William Kennedy's Albany Cycle: Four-In-One

William Kennedy's Albany Cycle: Four-In-One

Benedict Giamo

This literary and cultural study draws upon archival research, selected interviews with Kennedy, and my own interpretation of the novels in question. My aim has been to explore the novelist’s imaginative life and craft of fiction. Kennedy’s commitment to the “spontaneous growth of the novel” and his creative process provide a thematic thread connecting each of the four novels examined herein: Legs, Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ironweed, and Very Old Bones.

I spent five weeks scouring the William Kennedy papers in the M. E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives at SUNY Albany, reviewing the drafts of each of Kennedy’s novels. I have also examined his journalism and the incoming correspondence from a variety of literary figures. In a few cases, such as with Legs, it was not an easy time, but there is so much more to say about a writer’s imaginative life by restoring the process of his or her efforts. Readers seldom, if ever, see such a treatment.

The pattern of my research entailed hitting the archive by day and spending time with Kennedy in the evenings and nights, both at his home in Averill Park, New York, and in his Albany townhouse, where Jack Legs Diamond was assassinated. We discussed the discoveries and insights from my daily investigation of his papers, conversed, dined, and conducted formal interviews. Although the archival research proved arduous, the ability to share my understandings with Kennedy helped enormously to put the findings into coherent perspective. The integration of primary research material with his commentary and my own growing comprehension of the making and meaning of the Albany Cycle would not have been possible without his generous cooperation.

My own approach to writing is to balance the roles of critic and reporter. Above all, it has been my intention to be accessible and engaging, to develop a literary analysis that is both scholarly and creative. I have taken to heart Henry James’s charge to the critic that he “feels till he understands,” and must have “perception at the pitch of passion.” I gave it my best shot. In doing so, I hope I have brought my appreciation and zeal to the project, and my felt experience, guiding the reader to a fuller understanding of the core of the Albany Cycle, which I regard as the Phelan family trilogy. This trilogy was preceded by a herculean effort that set the cycle in motion while teaching Kennedy how to master the art and craft of writing the novel. Legs was more than a warm up; it was a reconceptualization of an entire genre in itself. In all, the novels comprising the Four-in-One reveal a remarkable performance of literature at its very best.