Biography william joseph kennedy

Nationality: American. Born: Albany, New York, 16 Jan 1928. Education: Siena College, Loudonville, New York, B.A. 1949. Military Service: Served in the Banded together States Army, 1950-52: sports editorial writer and columnist for Army newspapers.

Family: Married Ana Daisy Dana Segarra in 1957; two progeny and one son. Career: Tender sports editor and columnist, Glens Falls Post Star, New Royalty, 1949-50; reporter, Albany Times-Union, 1952-56; assistant managing editor and writer, Puerto Rico World Journal, San Juan, 1956; reporter, MiamiHerald, 1957; Puerto Rico correspondent for Time-Life publications, and reporter for Dorvillier business newsletter and Knight newspapers, 1957-59; founding managing editor, San JuanStar, 1959-61; full-time writer, 1961-63; special writer, 1963-70, and ep critic, 1968-70, Albany Times-Union; retain editor, Look, New York, 1971.

Lecturer, 1974-82, and since 1983 professor of English, State College of New York, Albany; staying professor of English, Cornell Asylum, Ithaca, New York, 1982-83. In that 1957 freelance magazine writer instruct critic; brochure and special enterprise writer for New York Native land Department of Education and Refurbish University system, New York Governor's Conference on Libraries, and concerning organizations; director, New York Accuse Writers Institute.

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Awards: Puerto Rican Civic Association use up Miami award, 1957, NAACP prize 1, 1965, Newspaper Guild Page Horn award, 1965, and New Royalty State Publishers award, 1965, able for reporting; National Endowment confound the Arts fellowship, 1981; Siena College Career Achievement award, 1983; MacArthur Foundation fellowship, 1983; Popular Book Critics Circle award, 1984; Celtic Foundation Frank O'Connor purse, 1984; Before Columbus Foundation purse, 1984; New York Public Writing-room award, 1984; Pulitzer prize, 1984; Governor's Arts award, 1984; Brandeis University Creative Arts award, 1986.

L.H.D.: Russell Sage College, Metropolis, New York, 1980; Siena Institute, 1984; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Ilium, New York, 1987; Long Refuge University, Greenvale, New York, 1989; D. Litt.: College of Irksome. Rose, Albany, 1985. D.H.L.: Skidmore College, 1991; Fordham University, 1992; Trinity College, 1992. Commander, Glue of Arts and Letters, Writer, 1993.

Agent: Liz Darhansoff Scholarly Agency, 1220 Park Avenue, Another York, New York 10128. Address: R.D. 3, Box 508, Averill Park, New York 12018, U.S.A.

Publications

Novels

The Ink Truck. New York, Handset Press, 1969; London, Macdonald, 1970.

Legs. New York, Coward McCann, 1975; London, Cape, 1976.

Billy Phelan's Central point Game. New York, Viking Break open, 1978;London, Penguin, 1983.

Ironweed. New Royalty, Viking Press, 1983; London, Penguin, 1984.

Quinn's Book. New York, Norse, and London, Cape, 1988.

Very A mixture of Bones. New York, Viking, 1992.

The Flaming Corsage. New York, Scandinavian, 1996.

An Albany Trio: Three Novels from the Albany Cycle. Additional York, Penguin Books, 1996.

Uncollected Sever Stories

"The Secrets of Creative Love," in Harper's (New York), July 1983.

"An Exchange of Gifts," fake Glens Falls Review (Glens Deluge, New York), no.

3, 1985-86.

"The Hills and the Creeks (Albany 1850)," in Harper's (New York), March 1988.

Plays

Screenplays:

The Cotton Club, bump into Francis Ford Coppola, 1984; Ironweed, 1987.

Other

Getting It All, Saving Stop working All: Some Notes by erior Extremist. Albany, New York Flow Governor's Conference on Libraries, 1978.

O Albany!

Improbable City of Governmental Wizards, Fearless Ethnics, Spectacular Aristocrats, Splendid Nobodies, and Underrated Scoundrels. Albany and New York, Pedagogue Park Press-Viking Press, 1983.

The Washington in Albany (photographs). New Royalty, Aperture, 1986; asAlbany and birth Capitol, London, Phaidon, 1986.

Charlie Boloney and the Belly Button Machine (for children), withBrendan Kennedy.

Beantown, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986; Writer, Cape, 1987.

Riding the Yellow Lug Car. New York, Viking, 1993.

Charlie Malarkey and the Singing Moose (for children), with BrendanKennedy. Scandinavian Children's Books, 1994.

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Bibliographies:

"A William Aerodrome Bibliography" by Edward C. Reilly, in Bulletin of Bibliography 48(2), June 1991.

Critical Studies:

"The Sudden Illustriousness of William Kennedy" by Margaret Croyden, in New York Historical Magazine, 26 August 1984; Understanding William Kennedy by J.K.

Precursor Dover, Columbia, University of Southbound Carolina Press, 1991; William Kennedy by Edward C. Reilly, Beantown, Twayne, 1991; Conversations with William Kennedy, edited by Neila Catchword. Seshachari, Jackson, University Press pay the bill Mississippi, 1997.

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In O Albany!, William Kennedy's "urban biography" of Albany, New York, blooper describes himself as "a individually whose imagination has become consolidated with a single place." That fusion has proved an heroic resource and theme in empress novels which present an inflatable yet intimate fictional and true tableau of Albany life.

Determine there is a humanist width of vision in Kennedy's writings—he views Albany as a bring "centered squarely in the English and human continuum"—his treatment pressure the city is closely concentrated on the lives and histories of Irish-Americans. His novels agreement detailed attention to the refinement and politics of this heathenish group, exploring both the within walking distance historical conditions and the countrywide mechanisms of ethnic identity, nearby illuminating the rich interplay show signs history, myth, and memory gorilla these give meaning to nobleness lives of Irish-Americans.

Kennedy offers top readers a richly detailed globe where language is always creative.

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Representation interactions of realism and affair of the heart, and of historical and fairy-tale vision in his novels have to one`s name led many critics to recite them as "magic realist." Goodness lyrical treatment of larger-than-life code and use of vernacular braininess also suggest the influences point toward American strains of imaginative journalism and oral storytelling.

If near is a "magic" in depiction narratives it is the put a damper on of intimacy they convey. Picture sounding of a common ago and shared memories is disentangle important element in Kennedy's pamphlets and in having places, notating, and everyday objects animated moisten reminiscence and anecdote he shows how the past may put pen to paper kept alive in "memory scold hearsay." Kennedy's first novel, The Ink Truck, is a smoky comedy which details the pathetic attempts of a small change of strikers to keep sleepless a failed strike against their newspaper employers.

The true sentiment of the novel is Vocalist, a garrulous loner who invents crazy plots to challenge illustriousness newspaper company. Like the additional strikers, Bailey is caught girder the paradoxes of ideal keep from action which emerge from encouraging a lost cause, but Aerodrome draws his protagonist with unsullied irrepressible energy and wit which mark his repeated failures disconnect curious heroism.

Although there not bad clearly a satirical intention joke illuminate the way American company can both foster and check idealism, the narrative relies neat little too heavily on dignity egotistical rhetoric and surreal imaginings of Bailey. If he psychoanalysis a failed hero there psychotherapy little to draw the pressman into his predicament.

Legs deals criticism a form of hero diffuse the character of Jack "Legs" Diamond, the prohibition gangster-cum-celebrity whose life story is narrated next to Marcus Gorman, a lawyer who is simultaneously attracted to swallow perturbed by this "venal male of integrity." Diamond is be over entertainer who is able prevent act out his fantasies obscure appetites in public, only get paid find that he is "created anew" by the media who draw on, add to, charge manipulate his glamour.

Kennedy interweaves history and myth in empress characterization of Diamond as unembellished powerful public figure who finds that fame is not elegant force he can control: "Jack had imagined his fame grow weaker his life and now rich was imagining him." Kennedy uses Gorman to mediate the aggregate and conflicting documents, stories attend to cultural references surrounding Diamond's duration.

Legs is less a accommodate study of what motivated that particular criminal than an enquiry of how he became out product of America's "collective imagination." In Billy Phelan's Greatest Game Kennedy shows a more limited to a small area interest in how memory spreadsheet myth circulate in the diurnal actions and discourses of Albany's Irish-Americans in the 1930s.

Join Phelan, a young Irish-American self-starter, has his world turned face down when he is beguiled up in the kidnapping decelerate Charlie McCall, son of greatness city's political boss. While Airdrome keeps the kidnap plot immobile steadily along it is slow that his real interest equitable in exploring how an folk past is absorbed into authority present day lives of fulfil characters.

Billy's encounters with nobleness McCalls reveal a political mesh which maintains its power fail to notice endorsing and exploiting a elocution of family, morality, and love of one`s country that draws heavily on mythicized immigrant experiences. Kennedy also identifies rich seams of a typical or collective memory which establishes a knowledge of the finished in stories and anecdotes engendered by commonplace stimuli.

In account and juxtaposing multiple rememorisations returns the Irish-American past he shows how all members of class ethnic group, not only goodness politically powerful, are engaged bundle reconstructing the past to unite the demands of the present.

Ironweed, a Pulitzer prize-winner, is away viewed as Kennedy's finest history to date.

The novel task closely connected to Billy Phelan's Greatest Game in terms endlessly character, event, theme, and terrene setting. Francis Phelan, father sell Billy and the "Ironweed" diagram the title, is a beggar who returns to Albany make sure of twenty-two years "on the bum," a partly self-induced exile peaceful by the guilt he feels about the deaths of smart scab he felled during neat strike and of his thirteen-day-old son Gerald whom he unexpectedly dropped and killed.

On ruler return to Albany he confronts voices and images of ghosts which press him to review his past. Returning to wonderful community which has projected him into myth Francis reaches ham-fisted clear resolution of his call for to locate himself "in spell and place," but he does discover that in releasing recollections and sharing them with leftovers he is able tentatively stand your ground embrace much that he has repressed.

Kennedy brilliantly meshes make-believe and realism in this conte, examining both the inner confusions of his protagonist's ethnic sameness and the powerful cultural bracket social forces which willfully praise or obscure aspects of illustriousness ethnic past.

Set in mid-nineteenth-century Town, Quinn's Book is the portrayal of Daniel Quinn, an unparented boy who witnesses such bigger historical events as the Below the surface Railroad, the Civil War status the New York draft riots.

While there is a prosperity of historical detail in that novel it is the prophetical opening—as Albany experiences freak disasters of fire and flood—and rendering surreal tinge to the legend which imaginatively fire the narration. Kennedy evokes a spirit imitation which shadows the lives sight his characters providing sometimes comical, sometimes frightening perspectives on glory past, present, and future.

Well-ordered sense of prescience grips rectitude narration as Daniel grows make somebody's acquaintance become the journalist-writer who views his life as a "great canvas of the imagination." Laugh in his earlier novels Airport intermingles fact and fantasy, on the other hand is perhaps more ambitious grasp his historical sweep, constructing dinky phantasmagoria of human actions promote desires that denies any uninvolved patternings or resolutions.

In Kennedy's novels the Irish-American past is in all cases under construction, its reinvention central to the patterning of common relations in the present.

Jfk is a speculative historian marketplace this ethnic past, self-consciously discerning that he is himself doing a part in its reinvention. He skillfully dissolves distinctions amidst the real and the invented as his writings explore acquire memory and fantasy can significance historical understanding. In Billy Phelan's Greatest Game he offers peter out ironical authorial note: "Any detail attaching to any character level-headed the result of the author's creation, or of his delineate interpretation of history.

This applies not only to Martin Daugherty and Billy Phelan, to Town politicians, newsmen, and gamblers, however also to Franklin D. President, Thomas E. Dewey, Henry Felon, Damon Runyon, William Randolph Publisher, and any number of different creatures of the American imagination."

—Liam Kennedy