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A Conversation with William Kennedy

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A Conversation with William Kennedy 20 A Conversation with William “Oh, I do. I feel when I’m writing as if I’m a resident of Elk Street, or Colonie Street, or Broadway in “I guess it dates back to the so valuable to me that I wanted the North End. I once found a 1960s when I was going through to own them,” he said.“I now map from 1876 that gave me a old newspapers for an assign- have every issue of the Albany picture of what my neighbor- ment…and out of that experience Argus from 1883 to 1921, when it hood was like long before I was came the awareness of how went out of business.” He leaves born. It brought that whole long- fragile the historical record was.” the room and returns with a gone city back to life for me.” It’s a late afternoon in winter, large, cumbersome, bound volume He found the map in the and William Kennedy, author of and turns the pages of the now- Albany Public Library; it shows a dozen books, among them the defunct newspaper.“I use these forty-two piers of a thriving “Albany cycle” of novels that includes the Pulitzer Prize-winning IIronweed, is describing his first “It drives me crazy to read a story that encounter with archival records: handling the crumbling pages of aging newspapers. The experi- leaves out essential details that should ence he refers to began more than thirty-five years ago in an be there…A story comes to life with Albany newspaper morgue. He had just returned to his native the real details of history.” Albany after seven years as a journalist and editor in Puerto Rico, and the mention of that all the time. For the novel I just lumber district between the Erie sun-filled island creates, at least in finished I tracked the 1919 election Canal and the Hudson River in this writer’s imagination, a strong of Dan O’Connell, who became his North End neighborhood. He counterpoint to the snow outside. the town’s political boss. I could was captivated.“When I grew up His general assignment from follow the election coverage day there were no piers, and the canal an Albany Times Union editor, by day. When I wrote The Flaming was gone. But Albany had called he explains, was to write about Corsage,I was able to move itself the white pine center of Albany’s neighborhoods. That through the social life of the 1890s the world—lumber companies assignment would eventually via the daily pages of the Argus.” denuding the Adirondacks, ship- become the basis for his critically But old newspapers are not ping logs down the canal to North acclaimed non-fiction book O Kennedy’s only sources of fact and Albany for conversion to lumber Albany! (1983), a lively history of inspiration. When asked if he feels for trans-shipment everywhere. It the capital of New York State and, transported back to the period was such a vibrant thing to be not coincidentally, his hometown. about which he is writing, the able to reconstitute at will those “The old newspapers proved journalist-turned-novelist agrees. long-gone days of the city.” NEW YORK archives • SUMMER 2001 21 William Kennedy’s Ironweed (1983) won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Some of his other books include: Legs (1975), Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game (1978), O Albany!: Kennedy Improbable City of Political Wizards, Fearless Ethnics, Spectacular Aristocrats, Splendid Nobodies, and Underrated really doesn’t know what he’s trove, an avenue into a forgotten writing about. A story comes to time.” Kennedy also remembers Scoundrels (1983), Quinn’s Book life with the real details of history, the access he was given to the (1988), Very Old Bones (1992), even if you invent them. But you clipping files of the New York can’t invent convincingly if you’re Daily News when he was tracking The Flaming Corsage (1996), ignorant of history.” Legs Diamond.“I spent two days and Roscoe (2002). Kennedy says he “went through in the City Room typing for eight any kind of historical volume I hours, as fast as I could, to copy could find” to write his novel Legs, the clips. It was the only way to do the story of the gangster Jack it. No microfilm or copiers were PHOTOGRAPHY: DONNA ABBOTT VLAHOS DONNA ABBOTT PHOTOGRAPHY: (Legs) Diamond who was notori- available to me. But it illuminated Kennedy mined old city ous in Albany and was murdered the age more than anything I ever directories, and talked to people there. He estimates he spent six found elsewhere.” in their 80s and 90s who lived in years writing the novel, two of Kennedy rises from the cor- the old days.“I discovered a way of those years under a microfilm dovan leather chair in his life that I hadn’t a clue about when machine reading old newspapers: wood-paneled den to search for I was living there as a boy—the the New York Times, the Daily News something, and finally produces railroad, the paperworks, the and Daily Mirror, all the Albany a framed copy of a record that is baseball park, the rural tavern newspapers, and many more. especially evocative for him: the where they staged bare-knuckle Was there a particular archival Wanted poster for Legs Diamond. boxing and cockfights. I could record that prompted an espe- move around the city, see what cially emotional or poignant Dove Street was like and who response from him? “The Albany was living on it the night Jack Chronicles,compiled by Cuyler Diamond was killed.” Reynolds,” he says.“It’s a record Kennedy’s reconstituted city of the entire history of the city appears throughout his novels, taken from archival records, and and critics have said that if Albany also from newspapers, and I were destroyed tomorrow followed the life of the city day some of its sections could be by day from the time of Henry reconstructed from his books. Hudson up through 1906 when Kennedy believes in the it ends. It was magical.” importance of historical authen- He also mentions the writings He sums up his regard for the ticity to both journalism and of Huybertie Pruyn, an old Dutch historical record in one sentence: literature.“I have this belief in aristocrat who chronicled her “These archives have been hard fact,” he says.“It drives me family’s and the city’s life during absolutely priceless to me.” ■ crazy to read a story that leaves the last two decades of the nine- out essential details that should teenth century and the beginning JUDY P. HOHMANN be there.You know the writer of the twentieth: “A treasure Managing Editor www.nysarchives.org .
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