Conversations with William Kennedy

Conversations with William Kennedy - Paperback

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Conversations with William Kennedy
  • Conversations with William Kennedy
Conversations with William Kennedy - Paperback

Conversations with William Kennedy - Paperback

by William Kennedy
$54.00
$54.00

Book Overview

by William Kennedy (Author), Neila C. Seshachari (Editor)

To read these interviews given between 1969 and 1996 is to gain insights into William Kennedy's high seriousness in pursuing the craft of fiction and to witness the artistic growth of this remarkable writer. The twenty-four interviews in this collection reveal how the opportunities and challenges in Kennedy's writing life parallel those other contemporary writers have faced in the last years of the century.

"The high drama of imagined worlds," he says, "becomes a Rosetta Stone, the key that unlocks the very real mysteries and complexities of our daily lives."

"You're inventing out of a confluence of known facts and random ideas," he says about the process of writing, "juxtaposing reality and abstractions, and then wham! You've got something brand new in your head, and on the page. You're functioning on a plane of existence you didn't know was possible. That's creation, and it's profound pleasure. It's what you live for."

Readers of these interviews will be privy to another process as well, the arduous but exciting process by which Kennedy has emerged as a major voice in contemporary letters. His meteoric rise to fame in 1983 and his continuing popularity since are the stuff of drama and folklore. In that year his novel Ironweed, rejected earlier by thirteen publishers, was finally published by Viking. It earned him a MacArthur Award, the New York Book Critics Circle Award, and a Pulitzer Prize. Governor Mario Cuomo honored him with the New York State Governor's Arts Award and declared that in Kennedy "Albany [had] found its Homer." Hollywood came calling and secured screen rights to Ironweed, Legs, and Billy Phelan's Greatest Game. With Francis Ford Coppola, Kennedy co-wrote the screenplay of The Cotton Club.

The career that lifted off with such dramatic momentum has shown no signs of flagging. With steady regularity, Kennedy continues to add to his Albany Cycle of novels, as he experiments boldly with the craft of fiction.

Front Jacket

Interviews with the author of Ironweed and Legs

Author Biography

Neila C. Seshachari is professor of English at Weber State University. She is editor of Weber Studies: An Interdisciplinary Humanities Journal.

Number of Pages: 296
Dimensions: 0.67 x 9 x 6 IN
Publication Date: September 01, 2012
ISBN9781617037061
Author William Kennedy
PublisherUniversity Press of Mississippi
GenreBiography and Literature
FormatPaperback
PublishedSeptember 2012
LanguageENG- English
Pages296
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Biography & Autobiography Literary Criticism Nonfiction

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WILLIAM KENNEDY (b. 1928), a novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and essayist hailing from Albany, NY, is best known for his Albany cycle of novels, currently a series of eight interconnected books. The founding director of the New York State Writers Institute, he has been the recipient of numerous awards for his work, including both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Critics Circle Award for Ironweed. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1993 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002, and was named a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France. 

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