Roscoe [Hardcover]

William Kennedy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 10, 2002

You've never met a politician like Roscoe (or have you?): a suave Falstaffian in a double-breasted white Palm Beach suit, unscrupulous, brilliant, exploding with courtly romance. It's V-J Day, the war's over, and Roscoe, after twenty-six years as chief braintruster of Albany's notorious political machine, decides to quit politics forever. But there's no exit, only new political wars, mysterious death, self-destructive party feuds, and scandalous threats to his beloved and her family.

Roscoe, the chivalrous warrior, turns his own life, and everybody else's, inside out to cope with the erupting disasters and finds fraudulence an extremely effective combat weapon. "Righteousness doesn't stand a chance against the imagination," he concludes. Every step forward leads Roscoe back to the past-to the early loss of his true love, his own peculiar heroics in the First World War, the takeover of city hall, the fight with FDR and Al Smith to elect a governor, and the methodical assassination of gangster Jack (Legs) Diamond.

Roscoe, William Kennedy's seventh novel in his Albany cycle, illuminates the high and low of Albany life between the world wars. It is an odyssey of great scope and linguistic verve, a deadly comic masterpiece from one of America's most important novelists.

"Kennedy's beguiling yarns are the kind of family myths embellished and retold across a kitchen table at night: whiskified, raunchy, darkly funny, tangles of old resentments and fresh exasperations." (Time )

"When Kennedy writes about Albany, New York, he is in fact holding up a mirror to all of American history . . . his fictional terrain can be compared to the Faulknerian South in its complex richness." (The Washington Post)

"Kennedy's power is such that the reader will follow him almost anywhere, to the edge of tragedy and back again to redemption." (The Wall Street Journal)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Insubstantial but charming, William Kennedy's Roscoe seems to unintentionally resemble many of the politicians it depicts. The seventh novel in Kennedy's Albany series, Roscoe follows Roscoe Conway, a quick-witted, charismatic lawyer-politician who has devoted much of his life to helping his Democratic Party cohorts achieve and maintain political power in 1930s and ‘40s Albany, New York. It's 1945, and Roscoe has decided to retire from politics, but a series of deaths and scandals forces him to stay and confront his past. Kennedy takes the reader on an intricate, whirlwind tour of (mostly) fictional Albany in the first half of the 20th century. He presents a mythologized, tabloid version of history, leaving no stone unturned: a multitude of gangsters, bookies, thieves, and hookers mingle with politicians, cops, and lawyers. In the middle of it all is Roscoe, the kind of behind-the-scenes, wisecracking, truth-bending man of the people who makes everything happen--or at least it's fun to think so. Kennedy shows an obvious affection for his book's colorful characters and historic Albany, and he describes both with loving specificity. Though the book often works as light comedy, its clichéd plot developments and stereotypical characters undermine its serious concerns with truth, history, and honor. "You've never met a politician like Roscoe Conway," promises the book's jacket blurb. But we have, through his different roles in countless films and TV series. As with its notoriously deceitful hero, Roscoe is likeable as long as you don't take it too seriously. --Ross Doll

From Publishers Weekly

"Roscoe Owens Conway presided at Albany Democratic Party headquarters, on the eleventh floor of the State Bank building, the main stop for Democrats on the way to heaven." Thus begins Kennedy's first novel in five years, the seventh installment in his Albany cycle, which includes the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ironweed. He continues to display the insider's confident mastery of fact, the sharp-edged irony that contrasts appearance and reality and the vision of the outcomes to which his characters are fated. Roscoe is fixer for Albany, N.Y., and on V-J Day, 1945, the Democratic machine is under threat. The external enemy is New York's Republican governor, gathering evidence of the widespread corruption gambling, prostitution, violence that hallmarks Democratic leader Patsy McCall's rule. The mysterious suicide of Elisha Fitzgibbon, the machine's moneyman, sets the events in motion. Internally, the machine is strife ridden: Roscoe must patch up the hostility between McCall and his brother over a cockfight; he must deal with the conflict between police lieutenant and McCall gunsel Jeremiah "Mac" McEvoy and Roscoe's brother, O.B., the chief of police; and he must secure the mayoral re-election of Alex, Elisha's son. Meanwhile, Roscoe seems near a lifelong goal: marrying Veronica, Elisha's widow. As in all of Kennedy's Albany novels, the town is rendered with a hallucinatory, three-dimensional density. The seams of the past from politics to business to crime are split open, but Roscoe's job is to keep Albany's secret history secret. A good man at heart, he is corrupted by his means (blackmail, lies and faked testimony) until his dearest goals are thwarted. This is an engrossing, comic vision of the dark side of politics as the "art of the possible." Readers who were disappointed by the thinness of The Flaming Corsage, the Albany novel that preceded this one, will rejoice at the arrival of the full-blooded Roscoe. 10-city author tour.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 291 pages
• Publisher: Viking Penguin; 1st edition (January 10, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670030295
• ISBN-13: 978-0670030293
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,093,342 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Mixed Bag of Success, January 9, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Roscoe (Hardcover)

Roscoe is the seventh novel in Kennedy's "Albany" cycle, the most notable other book of which is the excellent Ironweed, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. It's the only other book by Kennedy I've read, but I liked it well enough to want to pick up the new one, and for the most part am glad I did.

Ironweed is one of those rare novels that translated well to the Big Screen--I thought the adaptation, with Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep and Tom Waits was terrific. Much of the reason why is perhaps that Kennedy is among the most "cinematic" of "literary" novelists, a quality in evidence with the present book, too--in a way that somehow reminds me of D.H. Lawrence, Kennedy is capable of vivid lyrical flights which never detract from an otherwise conventional narrative, and which evoke an overtly visual panoramic landscape. As in Ironweed, Kennedy weaves the surreal in with the realism of the prose, creating a convincing and often brilliant effect where the reader is able to step into the actual conciousness of a character--"hearing" dead people "speak", for example--without missing a beat of the forward motion of the plot.

But that is where the novel becomes a little weighty. Much of the motion of the book is slow and cumbersome, and at times a bit predictable, as we enter the lives of a post-WW II Albany small-time polititian and his world of other politicians, complete with the lack of character one might expect from such characters.

Not that we're supposed to especially like Roscoe, the man, but one never really gets a very clear sense of him or of any of the many other characters in this novel. It's easy to say that this is because Kennedy is suggesting that there's not much to them, but I don't buy the imitative fallacy. We're introduced, mid-stream, to such a plethora of people and their lineages in a mere 291 pages that all the characters, even the principals, are drawn far too thinly to sustain a narrative about events that are less disagreeable than rather tedious and boring. Perhaps I'm missing something because I haven't read all seven books of the cycle, but a novel should stand on its own.

Vivid, lyrical writers like Kennedy, and at times Lawrence, seem to often fall into this predicament. Kennedy is at times wryly funny in a way Lawrence never was, but he seems to want to create a microcosm of America a bit...obviously, a bit too much.

But the actual writing, save for some episodes of forgettable dialogue, soars. At his best, Kennedy is spectacular, a surreal prose-poem stylist who's worth reading simply for the tightness of the imagery and the energy that bursts out of his sentences like atoms splitting in the middle of a consonant. There is no American fiction writer alive who can come close to William Kennedy in this aspect of his prose.

Which is why Roscoe is finally a success. The prose itself creates a narrative of its own, and makes me wonder if conventional standards of character and narrative should even be held to apply to such a vigorous, fresh way of telling a story.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exuberant prose and a big story, February 14, 2002

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Roscoe (Hardcover)

Roscoe Conway, a fixture of the Albany political machine for 26 years, from post-World War I through the Depression and Prohibition and World War II, wants out. As the country celebrates V-J Day and the end of the war, Roscoe finds himself weary of wheeling and dealing. Unmarried and still pining after his first love, who married his best friend, Elisha Fitzgibbon, Roscoe questions the meaning of it all.

"I have to change my life, do something that engages my soul before I die," Roscoe tells Elisha, who observes that Roscoe has kept his discontent hidden. Roscoe explains, "I have no choice. I have no choice in most things. All the repetitions, the goddamn investigations that never end, another election coming and now Patsy wants a third candidate to dilute the Republican vote. We'll humiliate the Governor. On top of that, Cutie LaRue told me this afternoon George Scully has increased his surveillance on me. They're probably doubling their watch on you, too. You'd make a handsome trophy."

This statement establishes William Kennedy's mid-century Albany in the seventh book of his Albany cycle - a city run by a small, closed circle whose primary function is to maintain power, constantly besieged by similar cabals whose goal is to grab that power for themselves. The weapon of choice is the scandal, of which there are plenty to go around, real or manufactured. And the best defense is a ferocious boomerang of a spin, at which Roscoe excels. The reasons he wants to retire are the same reasons why he can't. Roscoe's life is inextricably entwined with the Democratic Albany machine and both Roscoe and his city are ailing.

Albany is run by a triumvirate of boyhood friends - Roscoe, Elisha Fitzgibbon and Patsy McCall, none of whom hold office. Hours after Roscoe announces his intent to retire, his friend Elisha commits suicide. Puzzled and shocked, Roscoe's political antenna tells him Elisha had a good reason, probably to do with protecting his family. He postpones his retirement to help Veronica stave off a nasty family scandal, his youthful hopes of romance rekindled.

As the Republicans position themselves for attack, and Roscoe plies his skills, Kennedy splices the teeming past into the melodramatic events of the present, history repeating itself with infinite variation. Roscoe's World War I experiences (and his first foray into "spin"), the numerous internecine battles among New York state's and Albany's democrats, the roles of big politicians like Al Smith and FDR and the big criminals like Legs Diamond, the opportunities of Prohibition and the ever-present dangers from muckrakers and power grabbers from outside the machine and feuds and jealousies within among the cops, judges, civil servants and vice purveyors who keep things volatile, all of it feeds the machine. The cast of characters is big and the novel's scope is vast but Kennedy engages the reader with his own fascination for history and ambitious, unscrupulous men.

Kennedy, an Albany native and winner of the Pulitzer for "Ironweed," gives us a portrait of a man and a city, mirror images, both full of heart and wit and delight in clever scheming. Roscoe is Albany, his fate rooted deeply in the city's. His father before him was a cog in the machine and Roscoe's first steps were orchestrated by (and a tribute to) his father's ambitions. When Roscoe says he never had a choice, it's the truth. He can no more escape the clutches and drive of Albany than Albany can shed the machine that makes it run. As the reader recognizes this, Roscoe is driven to greater feats of political brilliance and sleight-of-hand. But no man can control the passions of others or the quirks of fate.

Kennedy's prose is as big and ebullient as his sprawling story. In Kennedy's hands Albany history has a legendary, mythic feel. Though the cast of characters and dizzying panorama of events sometimes taxes concentration, Kennedy's black humor, sharp irony and the perverse likability of rascally Roscoe continually enthralls, right up to the final irony of the perfect ending.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A difficult review to write, April 10, 2002

By 

Jeffrey Ellis "bored recluse" (Richardson, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Roscoe (Hardcover)

Of all the reviews I've ever written for amazon, this has to be one of the most difficult. I completed the latest novel in William Kennedy's Albany cycle two weeks ago and I'm still not quite sure what I think of it. This is hardly meant as a negative comment. Most books I read rarely linger in the memory past one or two days after I turn the final page. However, Roscoe is a book that has haunted my mind. If, while reading the book, I was occasionally frustrated by the feeling that -- as skillfull a writer as the author obviously is -- Kennedy had just missed the chance to create something great, I must also say that many of the darkly humorous, somewhat disturbing images that Kennedy paints have continued to haunt my mind. I have always felt that the sign of a true work of art isn't how much it might entertain while you're experiencing it but how it affects the way you see your own reality once the initial experience is complete. A great work of art for me is one that literally infects the world around you. Roscoe is that type of art. I'm not giving this book four stars because I feel its flawless but because its mysteries have stayed with me even after I expected them to be forgotten.

Impishly mixing fact and fantasy, Roscoe tells the story of the infamous Albany political machine of the early 20th century. It was a machine that produced some great men while building its foundations on the actions of some very bad men and it is this juxtaposition that Kennedy gleefully juggles over the course of his narrative. The fictional Roscoe Conway is a Falstaffian-figure that would -- at most -- probably be only a minor comedic henchman in most political novels, a man who has spent his life as something of an errand boy (albiet a very powerful errand boy) for the true leaders of the Albany political machine. He's a drinker, a womanizer, and, if a lifetime of aiding political corruption and general graft has left him with the beginnings of a tortured soul, he manages to handle the pain with an admirable good humor. The book opens with the end of World War II and as the nation celebrates, Roscoe's best friend mysteriously commits suicide. Roscoe's attempts to understand his friend's death leads him on the expected soul-searching journey. What's unexpected are the surreal detours that journey takes. With poetic, freeform prose, Kennedy mixes accounts of Roscoe's rougish past with a present day storyline (involving his dead friend's widow's -- the woman Roscoe loves -- attempts to not lose custody of her adopted son) that at times seems to deliberately read like a parody of a Douglas Sirk film. Throughout it all, Kennedy presents us with dream-like images that include Roscoe's dead friend coming to life just to immediately die once more, a nonsensical conversation with the Pope, and a brief aside that details Roscoe's late father's head blowing up like a balloon and bursting once it floats up to the ceiling. What these images are meant to represent are left up to the reader, an admirable choice on Kennedy's part that will, nonetheless, leave many readers frustrated. Is Roscoe truly remorseful over the sins of the past, does the widow truly deserve his or anyone's love, and is Albany's idealistic and youthful Mayor a brave hero or a self-righteous fool? These are just a few of the questions that Kennedy forces his readers to ponder. The book, to its own brave credit, declines to directly answer but instead leaves it up to the reader to sort through all the images and figure out what adds up to what.

But before I make Roscoe sound overly pretentious, it should be understood that this is a wonderfully entertaining book and the rapidly paced, cheerfully over-the-top storyline will hold the interest of most readers rather their searching for deeper literary meaning or just a good and enjoyable read. If Kennedy leaves the reader with many mysteries, he also provides an all--too believable revisionist history of both New York and our country that manages to include acidic portraits of everyone from Franklin Roosevelt to Thomas Dewey (never named but obviously meant to be the gnomish Republican governor who causes the Albany machine such trouble) to gangster Legs Diamond. Kennedy populates his political world with a lively and truly memorable gallery of humorous grotesques. Every character -- from the lead character to the town's leading hooker to the definitely psychotic but still rather likeable police detective -- comes vividly to life in Kennedy's masterful prose. Kennedy crafts his characters so that they possess enough quirks to keep the reader on his toes, yet he never commits the all-too common sin of mistaking quirkiness for motivation. And, of course, Kennedy's Albany comes to brilliant life so that by the end of the novel even a dyed-in-the-wool Texan like myself can't help but love the city. No, Roscoe is not a perfect novel but it is definitely one that should be read and cherished for both what it is and what the reader makes of it.