William J. Kennedy (1) (1928–)

A powerful look inside someone else's head. Frank has been a bum, left his family without a word, for over 30 years. Now he's back in town, wandering with other indigents, eating at a mission & looking for an abandoned building to sleep in, and overpowered by flashbacks of his life, the fights he's had, his glory days as a ball player, his role in a worker's strike.[return]I saw the movie before I read this. As I read, the text brought up images from the powerful movie, increasing my connection with the text. Of course many of the thoughts were not filmed, and I don't remember any of the scenes with Katrina. The movie gave the impression that the "ghosts" he was seeing were a result of DT's, but reading the book it seemed just as possible that they were a product of his guilt, his need to stop running and face what he did. The ending of the novel is pretty ambiguous: will he really make a change, or are his thoughts those of a dying man?[return]"I believe we die when we can't stand it anymore. I believe we stand as much as we can and then we die when we can..." (p. 65)[return]"Flight again...in order to assert the one talent ...that let him dance on the earth to the din of brass bands..." (p. 147)[return]"if he was ever to survive, it would be ...with a clear head and a steady eye for the truth: for the guilt he felt was not worth the dying...The trick was to live, to beat...that fateful chaos and show them all what a man can do to set things right, once he sets hi mind to it." (p. 207)… (more)

VERY OLD BONES (1992) is, not surprisingly, a damn good book, so I'm not sure why it sat on my shelf for over twenty years, unread. It's one of several novels which make up William Kennedy's "Albany Cycle." Kennedy grew up in Albany, where he attended Catholic high school, and then a Catholic college (Siena), also in Upstate NY. I've read a couple of his Albany books, LEGS and IRONWEED, thirty-some years ago, and enjoyed both, but especially the latter, which won the Pulitzer, and was also adapted into an acclaimed film, with Jack Nicholson as Francis, the wandering prodigal of the large, dysfunctional Phelan clan. BONES is a logical sequel to IRONWEED, set in an Albany twenty years later, in 1958, with Francis making only a brief appearance, but still looming large in the family's tragic history. The narrator here is Orson, the bastard son of Peter Phelan, an aging artist only recently gaining fame for his work, much of it derived from family stories and eccentric characters, Francis included. Orson delves deep into family - ancestors, sibling rivalries, Christianity, witches, superstition - as well as his own post-war military service in Germany, where he meets and marries the exotic Giselle and suffers a complete breakdown. We learn too of his unnatural attraction to his aunt Molly, who has her own hidden secrets. And there is Chick Phelan, the former seminarian, and Sarah, the domineering 'virgin' of the family, as well as the brain-damaged Tommy. All of these and more converge on the family home in Albany, for the reading of Peter's will. Oh, and Peter is still very much alive.

Like IRONWEED, this is what I would call a highly literary 'potboiler,' and I loved it. Very, very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (more)