Customer Reviews

Legs

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This was the first book of Kennedy's that I'd read and am thrilled at the thought of having the rest of his books to look forward to. First of all, it's just the sheer quality of writing. Kennedy dances into, out of and all around the mind of Jack Legs Diamond, the prohibition era gangster. He'll take you close to him, then appal you with his ruthlessness. Kennedy is essentially trying to deal with a knot of myth and cliche. Legs' story has been played over again and again in literature and film. He really was the good-time gangster with the faithful wife and show girl mistress, the quick one-liners and aggressive ambition. This may have appealed to a writer, but how then to humanize him? Kennedy succeeds mainly because of the voice(s) through which he approaches the story. Marcus, Legs' lawyer, is the perfect guide - people tell lawyers their stories and here, he has passed them on. But the narrative is never that simple, flipping from waiter's anecdotes to mistress's yearnings, and all without losing or confusing a reader. Kennedy presents an incredible portrait. It simply doesn't matter whether or not he has figured out who Jack Diamond really was, for he has imagined an incredible three dimensional replacement of his own.

_Legs_ opens with a number of former friends and associates of the late Jack "Legs" Diamond reminiscing about the nature of the legendary gangster's death. Despite the subject matter of this rambling discussion I was struck by its high content of "gallows humor."

What I liked about this novel was although William Kennedy attempted to humanize Jack Diamond to a certain extent, Kennedy did not sentimentalize or apologize for him. I had no doubt that Jack Diamond was exactly what he was: a booklegger, a thief, and a murderer. Despite numerous arrests, Jack Diamond was "The Teflon" gangster--none of the state charges against him would stick. Jack was a true media celebrity, in the same sense that the popular, but corrupt New York Mayor, Jimmy Walker, was at the time, although Jack was often unkind to reporters and photographers. Jack had loads of fans, who were mostly "the common man" who probably identified with Jack's humble beginnings. He also had many detractors, some of whom wanted to kill him. Jack also had a loving wife, Alice, and an adoring mistress, Marion "Kiki" Roberts, a dance hall girl. Jack loved them both in his own fashion. In a particularly trying time towards the end of his short life, Jack sought comfort from both women by keeping them near him, in separate rooms, on the same floor in a hotel in which he was staying at the time. His body guards were in another room. It seems that the only person Jack ever truly loved was his brother, Eddie, who died many years before of tuberculosis. Just mentioning Eddie would cause Jack's eyes to well-up with tears. But any doubts of Jack Diamond being a vicious and sadistic criminal were completely dispelled in his kidnapping, torture, and near-hanging of an old man (accompanied by his young companion) who Jack erroneously believed was a rival bootlegger. It was this event (brutally described in the book and not for the squeamish) that caused Jack to be brought to trial, which included federal charges and unwanted media attention.

William Kennedy wrote _Legs_ in a light, informal style that also never let up on the intensity. I found reading the book fun, but with a constant, lingering sense of dread and doom that never left me. The fact remains that Legs Diamonds lived the last months of his life in constant fear of assasination and in spite of his greed for money, he died impoverished.

My brother mentioned that he liked this book and I started reading his copy to kill time, not intending to finish it. I found myself simultaneously repelled by the violence and seduced by William Kennedy's wonderful knack for storytelling and beautifully simple style. Needless to say, I kept reading. Kennedy's characterizations are as fascinating as his story. Legs Diamond is a murderous hedonist whose infectious personality makes his amorality palatable, if not forgivable. The narrator is appropriately colorless in contrast, making him the ideal non-intrusive storyteller. In other words, Legs is like sour candy--it makes you wince, but it's addictive!

Jack "Legs" Diamond, a larger than life thief/bootlegger/murderer, captured the imagination of the public during Prohibition, the Roaring Twenties, and the beginning of the Great Depression. Living the high life, surrounded by beautiful women, bodyguards, and associates, Diamond, in his early thirties, moved smoothly between speakeasies and sordid backrooms, between murder scenes and rural retreats, always exuding a sense of confidence and glamour. Setting this novel primarily in Albany, New York, in 1930-1931, Kennedy recreates the mystique of Diamond, a much handsomer contemporary of Chicago gangster Al Capone, and New York beer king Dutch Schultz, as he exercises his power, fights off intrusions into "his" territory, corners the market in illegal beverages, buys off politicians and judges, and tries to avoid conviction for his crimes.

Telling Diamond's story is Marcus Gorman, a lawyer who gets swept up in the excitement which surrounds Diamond and ends up as his attorney. Marcus, however, always insists that he be paid for his work, up front, and he refuses to be drawn into obviously illegal behavior. This makes him the perfect narrator-someone who admires much about Diamond but also someone whose judgment the reader can trust. Terse dialogue reminiscent of the novels of Raymond Chandler or Dashiel Hammett, fills the novel, but Marcus's musings about what motivates Diamond offer a more thoughtful approach to this shady character and his life than what one usually finds in noir novels.

A man with no conscience, Diamond double-crosses and cheats his way to success, often killing his own associates, events described in gory detail. But Diamond's legend grows. Kennedy humanizes him by emphasizing the loyalty of his wife Alice and the crazy love of his girlfriend, showgirl Kiki Roberts. After his two major trials, even the jury celebrates the inevitable acquittals. Other mobsters fear him, however, and know that if they don't get him first that he will get them. Surviving three murder attempts in two years, Diamond absorbs eleven bullets, before his final gun battle.

An uncomplicated but well-written novel, _Legs_ illustrates the attraction many feel to celebrity, even a sadistic celebrity such as Diamond. The author's insights into his life and motivations help to explain the roots of this attraction, and his follow-up on the lives of both Alice Diamond and Kiki Roberts brings the themes full circle. Fun to read, this is the first of the novels in the "Albany Cycle," followed by _Billy Phelan's Greatest Game_ and the Pulitzer Prize-winning _Ironweed_. n Mary Whipple

Money, crime, sex, and murder are the key elements to becoming a big time gang leader and Jack "Diamond" Legs has all of these qualities. Read through this epic novel of the final years of a big time 1920's prohibition gangster and how he both put fear and joy into the people's lives around him.
I felt this book was an easy one to read, but was still extremely enjoyable with its elements of crime and seduction. The story is told through the eyes of his lawyer, Marcus, which is great because of the unbiased perception he has towards other people. He will take you into the life of a big time gangster and how he narrowly escapes death time and time. Marcus' view towards others allows the reader to look deeper into the personalities of characters around Jack and how their personalities and views towards Jack change over time. The reader will read about all of Jack's horrible deeds and schemes to make money and destroy competition, but will also see how people interpret those deeds and Jack. Jack's faithful wife (Alice) and his showgirl mistress (Kicki) tell us about their lives and how it has changed because of Jack. This book will take you deep into the mind of its characters so you can see what they are thinking and then pull you back out again and do this over and over again. Legs is greatly written to show you how crime affects everyone.
This book is a great thriller to read in some free time. It's portrayal of the big time prohibition gangster is excellent and it will leave you in awe that some people lived their lives in such a manner during the Prohibition. This was a great summer reading book for me to read and I highly recommend picking it up and giving Jack a chance to take you inside the "family" of a gang leader and show you how things are supposed to be done.

Legs is the first part in William Kennedy's Albany Cycle, other novels in the trilogy are Billy Phelan's Greatest Game and Ironweed.

The plot:
He's crude, blunt, violent, and a severe sociopath, but when you are talking about one of America's most infamous gangsters, those aren't necessarily bad characteristics. Jack "Legs" Diamond is a quick-witted, prohibition-era mobster who makes himself a household name by being thrust into the public eye in the 1920's and 30's. Marcus Gorman, his attorney and confidant, narrates "Legs'" escapades finally culminating with Diamond's murder. Gorman the reliable narrator never seems to try to spin the truth, or miss one gory detail.

My take:
Kennedy writes in an easy to understand, flowing style which makes this book difficult to put down. He is very descriptive with his characters, which enables you to really explore their various psyches. Although, much of the mob life style in the book, which we have seen in countless movies and novels, may seem cliché, overall Legs is simply a very entertaining book that I would recommend for anyone looking for a causal read.

William Kennedy did his research before writing this book. Kennedy used a factual basis for Legs, but just enough to make you wonder what is fact or fiction. His historical accuracy draws you into a fast paced fictional world full of deception, hatred, revenge, murder, love, and booze. Because of this book, the gangster Jack "legs" Diamond will live on as a legend. Read it at least three times.

"Legs" was the public's nickname for Jack Diamond, an Irish-American bootlegger and gangster of the Twenties who operated in and around New York City and the Catskills. Today he is not as well-known as some of his contemporaries such as Dutch Schultz (who was at different times his associate and his mortal enemy), but when alive and operating Diamond captured the public imagination with his flamboyant lifestyle and his survival of numerous gunfights and gangland assassination attempts. 1931 saw his career come to an end, first as law enforcement -- spurred in part by a New York governor (FDR) interested in burnishing his image for the national political scene -- began to hound him and curtail his operations, and then when one of his numerous enemies finally succeeded in dispatching him with three bullets to the head in the early morning hours in the bedroom of a rooming house in Albany.

LEGS, the novel, is a fictionalized account of Diamond's criminal career, as narrated by Marcus Gorman, an Albany lawyer who sacrificed his opportunities for a career in politics in order to become the personal lawyer of Jack Diamond and thereby witness first-hand his charisma, crazed courage, and crass criminality. LEGS is also the first installment of Kennedy's Albany cycle of novels - which, depending on how one counts, numbers either three or seven.

In LEGS, Albany takes a back seat to the world of the gangster. It is a cruel and violent world, but it also is mesmerizing. If we can overcome the blood and gore - something that many readers cannot, though in truth Kennedy in LEGS is much less violent than Cormac McCarthy is in most of his novels -- we are intrigued, even transfixed, by the cynical and fearless outsider with his own code of loyalty and responsibility. (It is the same sort of fascination that underlies Mario Puzo's "The Godfather" and its film version.)

There is an anomalous integrity to the life of Jack Diamond, to which the narrator Marcus Gorman refers in explaining why he abandoned a career in politics in order to hitch his wagon to Jack. "When I think back now to whether [Congress or Jack] would have given me more insight into American life, I always lean to Jack. In the Congress I would have learned how rudimentary hypocrisy is turned into patriotism, into national policy, and into the law, and how hypocrites become heroes of the people. What I learned from Jack was that politicians imitated his style without comprehending it, without understanding that their venality was only hypocritical. Jack failed thoroughly as a hypocrite. He was a liar, of course, a perjurer, all of that, but he was also a venal man of integrity, for he never ceased to renew his vulnerability to punishment, death, and damnation."

Marcus Gorman/William Kennedy returns to this notion of hypocrisy and integrity when he compares Jack to Richard Nixon (the novel was published the year after Nixon resigned). He writes that Jack "was unquestionably an ancestral paradigm for modern urban political gangsters", such as Richard Nixon, "who left significant history in his wake, but no legend; whose corruption, overwhelmingly venal and invariably hypocritical, lacked the admirably white core fantasy that can give evil a mythical dimension."

In the early pages of LEGS, I was mildly repulsed by it. (Several early scenes of raw, gratuitous sex reminded me of adolescent boys bragging of their imaginary sexual conquests.) As the novel progressed, the story got better and better; memorable vignettes were stacked atop one another with increasing frequency. Finally, I was overcome by fascination for Jack Diamond and the skewed tragedy that was unfolding. I then began to wonder whether that fascination was a symptom of moral deficiency. (It is akin to a feeling engendered in me by Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels.) What it may signify, I suppose, is that William Kennedy had tapped into an utterly amoral, perhaps even evil, part of my subconscious. It also signifies that LEGS is more than just a gangster story; it is a subtle and sophisticated -- and literate -- exploration of the human psyche.

It fairly sings. What's not to love about Legs? He's selfish, he's beautiful, he has style to burn, he's amoral, he's a one-off, and he dies in the end. Break my heart, why don't you.

I find it somewhat ironic that this "fictionalized" portrait of Jack "Legs" Diamond is far superior to many of the factual biographies of this celebrated mobster which have been published to date. Told in the words of the imaginary Marcus Gorman, an attorney who is seduced by the charismatic gangster and swept into his orbit, "Legs" is probably as close to the truth as we can get. Kennedy's use of dialogue is, in a word, brilliant. I didn't think I would enjoy this book as much as I did, but I found it to be a great read.