's also pictured with actors Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, on the set of the film version of "Ironweed."

Men without hats

The author was born in Albany in 1928, in an Irish neighborhood where you knew who voted and who didn't. He always loved books — John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway were early favorites — and started out as a sports reporter in Glen Falls, N.Y.

In his mid-30s, Kennedy made a fateful decision, an unusual one among literary writers: He returned home. He had left to edit a newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and seemed determined, like his writing hero, James Joyce, to stay away forever.

But in the 1960s, on a temporary return to care for his ailing father, Kennedy rediscovered Albany and learned its history: from the shooting of "Legs" Diamond in a downtown hotel (now used by Kennedy as an office) to an old saloon, J.F. Toohey's, where men without hats were looked upon with suspicion.

"I once thought I loathed the city, left it without a sigh and thought I'd gone for good," he writes in the nonfiction work "O Albany!"

"I love its times of grace and greatness, its political secrets and its historical presence in every facet of the nation's life, including the unutterable, the unspeakable, and the ineffable. ... I saw it as being as various at the American psyche itself."

Kennedy worked as a reporter for the Times Union in Albany and published his first novel, "The Ink Truck," in 1969. Commercial success came years later with "Ironweed," released in 1983. The novel was rejected by 13 publishers and only accepted by Viking upon the recommendation of Bellow, whom Kennedy cites as an early mentor. "I showed him one manuscript and he read it and told me it was publishable

Praise from Cuomo

Writers take their chances telling local tales. Joyce and William Faulkner angered and embarrassed their communities by revealing what many didn't want told. They were heroes to much of the world, but back home they were troublemakers.

Kennedy, an acknowledged "booster" of Albany, rarely has endured such criticism. Politicians and everyday citizens alike seek him out. Before the publication of "Ironweed," then-Gov. Mario Cuomo even published a letter of praise.

"I'll never forget when I read it, January 1983," Cuomo recalls. "The reason I remember is that on the eighth day of my first term as governor the inmates grabbed 16 hostages at Sing Sing and we were up for 57 hours negotiating.

"When it was all over, I thought I was going to be so exhausted I would just fall asleep. But I took this book someone had left for me, 'Ironweed,' and I couldn't stop reading it. I called Kennedy and said, with whatever energy I still had left for me, "You're going to win every prize there is. This is just a fabulous book.'"

Kennedy says he's on good terms with Cuomo's successor, George Pataki. He's also known around City Hall. After an interview, Kennedy shares a ride with a photographer into Albany, where his picture is to be taken in the City Council chamber.

Security is tighter since Sept. 11. A uniformed official stops Kennedy in the lobby and says he'll need clearance. But a second official soon appears, greets the author and lets him through.