Reviews

Billy Phelan's Greatest Game by William Kennedy

jjgalietta's review against another edition

challenging slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

ben_miller's review against another edition

5.0

As the pages went by I kept thinking this is a book that Scott Fitzgerald might have written if he'd grown up on the dole in upstate New York instead of traipsing around Princeton in his matched sweaters and scarves (just having a little fun, Francis). Anyway, great book. Highbrow, lowbrow, middle-brow. Example: "Screwing your wife is like striking out the pitcher." It's not funny ha-ha, but the more you think about it the better it is.

Also notable for containing the phrase "no country for old men." I guess McCarthy is a fan.

tompizza1022's review against another edition

4.0

The first William Kennedy book I read since Ironweed long ago, this was in response to seeing the Albany icon speak and show a documentary on Albany during the prohibition era (more so a biography of famed bootlegger Legs Diamond). Billy Phelan's Greatest Game is an entertaining read. A story with two main focuses, one being the well known fictional Albany hustler Billy Phelan, and the other following an older newspaper editor who is trying to lightly traverse a kidnapping of the son of a powerful Albany political family (the McCalls). Unfortunately, the kidnapping story is rather weak and less then engaging throughout. But, this story is more about the characters, the city, and the beautiful ways in which Kennedy brings both to life. Phelan is a lost soul looking for his place in a town full of miscreants, political deviants, whores, and bums. He's well known as a pool, poker, and general parlor game hustler, and those passages are vividly told bringing the scenes and the city to life as Phelan interacts with Albany folk of all kinds. He befriends bartenders, neighbors, and bums all while learning of why his baseball hero father abandoned his family at such a young age. Billy eventually begins to work with friend and neighbor Martin Daugherty (the newsman mentioned above), as the two attempt to delicately solve the kidnapping case without angering the political bosses or their misinformed friends. It's a good read, and as a current Albanian, one that describes the city in a different light as to which it is now seen. Kennedy's prose about and passion for the city of Albany are unmistakable.

adiaz777's review against another edition

5.0

I've always been impressed by the ease with which William Kennedy's prose moves from persuasively colloquial and naturalistic dialogue to poetic cadence. His ear for period argot is pitch-perfect, but the narrative frame belongs to a completely different--although complimentary--register. Kennedy's voice openly comments on character, moment, and action, conveying an ironic affection for spiritual outlaws: gamblers, gangsters, drunks, derelicts, and corrupt politicians. His attitude toward the past (and the past is what Kennedy is all about, but with a sense of humor and direction that Faulkner altogether lacked) is appreciative, not nostalgic, but his sympathy for old Albany's devils, rakes, and dropouts is undeniable.

"Billy Phelan's Greatest Game" turns that ironic, indulgent gaze on a pool shark, an energetically shrewd operator whose "native arrogance" inspires: "Men like Billy Phelan, forged in the brass of Broadway, send, in the time of their splendor, telegraphic statements of mission: I you bums, am a winner. And that message, however devoid of Christ-like other-cheekery, dooms the faint-hearted Scottys of the night, who must sludge along, never knowing how it feels to leave the spillover there on the floor, more where that came from pal. Leave it for the sweeps."

But the action is beyond the game here, or in a different one, the self-assured winner's confrontation with something else, something uncomfortably close, and getting closer. The novel, and Billy, here provide a counterpoint to the character, themes and energy of the succeeding novel in the series, the widely-admired "Ironweed". And of all Kennedy's novels, these two are the most intimately, indissolubly linked. I'd argue that you can't fully appreciate either without the other. And I highly recommend both.

bwilkerson's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

3.5

elkensky's review

challenging funny reflective medium-paced

4.0