Customer Reviews

Billy Phelan's Greatest Game

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"Billy Phelan's Greatest Game" by William Kennedy is a mesmerizing, hysterical, and suspenseful romp through Depression-era Albany. Read the first chapter, where Billy bowls someone "to death", and I seriously doubt that you will put the book down. Billy is one of the most memorable characters in William Kennedy's galaxy, moreso than Francis Phelan in my book. Billy is a risk-taker, a guy whose heart is in the right place, and a rough-and-tumble sort that relies on his confidence in the midst of trouble. And these are the qualities that make him the inevitable, although unwilling, middle-man in a kidnapping negotiation.

Billy's world of gamblers, drinkers, sharks, corrupt Albany lackies, and broken families is dark and smoky but never despairing or hopeless. And Billy's moral calculus is a bright spot in this otherwise bleak setting. For my money, "Billy Phelan's Greatest Game" is the best of three in the Albany cycle. I found "Legs" to be slow-going and lacking focus. "Ironweed" is a sensational book, a close second to this novel, but its plot of two drinkers going from job to job, joint to joint, drink to drink does begin to wear down. "Billy Phelan's Greatest Game" has a good deal of plot tension, moral conflicts, humor, and a wider array of characters. I'm in the minority here, and that's fine, but in my analysis it's
WIN: (by a nose)"Billy Phelan's Greatest Game"
PLACE: "Ironweed"
SHOW: "Legs"

Billy Phelan is my fave of the great Kennedys' books. Billy is a fun guy to roam about with, listen to, learn from and even be inspired by. He is a great pool shooter, decent poker player, half-ass bookie and lovely raconteur.He takes the world as it comes and dives in to any and all of it with gusto and guts.Kennedy tosses in illustrative examples of the magic in daily life and the importance of being able to bounce back from those inevitable moments of (temporary!) defeat. All this told in Kennedys fine voice, a voice like that of a chain-smoking angel who can tell a snappy joke or a dazzling blue stretcher. What fun.

Billy Phelan, son of long gone Francis (Ironweed) has become a "man about town" on the streets of Albany. A snappy dresser, willing to participate in, or bet on, any game in town, has found himself caught up in a kidnapping. This isn't just another game and Billy must play the game of his life for his life.Again Kennedy has the talent to make his wide variety of characters true. My advice is to read this book before Flaming Corsage. The whole cast is there.

Albany, New York, during the Depression, when mobsters, crooked politicians, and fast-buck artists were in control, is the setting of _Billy Phelan's Greatest Game-, the second in William Kennedy's "Albany cycle." With some of the same characters appearing in the earlier _Legs_, and later appearing in the later Pulitzer Prize-winning novel _Ironweed_, this novel is a huge step forward for Kennedy. His ability to define character, create suspense, and explore major themes affecting fathers and sons and their values is far more sophisticated here than in _Legs_, the story of mobster Jack "Legs" Diamond.

In a sensational opening scene young Billy Phelan, part-time bookie and small-time card-player and gambler, is bowling the string of his life--two strikes away from a perfect score. The unexpected conclusion of the match, and its consequences for his opponent, produce a kind of metaphor for life in this era: Everyone lives on the edge, no one knows when disaster will strike, and there's not much anyone can do about it. Billy, whose father disappeared when he was young, is doing the best he can, "honoring" those he must "honor," helping his mother and sister, and acquiring a local reputation as a "good guy," taking bets and paying off, and not straying far from home.

When one of his acquaintances, Charlie MacCall, the son and nephew of two local pols, is kidnapped, Billy is asked to monitor the activities of one of the men with whom he plays cards, a man suspected of involvement in the kidnapping. Not a "stoolie," Billy faces a crisis of conscience. The reappearance of his father, an alcoholic who "helps" people who can help him, adds to his dilemma, since he counsels cooperation. Martin Daugherty, a newspaper columnist, offers a more mature view while commenting on the political and social aspects of the kidnapping of Charlie MacCall.

Whereas _Legs_ is a fairly straightforward biographical novel, this novel is far more complex. Numerous sets of fathers and sons, all of whom have intergenerational problems, reveal the changing morality of Depression-era Albany. Billy's moral code is more stringent than his father's, Martin Daugherty's son is studying for the priesthood (to his dismay), and the kidnapped Charlie MacCall is isolated from the political machine of his father and uncle. An outstanding novel which has not received its due recognition, this is a carefully crafted novel with well developed themes, dramatic dialogue, and grounding in setting that is rare in modern fiction. n Mary Whipple

William Kennedy was born in 1928 in Albany's North End. He was for a time a journalist in Albany, he has lived in or around the city most of his life, and he has written an acclaimed non-fiction work about the city, "O Albany!" He is more noted as a novelist, however, and most of his fiction also centers on Albany - much as James Joyce wrote about Dublin or Saul Bellow wrote about Chicago. Three of Kennedy's novels from 1975 to 1983 were part of a consciously crafted and presented "Albany cycle". BILLY PHELAN'S GREATEST GAME (from 1978) is the second of that cycle.

The first of the cycle, "Legs", focused more on a celebrated bootlegger and gangster from the Twenties, Jack "Legs" Diamond, than it did on Albany. BILLY PHELAN'S GREATEST GAME, though, truly is about Albany. The present action in the novel all takes place within a few days in October 1938, and it revolves around the kidnapping for ransom of the son of one of the three McCall brothers ("Albany's own Trinity"), who control both the Democratic Party and the rackets, bars, and night life in the city. The ripples from the kidnapping quickly engulf the two principal characters of the novel - Billy Phelan (hustler and player par excellence) and Martin Daugherty (leading journalist for the Albany newspaper). Throughout the novel, both Billy and Martin, in their own ways, wrestle with the question: "Was it possible to escape the stereotypes and be proud of being an Albany Irishman?"

The portrayal of Irish-Catholic Albany is superb. Similarly excellent is the exploration of the tensions, ambiguities, and ironies of the relations between religions, race and ethnicities, and economic classes. One brief example, from history, concerned an Irish mob killing a Jew in the midst of an anti-draft riot in New York City during the Civil War: "It was a moment of monstrous ethnic truth in American history, my friend, the persecuted Irish throwing a persecuted Jew out the window in protest against drafting Irishmen in the Union Army to help liberate the persecuted Negro."

But Kennedy tries to do more, including explore the relationship between fathers and sons - or at least the relationship between Billy Phelan and his father Francis, Martin Daugherty and his father Edward, and more generally Abraham and Isaac from Genesis. Kennedy's handling of this theme is less deft, less successful. The love triangle between Edward Daugherty and Melissa Spencer (an actress) and then, years later, between Melissa Spencer and the son Martin Daugherty is just plain weird - sicker than anything my subconscious would ever entertain left to its own devices.

Billy Phelan is uncomplicated and a true fictional hero - which, in Kennedy's world, seems to be a man free of hypocrisy. Billy is a student of the world and the world is not going to get the better of him (i.e., he is not a sucker), but in order to stay afloat and stay in the game, Billy Phelan will not cheat or cut corners - he must be true to himself. Martin Daugherty is more of an intellectual, he is much more complex, and (as a consequence?) he is much more susceptible to moral compromise. Billy and Martin share one thing in common (in addition to their strained relationships with their fathers): neither entertains any religious, ethnic, racial, or socioeconomic prejudice -- and is it that which makes each of them somewhat of an outsider among the Albany Irish?

Reading the novel is effortless and, overall, the writing is quite good. Kennedy clearly has found his voice. It is not a novel of sustained brilliance, however. Numerous phrases wowed me, but rarely did entire pages. I enjoyed BILLY PHELAN'S GREATEST GAME slightly less than I did "Legs", but enough to look forward to soon reading "Ironweed". Four-and-a-half stars.

This is the second of the Kennedy books I have read. I liked 'Ironweed' much better. True, this one has a great opening scene in which there is a head- on- head bowling match related with great suspense and pizzazz. Billy takes on a serious cheap character named Streck. Each one has his own backer. Streck's is Charlie McCall a scion of the family that runs Albany political life. Billy Phelan's is Morrie Berman, a small- time Jewish hood who has sympathy for the fatherless Phelan. The bowling match and especially its aftermath takes a surprising and violent turn, in typical Kennedy style.
At the end of the novel Billy Phelan who has stood by his principles and is not a stoolie finds himself ostracized.
All in all this is a tough realistic work, with sharp dialect and real humor.
If I did not go for it as much as I went for the 'Ironweed' book it is I believe because the violence of the whole thing, the world and the people in it, come to finally turn me off. As I see it Kennedy is a kind of more realistic, and serious Damon Runyan. But precisely Runyan's gentleness with his characters, his feeling that the oddballs and screwballs of his gambling, sports , crime world are loveable jerks after all is what greatly appeals to me. This is not to say Kennedy does not do a good job in delineating admirable sides of his characters, but rather only anything which goes so swiftly and casually from violence to violence ( even in language)is not my cup of Schaefer's , Budweiser's , Ballantine's Miller's , Molson's or any other Albany beer.