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Billy Phelans Greatest Game
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Book Synopsis Billy Phelan's Greatest Game by : William Kennedy
Download or read book Billy Phelan's Greatest Game written by William Kennedy and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-12-22 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Billy Phelan, a slightly tarnished poker player, pool hustler, and small-time bookie, moves through the lurid nighttime glare of a tough Depression-era town. A resourceful man full of Irish pluck, Billy works the fringes of Albany sporting life with his own particular style and private code of honor until he finds himself in the dangerous position of potential go-between in the kidnapping of a political boss's son. In relating Billy's fall from the underworld grace and his storybook redemption, Kennedy captures the seamy underside of a brassy, sweaty city that would prefer to pretend that the Depression doesn't exist.
Download or read book Ironweed written by William Kennedy and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-12-22 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, basis of the film starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. Francis Phelan, ex-big-leaguer, part-time gravedigger, full-time bum with the gift of gab, is back in town. He left Albany twenty-two years earlier after he dropped his infant son accidentally, and the boy died. Now he's on the way back to the wife and home he abandoned, haunted at every corner by the ghosts of his violent life. Francis; his wino ladyfriend of nine years, Helen; and his stumblebum pal, Rudy, shuffle their ragtag way through the city's bleakest streets, surviving on gumption, muscatel, and black wit. estiny is not their business. 'The premise of Ironweed was so unpromising, that in marketing terms the writer still to this day finds it funny: the story of a bunch of itinerant alcoholics, knocking around Kennedy's hometown, falling out, having visions, trying to pass for sober to cadge a bed for the night in the homeless shelter.' Guardian 'But for all the rich variety of prose and event, from hallucination to bedrock realism to slapstick and to blessed quotidian peace, ''Ironweed'' is more austere than its predecessors. It is more fierce, but also more forgiving.' Quoted from the classic New York Times review of Ironweed, which made it an overnight sensation.
Download or read book O Albany! written by William Kennedy and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1985-09-03 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kennedy's O Albany! is in part the non-fictional stories he covered in his novels, Legs and Billy Phelan's Greatest Game. Kennedy retells the exploits of the bootlegger Jack 'Legs' Diamond, the bungled 1933 kidnapping of John O'Connell, Jr., heir to the Albany Democratic machine and explores the Albany of his past, including its demographics and vanished neighborhoods.
Download or read book Legs written by William Kennedy and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1983-01-27 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legs, the inaugural book in William Kennedy’s acclaimed Albany cycle of novels, brilliantly evokes the flamboyant career of gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond. Through the equivocal eyes of Diamond’s attorney, Marcus Gorman (who scraps a promising political career for the more elemental excitement of the criminal underworld), we watch as Legs and his showgirl mistress, Kiki Roberts, blaze their gaudy trail across the tabloid pages of the 1920s and 1930s.
Download or read book An Albany Trio written by William Kennedy and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1996-07-01 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Kennedy's justly acclaimed Albany Cycle [is] one of the imperishable products of American literature since the Second World War. These books can be read singly or in sequence, but read they must be. Kennedy is one of our necessary writers.”—GQ Legs inaugurated William Kennedy’s celebrated cycle of novels set in Albany, New York. True to both life and myth. Legs evokes the flamboyant career of the legendary gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond, who was finally murdered in Albany, and his showgirl mistress as they blaze a trail across the tabloid pages of the 1920s and 1930s. The second novel in the Albany cycle depicts Billy Phelan, a slightly tarnished poker player, pool hustler, and small-time bookie, as he moves through the lurid nighttime glare of a tough Depression-era town. Full of Irish pluck, he works the fringes of Albany sporting life with his own particular style—until he falls from underworld grace. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Ironweed, Francis Phelan, ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, and full-time drunk, has hit bottom. Years ago he left Albany after killing a scab during a workers’ strike, and again after he accidentally—and fatally—dropped his infant son. Now, in 1938, Francis is back, roaming familiar streets and trying to make peace with ghosts of the past and present. William Kennedy’s Albany Cycle of novels reflect what he once described as the fusion of his imagination with a single place. A native and longtime resident of Albany, New York, his work moves from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, chronicling family life, the city’s netherworld, and its spheres of power—financial, ethnic, political—often among the Irish-Americans who dominated the city in this period. The novels in his cycle include, Legs, Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, Ironweed, Quinn’s Book, Very Old Bones, The Flaming Corsage, and Roscoe.
Book Synopsis The Flaming Corsage by : William Kennedy
Download or read book The Flaming Corsage written by William Kennedy and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-12-22 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a Manhattan hotel room, the "Love Nest Killings of 1908" take place. But the mystery of who killed whom, and why, does not unravel until we explore the lives of Katrina Taylor and Edward Daughtery. He is a first-generation Irish American and a successful playwright. She is a high-born Protestant, a beautiful seductive woman with complex attitudes towards life. Their marriage is a passionate one, but a cataclysmic hotel fire changes it into something else altogether. Moving back and forth between the 1880s and 1912, The Flaming Corsagefollows Katrina and Edward as other lives impact upon theirs-their socially opposed families; Edward's flirtatious actress paramour, Melissa Spencer; the physician Giles Fitzroy, and his wife; and Edward's friend, the cynical journalist Thomas Maginn. The Flaming Corsageevocatively portrays through the lens of Albany's robust Irishtown and English-Dutch aristocracy the seething, contradictory impulses of our humanity, lusts and furies that know no bounds of time or place.
Download or read book Quinn's Book written by William Kennedy and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1849, a boy saves a girl from the Hudson River in this story “of wonders and sweetness, magic and horrors [that] immerses itself in the marvelous” (The Boston Sunday Globe). A penniless Irish orphan, Daniel Quinn is among the crowds gathered at the Hudson River in Albany to watch a legendary dancer aboard the ferry. But when the boat strikes the ice that chokes the water on this wintry day, awe turns to terror. Though the dancer’s life is lost, Daniel risks his neck and rescues her niece, Maud Fallon. But just as he’s falling in love with the beautiful, passionate girl, she’s snatched away from him. As the years pass and Daniel continues his quest for the beguiling Maud, he will witness the rise and fall of great dynasties in upstate New York, epochal prize fights, the exotic world of the theater, visitations from spirits beyond the grave, horrific battles between Irish immigrants and the Know-Nothings, the New York draft riots, the perils of the Underground Railroad, and the bloody despair of the Civil War. Rich with nineteenth-century history and filled with flourishes of humor and magical realism, this is an “engrossing and eerily profound” novel (Time) from an author who, in the words of Stephen King, “writes with verve and nerve [and] paints a full and lively canvas.” In the tradition of E. L. Doctorow’s Billy Bathgate or Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale, it is a remarkable saga from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Ironweed.
Download or read book Very Old Bones written by William Kennedy and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a Pulitzer Prize–winning author: “An immensely gratifying novel” of an Irish-American clan whose exploits changed Albany forever (The Boston Globe). When it was built, the Phelan mansion was the only home on the block. In the decades since, countless tragedies have swept through its rambling halls, but no matter how many times its foundations have been rocked, the old house still stands. Now, in 1958, its sole occupants are the eccentric old painter Peter Phelan and his illegitimate son, Orson, who sees all—but says nothing. When Peter invites his remaining family to hear him read his will aloud, it forces the Phelan clan to reckon with the most powerful force in Albany: their own tortured history. Unveiling a series of portraits inspired by family tragedy, Peter takes the Phelans back into the past, as far as 1887, forcing them to come face-to-face with the origins of the family curse. As the raucous narrative unfolds, Orson does his best to grapple with his roots, and the knowledge that the sins of the past can never truly be washed away. William Kennedy’s eight-book Albany Cycle is one of the most ambitious projects in modern historical fiction, a kaleidoscopic portrait of a city whose heroes are its corrupt politicians, conmen, and thieves. The Phelans are one of the roughest families in American literature, and also one of the greatest, who “can claim a place beside O’Neill’s Tyrones and Steinbeck’s Joads” (Library Journal).
Book Synopsis The Albany Cycle by : William Kennedy
Download or read book The Albany Cycle written by William Kennedy and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 723 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Francis Phelan is, alongside 'Legs' Diamond, William Kennedy's greatest character. Ex-ball player, latterly a bum, lush and hardcase, he is central to these three Albany novels: father to the pool shark Billy who struggles with his legacy of violence and self-glorification (BILLY PHELAN'S GREATEST GAME); brother to artist Peter whose paintings explore the dark corners of his family history, including Francis's life (VERY OLD BONES); and antihero of Pulitzer Prize winning IRONWEED, in which Phelan returns to Albany at the end of the Depression, roaming the familiar streets with his hobo pal Helen, trying to make peace with the ghosts of the past and present.
Book Synopsis Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes by : William Kennedy
Download or read book Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes written by William Kennedy and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Ironweed," a dramatic novel of love and revolution from one of America's finest writers. This is an unforgettably riotous story of romance and redemption set against the landscape of the civil rights movement.
Download or read book Roscoe written by William Kennedy and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2002-11-26 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Thick with crime, passion, and backroom banter” (The New Yorker), Roscoe is an odyssey of great scope and linguistic verve, a deadly, comic masterpiece from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ironweed It's V-J Day, the war is over, and Roscoe Conway, after twenty-six years as the second in command of Albany's notorious political machine, decides to quit politics forever. But there's no way out, and only his Machiavellian imagination can help him cope with the erupting disasters. Every step leads back to the past—to the early loss of his true love, the takeover of city hall, the machine's fight with FDR and Al Smith to elect a governor, and the methodical assassination of gangster Jack "Legs" Diamond. William Kennedy’s Albany Cycle of novels reflect what he once described as the fusion of his imagination with a single place. A native and longtime resident of Albany, New York, his work moves from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, chronicling family life, the city’s netherworld, and its spheres of power—financial, ethnic, political—often among the Irish-Americans who dominated the city in this period. The novels in his cycle include, Legs, Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, Ironweed, Quinn’s Book, Very Old Bones, The Flaming Corsage, and Roscoe.
Download or read book The Ink Truck written by William Kennedy and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “wildly funny” novel of a monumentally unsuccessful newspaper strike in 1960s upstate New York from a Pulitzer Prize–winning author (People). The newspaper strike has stretched on for more than a year. When it began, the Guild boasted over 250 members. Now, they’re down to eighteen, with only three truly serious about the cause. Their leader, Bailey, is a columnist with an outsize sense of his own importance and a hatred of scabs that borders on fanaticism. Married to a roller derby queen, but smitten with one of his fellow radicals, Bailey is on a path of self-destruction that could take the entire city’s newspaper establishment down along with him. And that’s just what he has in mind. With the cape-wearing old-school Rosenthal at his side, Bailey embarks on a mad mission: hijacking the newspaper’s entire ink shipment and dumping it in the snow. But he’s hardly taken his first step when the scheme spins out of control, trapping him between armies of gypsies, scabs, and the wildest hippies New York has to offer. Set in a city closely resembling his native Albany, the fiction debut of William Kennedy is “a bawdy Celtic romp,” foreshadowing the wit and imagination that marked his literary career (Time).
Book Synopsis The Man with the Sawed-Off Leg and Other Tales of a New York City Block by : Daniel J. Wakin
Download or read book The Man with the Sawed-Off Leg and Other Tales of a New York City Block written by Daniel J. Wakin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 999 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They stand proudly gazing across the Hudson River at the cliffs of New Jersey. Their brows are marked by ornamental pediments. Greek columns stand as sentries by their entrances and stone medallions bedeck their chests. They are seven graceful relics of Beaux Arts New York, townhouses built more than 100 years ago for a new class of industrialists, actors and scientists -- many from abroad -- who made their fortunes in the United States and shaped the lives of Americans. This book brings to life the ghosts who inhabit that row of townhouses on Manhattan’s stately Riverside Drive for the first fifty years of the 20th Century, including a vicious crew of hoodlums who carried out what at the time was the largest armored car robbery in American history. It was a daring, minutely planned exploit that ended in blood, when one of the gangsters accidentally shot himself. He was taken to one of the townhouses -- then, in 1934, an underworld safehouse -- where he died and was stuffed in a steamer trunk (but his cohorts had to saw off one of his legs to fit him in it). From gangsters to industrialists, from future mayors to murderers, from movie stars to mafia dons, one block in a burgeoning city saw it all. The people who lived in each of the "Seven Sisters" reads like a mini Who's Who. Meet: * Percy Geary and John Oley, two Albany gangsters with a background in kidnapping and bootlegging; * Lucretia Davis, baking powder heiress whose parents were engaged in a bitter divorce that included allegations that her mother was trying get her father declared insane and take over his business; * Jokichi Takamine, the world's first biotech engineer and a rare Japanese scientist in the United States at the turn of the 19th century--He discovered diastase, an enzyme to ferment whisky and settle the stomach, and the adrenaline, a major scientific discovery; * Marion Davies, the mistress of William Randolph Hearst, who rose to movie stardom on the back of W.R.'s publicity machine while living on the block; * Julia Marlowe, American's greatest Shakespearean actress around 1900, just to name a few. If only the buildings could speak. * The Fabers of pencil fame * Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (Albany gang made famous by William Kennedy) * Duke Ellington, two mayors, and lurking in the background Legs Diamond.... If only the walls could talk? Dan Wakins makes it so in this unforgettable intimate glimpse into the history of New York City.
Book Synopsis Where the Blue Begins by : Christopher Morley
Download or read book Where the Blue Begins written by Christopher Morley and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gissing, a dog, lives alone comfortably in a country house in the Canine Estates until he becomes a father, which changes everything.
Book Synopsis yes I said yes I will Yes. by : Nola Tully
Download or read book yes I said yes I will Yes. written by Nola Tully and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-05-19 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the fictional morning of June 16, 1904—Bloomsday, as it has come to be known—Mr. Leopold Bloom set out from his home at 7 Eccles Street and began his day’s journey through Dublin life in the pages of James Joyce’s novel of the century, Ulysses. Commemorating the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, Yes I Said Yes I Will Yes offers a priceless gathering of what’s been said about Ulysses since the extravagant praise and withering condemnation that first greeted it upon its initial publication. From the varied appraisals of such Joyce contemporaries as William Butler Yeats (“It is an entirely new thing. . . . He has certainly surpassed in intensity any novelist of our time”) and Virginia Woolf (“Never did I read such tosh”), to excerpts from Tennessee Williams’ term paper “Why Ulysses is Boring” and assorted wit, praise, parody, caricature, photographs, anecdotes, bon mots, and reminiscence, this treasury of Bloomsiana is a lively and winning tribute to the most famous day in literature.
Book Synopsis Conversations with William Kennedy by : William Kennedy
Download or read book Conversations with William Kennedy written by William Kennedy and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To read these interviews given between 1969 and 1996 is to gain insights into William Kennedy's high seriousness in pursuing the craft of fiction and to witness the artistic growth of this remarkable writer. The twenty-four interviews in this collection reveal how the opportunities and challenges in Kennedy's writing life parallel those other contemporary writers have faced in the last years of the century.The high drama of imagined worlds, he says, becomes a Rosetta Stone, the key that unlocks the very real mysteries and complexities of our daily lives.You're inventing out of a confluence of known facts and random ideas, he says about the process of writing, juxtaposing reality and abstractions, and then wham! You've got something brand new in your head, and on the page. You're functioning on a plane of existence you didn't know was possible. That's creation, and it's profound pleasure. It's what you live for.Readers of these interviews will be privy to another process as well, the arduous but exciting process by which Kennedy has emerged as a major voice in contemporary letters. His meteoric rise to fame in 1983 and his continuing popularity since are the stuff of drama and folklore. In that year his novel Ironweed, rejected earlier by thirteen publishers, was finally published by Viking. It earned him a MacArthur Award, the New York Book Critics Circle Award, and a Pulitzer Prize. Governor Mario Cuomo honored him with the New York State Governor's Arts Award and declared that in Kennedy Albany (had) found its Homer. Hollywood came calling and secured screen rights to Ironweed, Legs, and Billy Phelan's Greatest Game. With Francis Ford Coppola, Kennedy co-wrote thescreenplay of The Cotton Club.The career that lifted off with such dramatic momentum has shown no signs of flagging. With steady regularity, Kennedy continues to add to his Albany Cycle of novels, as he experiments boldly with the craft of fiction.
Download or read book A Good Day to Die written by Jim Harrison and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A road trip novel of three desperate souls fueled by drugs, alcohol, and delusions—from the New York Times–bestselling author of Legends of the Fall. The author of thirty-nine books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, Jim Harrison was one of our most beloved and acclaimed writers, adored by both readers and critics. His novel, A Good Day to Die, centers on an unlikely trio: a poet with a tendency to lapse into beatific reveries of superb fishing in cold, fast streams; a Vietnam vet consumed by uppers, downers, and violence; and a girl who loved only one of them—at first. With plans conceived during the madness of one long drunken night, the three of them leave Florida, driving west to buy a case of dynamite, determined to save the Grand Canyon from a dam they believe is about to be built. A Good Day to Die is an unrelenting tour de force, and a dark exploration of what it means to live beyond the pale in contemporary America. “Mr. Harrison’s perceptions are jagged and cutting . . . A remarkably well-plotted story.” —Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
