William Kennedy suffered first the indignity of nonpublication, then the commercial reproach of poor sales before, in his mid-fifties, becoming one of the most admired novelists in America with the publication of Ironweed, which won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. When success came, he was confident enough to enjoy it. He bought a Jaguar, made some celebrity friends, gave lots of interviews. But he never left Albany, New York, the setting of nine of his novels, for very long. Nor could fame keep him away from his writing desk. A journalist for many years at the San Juan Star and the Albany Times-Union before committing fully to fiction, he was fitted to a Smith-Corona like a jockey to his thoroughbred. All that was missing were the shirt garters and the fedora.
Read all of Jonathan Clarke's essay on William Kennedy in City Journal.
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