Search

The Flaming Corsage begins with the “Love Nest Killings of 1908.” A cuckolded husband enters a Manhattan hotel suite; shoots his wife through the heart, killing her; fires two shots at Edward Daugherty, the novel’s protagonist, hitting him with one; sends Daugherty’s mistress scampering into the bedroom to hide; and kills himself by putting the revolver under his chin and pulling the trigger. Our initial reaction is that William Kennedy has left Albany behind and opted instead to tell a story that takes place in the more famous neighboring city to the south. After this brief and explosive opening, though, the novel moves backward in time to September, 1885, and readers have returned to Kennedy’s Albany.

With the publication of Ironweed in 1983, Kennedy suddenly found himself at the forefront of contemporary American fiction. This third novel of Kennedy’s Albany cycle received wide critical acclaim, winning both the National Book Critics Circle Award (1983-1984) and the Pulitzer Prize (1984). Ironically, Ironweed was initially rejected by thirteen publishing houses. Because of the commercial failings of Legs and Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, the editors at Viking were reluctant to undertake the publication of another Kennedy novel. A scolding letter from novelist Bellow, however, Kennedy’s first fiction writing teacher, changed their minds and gave Viking the idea of reissuing Kennedy’s two previous novels and marketing the trilogy as what Bellow called the Albany cycle. In his letter, Bellow reprimanded the editors at Viking, saying, “That the author of Billy Phelan should have a manuscript kicking around looking for a publisher is disgraceful.”

Many critics have argued that Quinn’s Book should not be considered a part of Kennedy’s Albany cycle. In both style and setting, Quinn’s Book stands apart from Kennedy’s previous works. Though set in Albany, Quinn’s Book shows New York’s capital city as it was in the nineteenth century and marks a break from Kennedy’s previous preoccupation with twentieth century Albany. The style of writing also looks back to an earlier time, often imitating the melodramatic, convoluted rhetoric typical of nineteenth century prose.

William Kennedy’s seventh novel of the Albany cycle, Roscoe is the story of Roscoe Conway, the boisterous, engaging, and rogue politician who has made the Democratic Party what it is in 1930’s and 1940’s Albany. The book begins in 1945, as Roscoe has decided, finally, to retire from politics. A series of barriers, however, stand in the way, and the retirement has to be delayed.

In Legs, Kennedy creates a fictional biography recounting the last year and a half of the life of Albany’s most notorious gangster. Jack “Legs” Diamond—a real-life bootlegger, murderer, drug dealer, and rascal—lived above the law, carrying out his business in upstate New York during Prohibition in the 1920’s and early 1930’s. Kennedy’s fictional account of this legendary figure was five years in the making, the result of painstaking historical research and eight drafts. Legs is, however, more than a catalog of one gangster’s exploits. It is a psychological and sociological look at America’s fascination with gangsters, murderers, and criminals of all types. Jack, like many gangsters of his era, was a celebrity, a national obsession. The newspapers were filled with details of his every move. He received fan mail, and cheers filled the courtroom when he was acquitted of one particularly brutal assault.

Quentin Tarantino, a video store clerk turned writer-director, fused Pulp Fiction together from a wide array of influences: undervalued American crime fiction, samurai films, the French New Wave, the work of directors Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma, blaxploitation films, and 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s pop culture. The film, cowritten with Roger Avary, was successful, in part because it was an homage to Tarantino’s favorite writers, directors, and singers. It was also challenging in a time when Hollywood was pushing safe, formulaic blockbusters, and it stood out because it relied heavily on dialogue and challenged standard conventions of storytelling.

Thomas Skelton, having quit college, wants to become a skiff guide at home in Key West, Florida. Upset by the decadence of American culture, Skelton has fallen back on a life of drugs and promiscuity. He has arrived at his ideal occupation only after realizing that there is nothing else he would like to do. Sportfishing, suddenly, is the only job that makes sense to him in an America that prizes excess and waste.

The Iowa Baseball Confederacy again has baseball as its dominant motif. This time, though, Kinsella injects even more elements of magic and mystery, as the reader learns that to be obsessed with baseball is to achieve a sort of mystical state. The narrator here, Gideon Clarke, whose love of baseball was passed down to him by his father, not only is obsessed with a mysterious and mythical baseball event, but also is ultimately given access to a magical realm. Clarke, like his father before him, is out to prove to the world that the Chicago Cubs traveled to Onamata, Iowa, in the summer of 1908 for an exhibition game against the all-stars of the Iowa Baseball Confederacy, an amateur league. The game, which the Cubs figured would not be much of a game at all, lasted in excess of two thousand innings and was played in an almost constant downpour. Since the game appears in no record books, the offices of the Cubs (and pretty much everyone else) have written Clarke off as insane. No one seems to acknowledge the game or even the confederacy. However, Clarke is convinced that the game was played. He believes so strongly, in fact, in the existence of the confederacy and the marathon game they played against the Cubs that he devotes his entire life to setting the record straight.

TYPES OF PLOT: Hard-boiled; private investigator; historical

During Prohibition, Chicago’s Beer Wars were at the forefront of the national imagination. For years the city had been turned into a battleground. Dean O’Banion ruled the North Side, and Al “Scarface” Capone and Johnny Torrio had the South Side. O’Banion was killed in 1924 by Frankie Yale, John Scalise, and Albert Anselmi, gunners for Capone, and Torrio was killed the following year by North Siders Earl “Hymie” Weiss, Vincent “The Schemer” Drucci, and George “Bugs” Moran. Soon after, Weiss, Drucci, and Moran made an attempt on Capone’s life. They failed, and Weiss later died at the hands of two Capone gunmen; Drucci was killed by a young cop. Eventually, Moran was the only one of O’Banion’s men left, and he took over the North Side operation. Moran swore an eternal vendetta against Capone, who had long been desperate to have control of the North Side as well as the South Side. While on vacation at his home in Palm Island, Florida, in early 1929, Capone received word that Moran’s gunners had killed several of his top lieutenants.

Born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, Geoffrey Hill’s work is defined by his working-class upbringing (his father and grandfather were police officers), his early memories of World War II, his views of European history, and his Christian vision of the world. Hill, who is deaf in one ear, was educated at Bromsgrove High School. He went on to attend Keble College, Oxford, where he studied English literature and first began to publish his poems. After graduating from Oxford, Hill taught at Leeds University for the better part of three decades. During this time, he also taught in Michigan and Nigeria. After leaving Leeds University, Hill taught at Emmanuel College and Boston University. He retired from Boston University in August, 2006, and assumed the title of professor emeritus. A revered poet, Hill has published numerous poetry collections, including The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy (1983) and Canaan (1996). The Triumph of Love is widely considered his finest work.

In this book, Kinsella revisits the characters from the Ermineskin series. The evolving relationship between Silas, who has become a writer, and his buddy Frank is the focus of this collection. The characters have grown since they appeared in The Fencepost Chronicles and The Miss Hobbema Pageant, but they are no less raucous. Kinsella follows his lovable misfits as they swindle their way across western Canada, generally wreaking havoc.

In February, 1948, Alexander Korda, a leading figure in the British film industry and the founder of London Films, asked novelist Graham Greene to write a film for him. The film was to be about the four-power (American, British, French, and Soviet) occupation of postwar Vienna, and it would be directed by Carol Reed, who had recently filmed Greene’s The Fallen Idol (1948). Greene visited Vienna and returned with the story that became the film treatment for The Third Man (1949). Korda drafted Hollywood producer David O. Selznick to coproduce the film. Selznick came on board, supplying a large part of the budget and providing some of his American stars.

“The Snows of Kilimanjaro” centers on the memories of a dying writer named Harry. On safari in Africa, he has been wounded and has developed an infection. Waiting around to die, he thinks about the past years of his life. He regrets that he did not accomplish more as a writer and realizes that he let himself get lazy. Part of Harry’s reason for going on safari had been to discipline himself. Though he and his wife have been to many great places and have had wonderful experiences, Harry has been swept up in the empty world of the wealthy, forgetting that it was his experiences with poor and interesting people that first awakened his desire to write. Harry fights with his wife, recognizing that she drove him to a life of decadence. He dies, and his soul flies to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, the House of God.