June 1992
William Kennedy's cautionary tale
of diseased self-contemplation
'Very Old Bones'
Interview by Peggy Langstaff
"I came to see how disaster does not always enter the house with thunder, high winds, and a splitting of the earth. Sometimes it burrows under the foundation and, like a field mouse on tiptoe, and at its own deliberate speed, gnaws away the entire substructure."
These words of Orson Purcell, bastard son of Peter Phelan, and the narrator of this latest installment in William Kennedy's Albany cycle of novels, sound a premonitory knell early in Very Old Bones (Viking, $23) and loom over the subsequent 300 pages of, in his own words, "this cautionary tale of diseased self-contemplation -- my own and others."
This latter-day gothic, Irish House of Usher sort of story is a continuation of the tangled, tortured, and, by turns, uproarious lives of the Phelans and McIllenys, families whom readers will remember from Ironweed, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, and Quinn's Book. Saturated with the lore, mores, travails, quirks, obsessions, dementia, and joys of the descendants of Albany's Irish immigrants, Very Old Bones almost certainly will be considered a capstone of an important fictive edifice that will endure for years to come.
William Kennedy spoke in a recent interview on the writing of this novel and other related subjects. We found him amiable, sincere, and rather humble over the literary hoopla accompanying the publication of his newest work. He chooses his words carefully but is disarmingly direct, low-key, even slangy, when speaking of issues as mighty as "One's Place in American Literature" or "What I Hope to Achieve with This Work." It was refreshing to talk to such a regular kind of guy about things that more self-conscious writers are prone to choke on.
BP: Taking it from the top, can you tell us in general terms what the book is about?
WK: It's another in the series of the Albany cycle of novels, and it relates directly to Billy Phelan's Greatest Game and to Ironweed. But this one concerns the brothers and sisters of Francis Phelan, mainly, and the mother of the family and the relatives of hers going back to the year 1887.
The narrator, Orson Purcell, is the bastard son of Peter Phelan who is an artist and also one of the principal characters of the book. Ultimately Peter's art revolves around Francis, his brother, who returns home for the funeral of the mother in 1934 and who precipitates a major crisis and recapitulates an earlier major crisis in the family history. The story of Francis is told on two planes and that of the whole family, the repetition of the characters, from the time they were children to now when they're adults, is replayed also.
BP: The plot seems to turn, then, on shared family memories of events?
WK: Yes. A major moment in the book is a horrific 1887 episode of witchcraft precipitated by Malachi McIlleny, the villan, whose evil is more a result of ignorance and stupidity than will. He's a central figure in this climactic episode in the family's history which is, in turn, the subject of a whole suite of paintings by Peter Phelan. The story is told in part through the development of the paintings and what's in them and the focal moments of these horrific events.
BP: You give the figure of an artist a central role thematically?
WK: What the book is really about is the power of art to transform life. The events dealt with in the paintings have conditioned behavior in members of the family and, through the paintings, this comes as a revelation at a late moment in the family's life. They begin to perceive how their lives have been affected because Peter has chosen to define the events through a suite of paintings, sketches and portraits of the principals. It changes their attitudes toward their ancestors and themselves.
BP: What about the shape of the book, the narrative structure?
WK: The whole book takes place in one day, July 26, 1958, which is the frame of the book. It begins with the time people wake up in two different houses, the Quinn house and the Phelan house, on through to the end of a luncheon at about four in the afternoon. In between this is woven all the history of the clan, especially Orson and Peter, who are the two principals.
BP: The volumes in the Albany cycle are stacking up. As a writer, what does this mean to you? Do you hope for readers who have read all of the foregoing Albany titles?
WK: Every book in the Albany cycle stands on its own. They are the individual stories of the special protagonists. But the fact that they are interacting is, I think, an enriching way of looking at literature. It's the way I began with this series of books. I had been tantalized by the achievement of Faulkner and Salinger's Glass family in which family members interlock from one book to the next.
BP: Will there be more novels in the cycle?
WK: The Albany cycle is inexhaustible to me. I'm already thinking in terms of a new novel. I really have about four books that I want to write, but I just don't know which one to focus on at this point.
I'm also writing a couple of movies. After I finished Very Old Bones, I did an original screenplay for TriStar about the Daily News strike. And I'm hoping we might be close on Billy Phelan's Greatest Game as a film.
BP: So you have several irons in the fire.
WK: I have two other books coming out this year too. One will a nonfiction collection of essays, book reviews, interviews, and literary criticism. And also my son Brendan and I are doing a sequel to the children's book we wrote some years ago. This one is called Charlie Malarkey and the Singing Moose and is being illustrated by Nick Bantock. Viking is doing all three.
Julia Braun Kessler writes on the arts for many magazines, among them World & I, Family Circle, and Travel & Leisure.
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