William Kennedy 8-16

 Here I admit to missing an opportunity. I read William Kennedy's Legs way back when. So far back I cannot remember whether it was during college or when I came back to Anderson in 1989. I may have even had a copy of Ironweed even if the memory is only of seeing a copy of movie tie-in edition. I hope it was after 1989. If after 1989 I had given up on a writing career because I would like to think myself capable of recognizing Kennedy's talents. Or maybe not.

Then came prison where in my last year or so, just before Covid hit Fort Dix FCI, I read Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes and came to understand Kennedy's Albany Cycle. When I was younger, when I first thought of being a writer, William Faulkner fascinated me with his inter-connected stories. I saw the possibility of something similar with Indiana (and do not let me neglect mentioning Ross Lockridge, Jr's Raintree County) but never thought I had the material to do so - no Civil War to regret losing.  That changed when I read Joyce Carol Oates' When We Were the M.ulvaneys. Kennedy reinforced the lesson taught by Oates of what could be done up north, away from Faulkner.

That really is what Kennedy has been writing about all along. Memory, conflict and redemption. Love, loss and betrayal. Small lives caught up with the big ones. The tastes and tones of neighborhoods, and the human stories that do a much better job of defining place than any map ever could.

Book review: ‘Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes’ by Scott Martelle

Except I may have waited too long, done too much damage to myself, to do anything worthwhile.

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