Billy Phelan, small-time bookie, pool hustler, and poker player becomes an unlikely go-between in the 1938 kidnapping of an Albany political boss's son.
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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 a professor in the English department at the State University of New York at Albany. He 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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"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"
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
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.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
My favorite of William Kennedy's Albany books.
For a good reason. I cannot root against an honorable man, even if, especially if, he is playing around the fringes of right and wrong. Billy Phelan is an honorable man. Read more
Published 1 month ago by John T. Sostak
2.0 out of 5 stars
Where is Elliott Ness when we need him?
Kennedy's Albany cycle includes a treasure of books on politics and crime in New York's capital city, circa the Depression era. Read more
Published 8 months ago by RSRS
4.0 out of 5 stars
"William Francis Irish Catholic Democrat Phelan"
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... Read more
Published on June 26, 2010 by R. M. Peterson
4.0 out of 5 stars
A too tough Damon Runyan
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... Read more
Published on July 29, 2007 by Shalom Freedman
5.0 out of 5 stars
"A sucker don't get even till he gets to heaven."
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... Read more
Published on July 27, 2005 by Mary Whipple
Citations (learn more)
20
books
cite this book:
See all 20 books citing this book
- Contemporary American Fiction: An Introduction to American Fiction since 1970 by Kenneth Millard on 4 pages
- Sporting with the Gods: The Rhetoric of Play and Game in American Literature (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture) by Michael Oriard on page 285, Back Matter, and Index
- The Reading List: Contemporary Fiction: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works of 125 Authors by David Rubel on page 173, and page 174
- Legs by William J. Kennedy in Front Matter, and Back Cover
- AN Albany Trio by William Kennedy in Copyright, and Back Cover
See all 20 books citing this book
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