“They were both questing for the behavior that was
proper to their station and their unutterable dreams. They both knew intimately
the etiquette, the taboos, the protocol of bums. By their talk to each other
they understood that they shared a belief in the brotherhood of the desolate;
yet in the scars of their eyes they confirmed that no such fraternity had ever
existed, that the only brotherhood they belonged to was the one that asked the
enduring question: How do I get through the next twenty minutes? They feared
drys, cops, jailers, bosses, moralists, crazies, truth-tellers, and one
another. They loved storytellers, liars, whores, fighters, singers, collie dogs
that wagged their tails, and generous bandits. Rudy, thought Francis, he’s just
a bum, but who ain’t?”—William Kennedy, Ironweed (1983)
William Kennedy was born on this date 85 years ago in the North End
of Albany, a city from which he created a fictional world as great and various
as John O’Hara’s Gibbsville or William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County. Ironweed, which won the Pulitzer Prize
(after being rejected 13 times), might be the central portion of his “Albany
Cycle” of novels. Its Joycean style, humor and fierce
compassion for the “brotherhood of the desolate” (beginning, appropriately
enough, on Halloween, climaxing on All Saints’ Day and ending on All Souls’ Day
during the Great Depression) will not be soon forgotten once you have finished
it.
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