Legs

William Kennedy

G.K. Hall, 2000 - Fiction - 427 pages

Legs inaugurated William Kennedy's critically-acclaimed cycle of novels (including Billy Phelan's Greatest Game and Ironweed) set in his hometown of Albany, New York. True to both life and myth, Legs brilliantly evokes the flamboyant career of the legendary gangster Jack Legs Diamond, who was finally murdered in Albany. Through the equivocal eyes of Diamond's attorney, we watch as Legs and his showgirl mistress, Kiki Roberts, blaze their gaudy trail across the tabloid pages of the 1920s and 1930s, emerging as emblematic figures from an era of American innocence -- and corruption.

Contents

• Section 1: 7
• Section 2: 15
• Section 3: 29

About the author

William Kennedy worked as a journalist on newspapers and magazines before he began a career as a novelist. Kennedy's novels, which are all centered around his home city of Albany, New York, include The Ink Truck, Legs, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, Quinn's Book, Very Old Bones, and The Flaming Corsage. Kennedy's celebrated 1983 novel, Ironweed, has won great acclaim over the years, and has earned a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award, and a PEN-Faulkner Award. In addition to writing novels, Kennedy co-authored the screenplay for The Cotton Club with Francis Coppola in 1984 and wrote the screenplay for Ironweed in 1987. Kennedy and his son, Brendan, co-authored two children's books, Charlie Malarkey and the Belly Button Machine and Charlie Malarkey and the Singing Moose. William Kennedy is the founder and director of the New York State Writers Institute, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a onetime editor of the San Juan Star and a former writing teacher at Cornell University. He is now a professor in the English department of the University at Albany.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Legs; G.K. Hall large print perennial bestseller series; The Albany Cycle Series; Thorndike Classics
• Author: William Kennedy
• Edition: reprint, large print
• Publisher: G.K. Hall, 2000
• ISBN: 0783888600, 9780783888606
• Length: 427 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Biographical; Fiction / City Life; Fiction / Crime; Fiction / Historical / General