About the Author

William Kennedy, author, screenwriter and playwright, was born and raised in Albany, New York. Kennedy brought his native city to literary life in many of his works. The Albany cycle, includes Legs, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, and the Pulitzer Prize winning Ironweed.The versatile Kennedy wrote the screenplay for Ironweed, the play Grand View, and cowrote the screenplay for the The Cotton Club with Francis Ford Coppola. Kennedy also wrote the nonfiction O Albany! and Riding the Yellow Trolley Car. Some of the other works he is known for include Roscoe and Very Old Bones.

Kennedy is the founding director of the New York State Writers Institute and, in 1993, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has received numerous literary awards, including the Literary Lions Award from the New York Public Library, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Governor’s Arts Award. Kennedy was also named Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France and a member of the board of directors of the New York State Council for the Humanities.

Reviews

Praise for Roscoe
A finalist for the PEN/Faulkner and The National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction

“Driven by a narrative electricity as alive as post-war America. Roscoe is Kennedy's finest novel since Ironweed.”—The Boston Globe

“This is a novel that, as they say, has it all.... Kennedy is a writer with something to say, about matters that touch us all, and he does it with uncommon artistry.”—The Washington Post

“A beaut, deadly serious high comedy propelled by soaring flights of linguistic legerdemain.”—The New York Times Book Review

“This new book has a lyricism and a gusto rarely achieved in serious American novels about politics.... Roscoe may, in fact, be Kennedy's greatest.”—The Atlantic Monthly

“An exuberant portrait of political and sexual intrigue. Its politics are backroom and bare-knuckle, all about power and money.”—USA Today

“William Kennedy writes so melodiously about the Irish ruffians of old Albany, NY he could make Philip Roth wish he were Catholic.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Roscoe Owen Conway is the ROC upon which Albany's Democratic Party is built. Roscoe is a combination of contrasts: a lawyer with no practice, a brewery owner who drinks gin, and a politician who holds no office. And he is a man with a broken heart, both literally (there's clotted blood in his ticker) and figuratively (he's desperately pining away for his best friend's wife). Roscoe will do anything and everything legal or not for the party, but for him the party is over. Kennedy's seventh novel is a sprawling political romp covering the roughly 12 weeks between V-J Day through Election Day, 1945, with flashbacks and asides detailing two decades of enough political corruption, crooked cops, cockfights, whores, gambling, and bootleggers to fill Sing Sing twice! Kennedy writes with great humor and marvelous attention to detail both in language and setting, and the book functions as a political expos? as well as a romance and to an extent a mystery, which leaves the reader guessing. But principally it is about a man who has made a career out of trading in lies and deceit but who nonetheless still can clearly discern the truth about himself. With Roscoe, Kennedy proves again that the American literary novel is not dead, it's just moved to Albany. Highly recommended. Michael Rogers, "Library Journal" Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

"Driven by a narrative electricity as alive as post-war America. Roscoe is Kennedy's finest novel since Ironweed." -The Boston Globe"This is a novel that, as they say, has it all.... Kennedy is a writer with something to say, about matters that touch us all, and he does it with uncommon artistry." -Michael Thomas, The Washington Post"A beaut, deadly serious high comedy propelled by soaring flights of linguistic legerdemain." -Ward Just, The New York Times Book Review"This new book has a lyricism and a gusto rarely achieved in serious American novels about politics.... Roscoe may, in fact, be Kennedy's greatest." -Tom Mallon, The Atlantic Monthly"An exuberant portrait of political and sexual intrigue. Its politics are backroom and bare-knuckle, all about power and money." -USA Today"William Kennedy writes so melodiously about the Irish ruffians of old Albany, NY he could make Philip Roth wish he were Catholic." -San Francisco Chronicle