Ironweed

The Albany Cycle #3

by William Kennedy

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Francis Phelan, ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, full-time drunk, has hit bottom. Years ago he left Albany in a hurry after killing a scab during a trolley workers' strike; he ran away again after accidentally - and fatally - dropping his infant son. Now, in 1938, Francis is back in town, roaming the old familiar streets with his hobo pal, Helen, trying to make peace with the ghosts of the past and the present.... New York "Rich in plot and dramatic tension... almost Joycean in its variety of rhetoric... the novel goes straight for the throat and the funnybone." Wall Street "[Kennedy's] power is such that the reader will follow him almost anywhere, to the edge of tragedy and back again to redemption."

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Classics, Literature, Novels, Literary Fiction, American

Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

William Joseph Kennedy is an American writer and journalist born and raised in Albany, New York. Many of his novels feature the interaction of members of the fictional Irish-American Phelan family, and make use of incidents of Albany's history and the supernatural.

Kennedy's works include The Ink Truck (1969), Legs (1975), Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (1978), Ironweed (1983, winner of 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; film, 1987), and Roscoe (2002).


See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_...

Reviews

[Guille · Rating 5 out of 5]

No descubro nada, el autor fue avalado en su día por Saul Below y la novela ganó en 1984 el Pulitzer de Ficción y el National Book Critics Circle. Es más, Tallo de hierro es de esas novelas míticas que triunfaron tras ser rechazada por multitud de editoriales, trece en su caso, amparándose en su pretendida sordidez. Pues bien, el libro me ha parecido incluso mejor de lo que las expectativas auspiciaban. Pero todos sabemos que no es suficiente que el libro sea bueno, incluso muy bueno, para quer le otorguemos 5 estrellas, tiene que tener algo más.

Buscando información sobre el autor, encontré unas declaraciones atribuidas a García Márquez en las que este enumeraba los ingredientes imprescindibles para cocinar una buena novela: amor, humor, política, nostalgia, tristeza, vida, muerte. La lista terminaba con tres signos de interrogación que representan eso que nadie conoce pero que es lo que consigue hacernos grande una novela. Sea lo que sea, para mí esta lo tiene. No solo he gozado y me he emocionado con todos y cada uno de los ingredientes citados por el autor colombiano, sino que ha conseguido responder a cualesquiera de esas misteriosas e imprescindibles interrogaciones que culminan mi particular lista.

No cabe duda de que el hecho de que sea literatura sobre perdedores le otorga un buen montón de puntos. También es importante que, aunque el autor considere las circunstancias, no reste a los protagonistas ni un ápice de su responsabilidad haciéndoles además, y esto es ya para nota, conscientes de ella (la autocompasión puede o no aparecer, ni me sobra ni me molesta, pero aquí no la encontraréis o solo el tiempo justo para que los personajes se desprendan de ella). Porque si tuviera que resumir el tema de la novela con una sola palabra esta sería sin duda alguna la palabra "culpa".

Aunque es esta también una novela de grandes personajes, principales y secundarios, vivos o muertos, personajes destrozados por la vida o personajes incapaces de sobrellevarla o de escapar de aquella que les tocó en suerte...

“Un gran poeta dijo cierta vez que el amor entra por los ojos. Uno tiene que tener cuidado para no ver demasiado. Uno debe dominar sus apetitos. El mundo es demasiado hermoso para la mayoría de nosotros."

... por encima de todos ellos reina Francis Phelan, el gran protagonista que la hace inolvidable. Un personaje que sufre y se lamenta, no por lo que el destino le haya hurtado, sino por no sentirse merecedor de ello. Un personaje que se niega a sí mismo cualquier atisbo de felicidad y que parece evitar su muerte únicamente por no detener el castigo del que se siente merecedor. Un vagabundo que hace de la huida una forma inútil de sobrellevar su dolor, aun consciente de que esa huida es también un castigo en sí mismo tanto para él como para los que le quieren. Un personaje al que su propia ética y su estricto cumplimiento le ha expulsado de la sociedad a un terreno donde solo queda preocuparse por la comida de ese día, por donde dormirá esa noche y por quién le proporcionará el siguiente trago... o eso es lo que él quisiera.

“Ha vivido diciéndose: creo de veras que estoy haciendo más o menos lo correcto. Creo en Dios. Saludo a la bandera. Me lavo los sobacos y la entrepierna, ¿y qué si bebo demasiado? ¿A quién le importa eso? ¿Quién sabe cuánto no he bebido?”

Ahora, tras 22 años de fuga, Francis vuelve a su ciudad, a su casa, con su mujer y sus hijos, y ahí empieza la novela. Una vuelta que nos es narrada en una magistral combinación de realidad, ensoñaciones, flashbacks y alucinaciones; diálogos fantásticos junto a párrafos de un emotivo lirismo sin que falten la ternura, la crueldad, la dureza o el humor, incluso a veces todo junto, como en las últimas páginas.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ironweed is the third book of William Kennedy's Albany series which focuses on the character Francis Phelan, father of the protagonist of his previous book Billy Phelan's Greatest Game and referring at times to events in the first book of this series, Legs. It won the Pulitzer in 1984 beating out Cathedral by Raymond Carver and The Feud by Thomas Berger, neither of which I have read yet. I think it was an unusual choice for the committee, and actually preferred Billy Phelan's Greatest Game. Nonetheless, it was a great read.

The book is almost entirely written from Francis' perspective - through his own neuroses and alcholic hazes, with hallucinations and sudden mood changes. For all of that, Franny is an interesting character that reminds me of an uncle of mine that passed a few years ago.

It starts with Francis going into the family cemetery as a grave digger, passing - not without some significance - the graves of his parents and the child he inadvertently killed when it slipped out of a loose diaper and broke its neck. This small pieces of insight are what build our sympathy with the protagonist. It is best to have read Billy Phelan's Greatest Game to get the context for how Billy views this event and his encounter with Helen in order to fully appreciate the narrative here.

Nobody quite describes life underneath society - whether that of gamblers or of gangsters or of bums - quite like Kennedy. It is most likely that precisely which earned him the Pulitzer for this book. The prose can be evocative and powerful in passages such as this when Francis looks back at his own conception: She closed her eyes and feel back on the wedding bed like a corpse, ready to receive the thrust, and the old man's impeccable blood shot into her aged vessel with a passionate burst that sset her writhing with the life of newley conceived death. Francis watched this primal pool of his own soulish body squirm into burgeoning matter, saw it change and grow with the speed of light until it was the size of an infant, saw it yanked out by his father, who straightened him, slapped him, into being, and swiftly molded him into a bestial weed. The body sprouted to wildly matured growth and stood fully clad at last in the very clothes Francis was now wearing. He recognized the toothless mouth, the absent finger joints, the bump on the nose, the mortal slouch of his newborn shade, and he knew then that he would be this decayed self he had been so long in becoming, though all the endless years of his death. (p. 99)
Francis was born in an atmosphere of neglect and horror of pleasure and repulsion for sex and this colored his entire existence. There is a certain fatalism in Kennedy's writing. I saw on a poster in the metro for an association for aiding the poor that on average, it takes six generations for a family to rise out of poverty. I get the feeling that Kennedy would find even that number somewhat optimistic. When we see the characters that populate his books, there seems to be a laid-in complacency, a lazy acceptance of mediocrity. Characters that buck this system are brutally beaten down or merely ignored and forgotten. That being said, there is a redeeming message underneath that of love that a vision of his mother who died in a house fire transmits to him: And then the woman interposed herself in his life, hiding herself in the deepest center of the flames, smiling at him with all the lewd beauty of her dreams; and she awakened in him the urge for a love of his own, a love that belonged to no other man, a love he would never have to share with any man, or boy, like himself. (p. 116) Even more importantly, even if it does not improve the economics, there is a reckoning and a sea change that operates in Francis despite his initial reticence: Everything was easier than coming home, even reducing yourself to the level of social maggot, streetside slug.
But then he came home. (p. 160) Abandoning Helen, Francis overcomes his self-hate and is able to reconcile with his past. I felt tearful when he went up to the attic and looked at the remnants of his previous life (p. 168)

Despite preferring the previous book, I truly did enjoy this one for the great writing and the story of redemption which did not stoop to empty sentimentalism, but rather shows Francis dealing with his own sins on his own terms.

My rating of all the Pulitzer Winners: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

[Sana · Rating 4 out of 5]

"معتقدم وقتی آدم می‌میره که دیگه نتونه تحمل کنه.به نظر من ما تا جایی که جون داریم تحمل می‌کنیم،بعد هروقت نتونستیم تحمل کنیم می‌میریم."

گل آفتابگردان،اثر ویلیام کندی نویسنده و روزنامه نگار
آمریکایی است.
ویلیام کندی همچون نویسنده های بزرگ مثل فاکنر، وقایع داستان های خود را در شهری خیالی به نام آلبانی می‌نویسد.
گل آفتابگردان،درباره ی مردی به نام فرانسیس که ناخواسته باعث مرگ مردی در اعتصابات حمل و نقل و بعد باعث مرگ نوزاد خود می‌شود و خانواده را ترک می‌کند.
بعد از گذشت ۲۲سال او و دوستش رودی،کاری در گورستان حومه شهر پیدا می‌کنند و فرانسیس برای نخستین بار گور پسرش را می‌بیند و گذشتهٔ خود را بازگو می‌کند.
داستان این کتاب در دوره ی رکود بزرگ اقتصاد آمریکا است.
نثر این کتاب کمی پیچیده ست؛روایت گاهی بین گذشته و حال می‌گذره.
کندی به موضوعات همچون گناه ، بی خانمان و فقدان پرداخته است.
در آخر گل آفتابگردان کتاب بسیار متفاوتی بود و اولین تجربه ی خواندنیم از این نویسنده هست.
کاش بیشتر کتاباش توسط آقای سالمی ترجمه بشن.

[Kemper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Treasure of the Rubbermaids 19: Big Rock Candy Mountain

The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of Rubbermaid containers previously stored and forgotten at my parent’s house and untouched for almost 20 years. Thanks to my father dumping them back on me, I now spend my spare time unearthing lost treasures from their plastic depths.

Francis Phelan is living the romantic life of a hobo during the Great Depression. Drifting from town to town by hopping trains and with no responsibilities to tie him down, Francis enjoys the company of his fellow bums as they share cans of beans and jugs of wine.

OK, that’s bullshit. Any notions of the hobo lifestyle having some kind of appeal are dealt with quickly and brutally here. Francis’s existence is a daily grind of trying to avoid freezing or starving to death, and a hobo’s corpse quickly becomes food for wild dogs. With few teeth left in his head and a simple shoestring being beyond his means, Francis dispels the myth of the carefree hobo. Particularly cringe worthy is a scene in which he is trying to take advantage of a visit to a friend’s apartment by cleaning himself up and his underwear falls to pieces when he tries to wash them in the sink. Think about how skeevy those drawers had to be and tell me you want to hang out by the campfire under the bridge.

Francis is also dealing with a fair amount of guilt. He hit the rails the first time after killing a scab during a strike, and while he eventually came home after that incident, another tragic turn sent him on the bum for good when Francis dropped his infant son who broke his neck in the fall. (Way to go, butterfingers!) His life as a hobo added to his regrets as the rough existence of a drifter forced him to kill others along the way. As a wise man once sang:

Nothing beats the hobo life
Stabbing folks with my hobo knife

Back in his old home town of Albany, Francis is stuck trying to work off a debt to a lawyer and dealing with the many ghosts that his past has haunted him with. He’s also trying to look out for his hobo girlfriend Helen and his buddy Rudy. Running into his grown sons provides the shocking realization that his family doesn’t hold a grudge for him abandoning them, but can Francis ever forgive himself?

Francis story is sad and compelling, and he’s an interesting character. He makes no excuses for the things he’s done or how he lives. Despite his capacity for violence, he doesn’t look for trouble. He’s generous with what little he has as well as compassionate. He’s got a kind of cheerful pragmatism despite the regrets he has.

The story of Francis makes this worth checking out, and it’s certainly well written, but I’m a little shocked that it won a Pulitzer. It seems very good, but not at a level of greatness that kind of prize would indicate.

[Justin Pickett · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Nobody’s a bum all their life.”

Set on the streets of Albany, New York, in 1938, this novel is about unhoused people, per the language of modern social science. It is an account of the factors (e.g., accidental family trauma, parental betrayal) that cause people to fall into homelessness. It is the tragic story of those kind souls with potential who were “born to bloom unseen.” It is a description of a way of life where fornication is a “standard survival currency.” It is about unhoused people’s efforts at expiation. It is the story of how they spend their days and where they sleep at night; it is about their altruism, violence, alcoholism, and friendships.

“They feared drys, cops, jailers, bosses, moralists, crazies, truth-tellers, and one another. They loved storytellers, liars, whores, fighters, singers, collie dogs that wagged their tails, and generous bandits.”

I live in New York’s Capital Region, where the novel is set. It was great reading about the places I know—Albany, Troy, Watervliet, the Erie Canal, Madison Avenue, and Arbor Hill. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1984. That it won is unsurprising. The story deals with a persistent problem in America, homelessness, and is gripping and gritty yet honest and full of heart. The characters are complex, simultaneously being killers and lovers; they move quickly from drunk fighting and sexual deviance to giving the only food they have to others who are starving. And the prose is exceptional. Here is an example of the writing:

“She had been dead all her life, Francis thought, and for the first time in years he felt pity for this woman, who had been spayed by the self-neutered nuns and self-gelded priests. As she yielded her fresh body to her new husband out of obligation, Francis felt the iron maiden of induced chastity piercing her everywhere, tightening with the years until all sensuality was strangulated and her body was as bloodless and cold as a granite angel. She closed her eyes and fell back on the wedding bed like a corpse, ready to receive the thrust, and the old man’s impeccable blood shot into her aged vessel with a passionate burst that set her writhing with the life of newly conceived death.”

MEMORABLE QUOTES:

“One never knows the potential within the human breast.”

“What they needed was a structured way, a mentor and guide through the hells and purgatories of their days.”

“Childhood, young manhood were passed on the streets of Arbor Hill, girls discovering they had urges, boys capitalizing on this discovery.”

“That hand’s seen it all. I mean the worst. Dead men took their last ride on that hand.”

“Go to jail, at least it’s warm. Get six months and be out in time for the flowers.”

[David J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The dead, they all got eyes.”

I wanted to hate this book. Portions of it are simply offensive. Those portions, however, are significantly outweighed by Kennedy’s ability to create beautiful prose out of objectionable material. There are, no doubt, pages of this book that read like poetry.

The first chapter is a compelling introduction to a character that begs for your revulsion, receiving instead your compassion. Francis Phelan is a bum, having left his wife and children over twenty years ago because of some poor choices and bad luck. I still have not decided if Francis is a product of his own agency, or a victim of his circumstances. That is why in the end, I cannot condemn him, although I want to. He left his family.

The novel is set in the late 1930’s and covers approximately two or three days of Francis’ return to his hometown of Albany where he finally attempts to reconcile with those living, all the while hounded by those who left this life either by his hand or in spite of it.

Francis’ guilt regarding those who died, whether or not by his hand, follows him through his attempt at reconciliation and redemption in the form of ghosts. They appear to him lying in their graves, they visit him in bathrooms, backyards, and while Francis is in a congregation of other bums. There is a scene where the dead seem to build bleachers and gather to watch what is arguably the most important portions of Francis’ story. It is in these scenes that I stopped blaming Francis, although he never stops blaming himself.

It is the pursuit by Francis’ past, and the beautiful prose Kennedy uses to describe the filthy things of transient life, that compel me to give it four stars rather than three or two. I don’t recommend this book to anyone under 18, since there are some heavy adult themes. In spite of those themes, I loved Ironweed for its ability to create beauty in the least likely of places.

In the last few paragraphs of Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It,” the narrator and protagonist laments the loss of those he knew and loved in life, that he could still hear their voices in the currents of the river. Ironweed is an example of Maclean’s aching last line, “I am haunted by waters.”

In the closing pages of Ironweed, Francis finally comes to terms with his life. “Francis asserted his own private wisdom and purpose: he had fled the folks because he was too profane a being to live among them; he had humbled himself willfully through the years to counter a fearful pride in his own ability to manufacture glory from which grace would flow.”

Unlike those of us who try to bury or erase the guilt of our past misdeeds, Francis comes to understand, “My guilt is all that I have left. If I lose it, I have stood for nothing, done nothing, been nothing.” In a culture where men and women so quickly become animals, Francis’ guilt is his last scrap of evidence he is indeed human.

[Barry Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

just crazy to think novels were once written this well

[Dagio_maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Correre da una base all’altra dopo il colpo secco della mazza, scappar via dalle accuse, fuggire dalla calunnia degli uomini e delle donne, sottrarsi alla famiglia, ai legami, all’impoverimento dello spirito attraverso rafforzamenti rituali, e infine scappare alla ricerca di un’evasione fine a se stessa, portando a compimento un manierismo dello spirito”

Questo libro mi è piaciuto molto non perché abbia vinto il Pulitzer o perché ne sia stato tratto un film con Jack Nicholson e Meryl Streep (1987).
Questo libro mi è piaciuto per come Kennedy ci racconta di drammi interiori che possono divenire macigni da trascinarsi dietro per tutta una vita.

Saul Bellow – che fu suo maestro di scrittura- ne parlava così:

” Ha saputo trarre i suoi materiali dalla strada e conferire ai suoi personaggi una straordinaria intensità umana. La gente di cui scrive non è consapevole della propria emarginazione, e viene sempre rappresentata dall’interno, con uno sguardo profondamente partecipe. Sono commosso dai suoi protagonisti, e dalle loro ingenue ma umanissime fragilità. Il modo in cui Kennedy tratta i personaggi non ha mai niente di trito o di banale. Non esiste una sola frase in un suo libro che non sia ricca di risonanze. La sua lingua è vigorosa, piena di energia. I suoi libri non fanno facili concessioni al lettore e non privilegiano mai la vendibilità immediata. Kennedy è, a suo modo, uno scrittore puro.”

La città è Albany (Stato di New York).
Francis Phelan è un ex campione di baseball che ha scelto di vivere per strada abbandonandosi all’alcolismo e ad uno stile di vita che non lo incateni lasciandogli sempre aperta una via di fuga.
Ecco: scappare è per Francis un imperativo.
Ventidue anni prima gli era scivolato dalle mani Gerald il figlio di tredici giorni e Francis salì s’un treno e se ne andò. Ma il passato non nasconde solo questo…
La prima scena che c’introduce nella storia non può mancare di essere in un cimitero (dove Francis, assunto a giornata, è andato a lavorare) perché il mondo dei morti segue ed insegue il protagonista tanto che si procede con un registro binario tra realtà ed irrealtà.
Le sue sono visioni e allucinazioni da alcolista oppure rimorsi di coscienza che fanno tornare a galla il passato concretizzandolo?
Kennedy, dunque, mette in scena fantasmi che si muovono e dialogano con il protagonista ma non perde di vista il piano reale dipingendoci l’ambiente dei vagabondi sia nelle sue sembianze più positive di fratellanza sia nei suoi lati più torbidi e meschini che spingono ad assumere comportamenti violenti e pericolosi dettati dall’alcool che poi è il centro di ogni desiderio.
La protagonista femminile Helen è legata sentimentalmente a Francis.
Anche lei è in fuga ma la sua fuga è dal presente: la condizione in cui si trova è quella da cui rifugge assentandosi nei ricordi di un passato più felice. La via per sfuggire è attraverso la bottiglia.
Se, tuttavia, Helen è un fiore delicato non si può dire altrettanto di lui.
Francis, infatti, combatte (”Un guerriero, di questo era certo, non era una vittima. Mai una vittima.” ) ed è proprio come l’ironweed: una pianta tipica dello stato di New York che deve proprio il suo nome alla durezza dello stelo, una pianta che difficilmente si piega e soccombe.

Bello, bello, bello!
Consigliato!

[Betsy Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t particularly like being around drunks, nor do I enjoy reading about them. But William Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a down-and-out ex-baseball player, Francis, who sees dead people and is dedicated to his own pain and a life spent running from it, and his cadre of drunks, including his girl Helen, a former musician, is so finely and freely well-written, sometimes funny, and authentic that I read it slowly with pleasure as well as pain.

. . . this drunk was not dead, not dying, but living an epilogue to a notable life. And yet, and yet . . . here he was, disguised behind a mustache, another cripple, his ancient, weary eyes revealing to Francis the scars of a blood brother, a man for whom life had been a promise unkept in spite of a great success, a promise now and forever unkeepable. The man was singing a song that had grown old not from time but from wear. The song is frayed. The song is worn out. (49-50)

And maybe my favorite line:

If you love something well enough, Grandmother Archer told Helen when the weakness was upon her, you will die for it; for when we love with all our might, our silly little selves are already dead and we have no more fear of dying. (118)

The book flows easily between reality, surreal reality, memory, and memory as reality in a Dubliners kind of journey through 1930s (Depression era) Albany, New York.

I’ve lived in New York City for more than forty years, so I have history that haunts me, attached to places—both existing and long-renovated away—as I walk through neighborhoods where I’ve lived and worked when I was in my twenties, thirties, and forties, or theaters I acted in when I was doing that. For a long time I’ve been thinking about writing something about this phenomenon of distinct former lives being so vivid that they still exist as one retraces old ground. Now I don’t have to. William Kennedy wrote this as well as I can imagine it being done. It’s not a literary trick; it’s just really good writing—worth living through despite my historical but still perpetual difficulties in the world of drunks.

[Kelly (and the Book Boar) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

“Katie bar the door. Too wet to plow.”



Okay, since I’m a robot that’s a bit of a fabrication. I did, however, get a little choked up and that’s pretty much as good as it gets when it comes to me bawling.

Francis has spent his entire life running . . .

“Running bases after the crack of the bat, running from accusation, running from the calumny of men and women, running from family, from bondage, from destitution of spirit through ritualistic straightenings, running, finally, in a quest for pure flight as a fulfilling mannerism of the spirit.”

He finally decided to run for good after the accidental death of his newborn son. Francis hit rock bottom and became a vagrant. He now spends his days doing as little as possible in order to earn enough to buy himself a jug each night in a futile attempt to rid himself of the voices of ghosts from his past.

“I’m sick of you all, [is] his thought. I am sick of imagining what you became, what I might have become if I’d lived among you. I am sick of your melancholy histories, your sentimental pieties, your goddamned unchanging faces. You ain’t nothin’ more than a photograph, you goddamn spooks. You ain’t real and I ain’t gonna be at your beck and call no more. You’re all dead, and if you ain’t, you ought to be.”

I feel more than a little crappy giving a Pulitzer Prize winner a 3 Star rating, but???? It is what it is. Here’s the deal . . . The first 75 pages and the last 75 pages of Ironweed are 5 Star worthy. The writing is some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen (and when you’re dealing with nothing but horrifying and revolting situations, that’s a major feat to accomplish), but the middle killed it.

You’ll notice in my synopsis I conveniently left out anything about the character “Helen.” While I found her to be a fine addition in order to add to the richness of Francis’ story (and apparently the movie version really beefed up her part being that Meryl Streep received an Oscar nod for the role),



I felt the book went a little off the rails having a featured segment of Helen’s history (along with padding Francis’ tale even further). Even the prose changed in the middle of the book. Maybe that change was intentional and I’m just too dumb to get it, but it felt like a bunch of filler to me.

My other complaint? The dialogue. This is a book that is filled with elaborate description and imagery that really made me feel like I was experiencing everything along with Francis . . . and then the characters started talking and I was immediately yanked right back to reality because the conversations seemed so stilted and read so false to me. The exception? The conversations Francis has with his “ghosts” – now some of those were heartbreaking.

If you haven’t yet read Ironweed and are already experiencing the holiday doldrums, I recommend keeping this pushed back a bit on your to-be-read list. After all, no one wants to come to someone’s house and find not only the turkey cooking in the oven, but the host trying to stick their head in there alongside it as well.

[Ned · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is early Christmas morning before my family has awakened and I’m warming myself by a nice radiator with all the modern comforts of a home and all my true needs basically covered. Not so the character of Francis Phelan, who returns to Albany New York in 1937 after 22 years bumming on the road. He tells this tale, the 3rd in the Albany series that I’ve read in the last 3 years, with intricate detail about the history, people and physical geography of a time and place. This is a tale about homecoming, and a completely unsentimental account of being homeless: It captures what seems most true about what drives these poor souls to the road and what keeps them there. It is told in gorgeous imagery and beautiful writing, from the old-fashioned omnipotent point of view. The result is an understanding of human nature, the conditions that trap us, and a mighty struggle for redemption (the elements I seek most in novels). This won the Pulitzer prize for good reason.

Francis (Franny) is first born of Irish immigrants, 58 years old, and back after having fled his native Albany presumably to escape his public braining of a scab during a railroad strike and privately his demons from having tragically killed his newborn by dropping him during a diaper change. Franny is still physically robust, though downtrodden and shabby in the ways of all hoboes, and observes his traveling companion Rudy (p. 23) as “…simple, hopeless as lost as Francis himself, though somewhat younger, dying of cancer, afloat in ignorance, weighted with stupidity, inane, sheeplike, and given to fits of weeping over his lostness; and yet there was something in him that buoyed Francis’ spirit…they both know intimately the etiquette, the taboos, the protocol of bums.”

We (I) tend to forget that all humans, even bums, are human and have the same basic nature. Francis has a woman, Helen, (p. 55) whose first true love “….kept her in his fierce embrace for years, but then he loosened that embrace and let her slide down and down until the hope within her died. Hopeless Helen, that’s who she was when she met Francis….Helen was a living explosion of unbearable memory and indomitable joy.”

There are many down and outers covered in this fine book, like Clara, whom Francis (p. 78) sees “….the curve of her life: sexy kid likes the rewards, goes pro, gets restless, marries and makes kids, chucks that, pro again, sickens, but really sick, getting’ old, getting’ ugly, locks onto Jack, turns monster. But she’s got most of her teeth, not bad; and that hair: You get her to a beauty shop and give her a marcel, it’d be all right; put her in new duds, high heels and silk stockin’s; and hey look at them titties, and that leg: The skin’s clear on it.” Franny sees that chance for redemption, but it is not easy for himself.

There is a lot about Irish Catholicism in here, though not heavy handed and very fresh, such as Franny imagining his mother during his own conception (p. 99) “….he felt pity for this woman, who had been spayed by self-neutered nuns and self-gelded priests. As she yielded her fresh body to her new husband out of obligation, Francis felt the iron maiden of induced chastity piercing her everywhere, tightening with the years until all sensuality was strangulated and her body was a bloodless and cold as a granite angel.” Wow, and that’s just part of one sentence!

Once upon a time (1983 or 1984) when I lived in Louisville, KY I saw this book made into film with the popular Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. My wife and I were big fans (especially of Meryl) and I’m glad the intervening years had largely erased my memory (of Jack certainly) so I could enjoy the plot of this book. So it was with fresh pleasure that I got to the point in this book where Francis actually gets up the nerve to visit the family he abandoned 22 years ago. They accept him, surprisingly, in a most touching scene of forgiveness and mixed emotion as we get hope (and Franny luxuriates in a bath and gets fresh close for the first time in a very long time). We get to meet his son Billy (of “Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game”, the 2nd in the Albany trilogy) again. His wife Annie is still unmarried and he sees her tarnished beauty afresh, physical and spiritual. It turns out she never told anyone, even his children that it was he who dropped their newborn those many years ago. This pure, unrequited love, gives Francis hope, and he sits down with his abandoned family to a glorious meal. But, sadly, on the verge of full confession, he feels doomed and hopeless contaminated, and his guilt prevents reconciliation (p. 160): “There was no way he could reveal all that had brought him here. It would have meant the recapitulation not only of all sins but of all his fugitive and fallen dreams, all his random movement across the country and back, all his returns to this city only to leave again without ever coming to see her, them, without ever knowing why he did it. It would have meant the anatomizing of his compulsive violence and his fear of justice, of his time with Helen, his present defection from Helen, his screwing so many women he really wanted nothing to do with, his drunken ways, his morning-after sicknesses, his sleeping in the weeds, his borrowing money from strangers not because there was a depression but first to help to Helen but then because it was easy: Easier than working. Everything was easier than coming home, even reducing yourself to the level of social maggot. Streetside slug”.

During the week or so covered in this book, Francis is in constant communication (hallucinations?) with those in his past, particularly those to whom he has committed violence. He departs his reunion with his family, against their pleas, since there is just too much water under that bridge. Francis has been sober for a week, and (other than the ghosts) his storytelling has been coherent and sharp. On page 192, with foreboding, I read “And so Francis began to drink for the first time in a week”. At this point the narration gets loose, the mean drunk monster is unleashed, and we abruptly see what those demons have been all about. In the early throes of his freshened drunk, Francis has early visions of clarity and sentimentality (p. 204) where we get a glimpse of what it was like to be an immigrant in Albany in the 19th century from a conversation he once had with one of the oldtimers: “..when he and the country were young, when the riverboats brought the greenhorns up the Hudson from the Irish ships. When the cholera was in the air, the greenhorns would be taken off the steamboats at Albany and sent west on canal boats, for the city’s elders had charged the government with keeping the pestilential foreigners out of the city…. The authorities there kept the newcomers westering under duress.”

Later, in the ramshackle hobo town outside Albany, deep into his drunk, around a comforting fire, Francis is tempted to confess again his guilt for dropping his newborn son, but even then (p. 215) “Francis’s confession seemed wasted. Mentioning Gerald to strangers for the first time was a mistake because nobody took it seriously. And it did not diminish his own guilt but merely cheapened the utterance, made it as commonplace as Rudy’s brainless chatter about bears and wizards. Francis concluded he had made yet another wrong decision, another in a long line. He concluded that he was not capable of making a right decision. That he was as wrongheaded a man that ever lived. He felt certain now that he would never attain the balance that allowed so many other men to live peaceful, nonviolent, nonfugitive lives, lives that spawned at least a modicum of happiness in old age.”

And then, in hobo-town, the government goons come sweeping in again and, like a hopeless avenging angel, the still sturdy Francis gets his bloodlust up again, swinging a bat in defense of his fellow bums (p. 218) and getting the old feeling back: “He watched with all but orgasmic pleasure as the breathless man twisted grotesquely and fell without a sound”.

Kennedy knows how to finish as (p. 224) the escaped Francis is tidying up loose ends, preparing for yet another launch, now told as forgone, inevitable: “Then he would walk out of Helen’s room, leaving the light burning. He would walk down the hall to the landing, salute the night clerk, who would be dozing in his chair, and then he would reenter the cold and living darkness of the light”.

The end is ambiguous, as he rattles in a boxcar heading south, where Francis either (1) throws himself off the train and in his dying brain imagines a heaven of living back with wife and family; (2) departs the train and actually returns to said halcyon; or (3) continues his active fantasy life as he rides the rails to his next adventure. This ending is satisfying to me, because this is an epic tale that keeps the mystery intact and reminds us that we are all one step, once decision, one chance encounter from a life of hope and meaning and the alternative.

Thank you William Kennedy for educating, informing and entertaining me. This is why I read. As I’ve said before, this actual book has been on my shelf for 30 years and gave up to me a postcard from that time from my dear departed grandmother, a woman who lived through most of these times (1937) and would have no illusions about human nature and its loveliness and cruelty that never changes. She gave me that love that Francis so undeservedly was yielded by his family, and her place and time is forever etched on my mind from the mundane to the spiritual.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very tough thing to read.

It’s towards the end of the Great Depression, and Francis Phelan, former baseball player, former husband and father, current self-described bum, recently returned to his home town of Albany, New York, driven by an admirable moral code, but haunted by ghosts from his past.

There are a mix of drives in Francis, as there are in all of us I suppose--our lives are not as simple as others want to think they are. Drifting makes him feel free, but he misses his family. He craves alcohol, gets angry and lashes out at those “on the other team,” and he is amazingly generous to his friends.

Helen has been with Francis on and off for years, and has her own set of inconsistent traits. Trained as a classical musician, she longs for the life she lost, but has to focus on staying warm and trying to put a little food in her seriously ill body. Her character touched me deeply.

“What brought her to this uncertainty is the accumulation of her sins, and if you must call them sins, then there is certainly quite an accumulation. But Helen prefers to call them decisions, which is why she has no compulsion to confess them.”

This is my first time reading William Kennedy, and I am amazed at how real he makes life on the streets. He gives details that are so ugly, and some that are so beautiful. Of course there is a mix, as there is in every setting, but this is gritty. You can feel the edge the characters are living on, creating a very affecting and very disturbing read.

I was inspired to read this after seeing the film with Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. It’s a wonderful film, but reading is so much more … personal. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t glad to be done with it. But I’d also be lying if I said I wasn’t forever changed.

“One never knows the potential within any human breast.”

[Tara Rock · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story really touched me emotionally. Sad, beautiful, and engrossing. I will always remember "Katie bar the door" and "It's too wet to plow." A very rich and startling Pulitzer prize winner.

[David Carrasco · Rating 5 out of 5]

De niño, regresando del colegio, vi una vez a un hombre sentado en un banco del parque, hablando solo. Nadie se detenía a mirarlo, salvo yo, que intentaba adivinar con quién conversaba. Quizá con sus muertos. Y entonces entendí que hay vidas que no encuentran redención, solo compañía en los fantasmas. Porque no todos los pecados se pueden lavar. Algunos se pegan a la piel como mugre y caminas con ellos hasta el final. Eso es Tallo de hierro.

¿Y si no hubiera redención? ¿Y si cargar con la culpa fuera lo único que nos queda cuando ya no hay a quién pedir perdón? ¿Qué pasa con los que no encontraron un arco de transformación bonito, ni un final donde todo encaje? ¿Qué hacemos con los que siguen ahí, a medio camino entre el recuerdo y la derrota, caminando por ciudades que ya no los reconocen?

Sí, muchas preguntas. Y ya te anticipo que en Tallo de hierro no encontrarás las respuestas. Aquí lo que encuentras es la vida de alguien que sobrevive con los bolsillos llenos de muertos. Y lo más jodido: que entiendes a Francis Phelan. Que, en algún momento, ves en él una parte de ti que no querrías mirar.

Porque hay libros que hacen justo eso; no te abrazan, te agarran del cuello, te arrastran por el barro y luego te susurran: “Mira, chaval. La vida también es esto”. Tallo de hierro, de William Kennedy, es de esos. Una novela que no pretende enseñarte nada, sino que te mira a los ojos con honestidad y te dice: así duele vivir cuando llevas fantasmas a cuestas. Y Francis Phelan, su protagonista, está hecho de puro peso muerto. De recuerdos que arañan. De errores que no se perdonan ni con el paso de las décadas.

A Francis lo conocemos cuando ya está destrozado. Vagabundo en Albany, 1938, en plena Gran Depresión. Exjugador de béisbol, exmarido, excasi todo. Se fue veinte años antes, huyendo de una culpa imposible: la muerte accidental de su hijo recién nacido y el asesinato de un esquirol durante una huelga. Y ahora vuelve. No buscando redención, porque ni se la cree ni la espera. Vuelve porque ya no puede seguir huyendo. Vuelve como quien se deja caer en el sitio donde empezó todo el derrumbe.

A su lado, Helen. Otra alma rota, compañera de miseria y de cama cuando se puede, aunque lo suyo nunca ha sido ternura sino necesidad. La relación entre ellos es de esas que no se sostienen en el amor sino en el frío. Porque el amor, en esta novela, no es refugio: es otra herida. Pero juntos se buscan, se cuidan lo justo, y sobreviven. Y eso, en este mundo, ya es una forma de ternura.

Kennedy lo sabe: por eso no se contenta con mostrarnos la decadencia. Nos mete dentro de la cabeza de Francis, y ahí es donde la novela se vuelve casi insoportable. Porque lo que hay en esa cabeza es un desfile de muertos. Literalmente. Kennedy inventa un realismo espectral —llámalo mágico si quieres, pero es algo más profundo, más punzante— donde los fantasmas del pasado se sientan con Francis en el autobús, lo increpan en la taberna o lo siguen por la iglesia. No como sustos, sino como parte de su paisaje interior. Son su culpa encarnada. Su memoria convertida en carne. Y él los acepta con la misma resignación con la que acepta la mugre de sus zapatos.

Pero claro, en manos de cualquier escritor de medio pelo, esta premisa podría escapársele de las manos y convertirse en algo grotesco. Sin embargo, la prosa de Kennedy tiene esa rara habilidad de ser poética sin empalagar, de ser cruda sin recrearse en la miseria. Describe la indigencia como quien describe el clima: sin melodrama, sin adornos, pero con un lirismo sutil que te parte por dentro. Hay belleza en esta ruina, pero es una belleza como la de una flor creciendo en un vertedero. Y no es casual: el ironweed, la planta del título, crece en terrenos pobres, olvidados. Como Francis. Como Helen. Como todos los que caminan esta novela a medio paso de la muerte.

Y esa mirada, que equilibra crudeza y lirismo, también marca la forma: la estructura no es lineal, y menos mal. Porque la vida de Francis no tiene lógica temporal. Es un mosaico roto de recuerdos, traumas, y momentos de lucidez que duran lo que tarda en vaciarse una botella. El tiempo se fragmenta como él, y Kennedy lo usa para desnudarnos su alma poco a poco, sin compasión.

Hay algo en Francis que recuerda al Willy Loman de La muerte de un viajante, ese otro hombre que también se va deshaciendo bajo el peso de una vida mal vivida, sin que nadie le tienda la mano. También podría ser primo lejano del Benjy Compson de El ruido y la furia, con su conciencia rota, atrapado entre tiempos que no encajan y recuerdos que lo desbordan. Y si uno escucha bien, entre las calles de Albany también resuena el eco de los perdedores de Bukowski, aunque sin el cinismo festivo: aquí no hay alcohol como anestesia, sino como castigo. Kennedy se inscribe en esa tradición de escritores que no decoran la derrota, que la muestran tal cual: sucia, insistente, ineludible.

Tallo de hierro es, al final, una novela sobre la culpa. Sobre cómo no todos los pecados tienen redención. Sobre cómo hay personas que no buscan ser perdonadas, sino simplemente ser entendidas. Francis no se perdona a sí mismo, y eso es quizá lo más honesto del libro. Porque a veces, lo único que se puede hacer con el pasado es cargar con él y seguir caminando. Y si no puedes con eso, te sientas a hablar con tus muertos.

Ganadora del Pulitzer en 1984, sí. Pero no te dejes engañar por los premios: Tallo de hierro no es literatura para exhibir en una estantería bonita. Es para leer con el estómago vacío y el corazón encogido. Es para entender que hay vidas que no salen en las novelas de superación, pero que merecen ser contadas con la misma dignidad. Porque, como decía Maya Angelou, “no puedes controlar todos los acontecimientos que te suceden, pero puedes decidir no ser dominada por ellos”. Francis no controla nada. Pero decide no desaparecer del todo. Y eso, en un mundo que ya lo había olvidado, es casi un acto de resistencia.

[Hosius Mr · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب زندگی فرانسیس فلن رو روایت میکنه، کارتن خوابی الکلی که به طور تصادفی باعث مرگ نوزادش شده! و البته دچار توهمات هم هست (در ابتدا داستان خیلی سورئال روایت میشه). هر چقدر که در داستان جلو میریم بیشتر با شخصیت فرانسیس و لایه های رفتاریش آشنا میشیم، این که در گذشته چه انسانی بوده و چه اتفاقاتی باعث شده که به این نقطه برسه و همه چیز رو از دست بده و ...
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داستان پیچیدگی های خاصی داره و روند بیگانه شدن انسان با خودش رو نشون میده

[Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all, a great thanks to my very good friend Dawn Michelle for having read it together with me!!
Thanks so much pal, whitout you it wouldn't have been such a rewarding read, and I wouldn't have had so much fun either!!!

William Kennedy gives us a glimpse of people stranded on the wrong lane of life!!
Francis, Helen, Rudy..
Homeless, and suffering from mental issues..
Alcohol, violence and broken!!

But this are people which had a life..
And William Kennedy takes the reader by the hand, and guide him deeper and deeper into the rabitt hole!!

Its a book that had touch me in many levels..
It will stay with me for a long time indeed!!

The ending is very meaningful, enigmatic and it opens the door to interpretations!!
Anyway,a great book, I'm so happy to have read it at the beginning of the new year..

Character driven and heartbreaking..
Powerful written, populated with vivid and colourful images..

All in all a classic which deserves to have won the Pulitzer Prize!!!

Dean;)

[Sue K H · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third book in William Kennedy's Albany series. Ironweed probably stands on it's own, but for me it was greatly enhanced by reading Billy Phelan's Greatest Game first. The first book, Legs, doesn't really add much to the other two other than it shows the evolution of gangsters into political leaders around Albany, NY.

I enjoyed all three of these books but each one was better than the last with this being my favorite. Ironweed is centered around Francis Phelan, Billy's absent father from the last book. Francis makes appearances in Billy Phelan's
Greatest Game, and in that we get the perspective of his family and how their life was without him.

Ironweed is the most introspective and poetic of the three. We learn of Francis' life after he accidentally kills his infant son and flees. It overlaps with the prior installment covering the time before and after he and Billy meet. I love how these two books fit together and highly recommend reading both.

Francis is an ex major league ball player who has a violent temper and a drinking problem and has already been responsible for a few deaths. After he kills a bum who tries to take his shoes by knifepoint his instinct is to run as he's done after other calamities he's caused.

" ... Francis began to run, an in so doing reconstituted a condition that was as pleasurable to his being as it was natural: the running of bases after the crack of the bat, the running from accusation, the running from the calumny of men and women, the running from family, from bondage, from destitution of spirit through ritualistic straightenings, the running, finally, in a quest for pure flight as a fulfilling mannerism of the spirit."

In this one we meet Francis' new "wife", Helen. Their story is melancholic but romantic as two lost souls find comfort in each other. Helen is smart, cultured, plays classical music on the piano, and has a great singing voice, but she never had enough ambition to make a career out of her talents. After being spurned by her first true love, she ends up on the streets where she meets Francis. Their relationship is pretty good at first but his drinking leads to ever deteriorating circumstances. At one point he talks her into singing at the bar they are in and she sings a couple songs to thunderous applause. The last song she sings is Fanny Brices "He's My Man"

"More, more, more, they yell, and she is crying so desperately now for happiness, or is it for loss, that it makes Francis and Pee Wee cry too. And even though people are calling for more, more more, Helen steps delicately back down the three platform steps and walks proudly over to Francis with her head in the air and her face impossibly wet, and she kisses him on the cheek so all will know that this is the man she was talking about, in case you didn't notice when we came in together. This is the man."

The song is also aimed at Francis as she tries to cling to him despite feeling that he is slipping away.

Francis gets a part time job as a graveyard laborer and while at work, he passes by graves of those he's killed or feels somewhat responsible for their deaths. As he passes by each grave, their ghosts speak to him. Not in a supernatural way but in a way where a man fully contemplates the gravity of his mistakes. It's really well done. Some Ghosts later follow him when he's hired to pick up junk from people's homes in and around his old neighborhood. In one encounter:

"Francis brushed rust off his fingers and went behind the house for more dead metal. When he returned with an armload, the scab Harold Allen, wearing a black coat and a motorman's cap, was sitting with the Fiddler, who had his boater on his lap now. When Francis looked up at the pair of them, Harold Allen doffed his cap. Both men's heads were laid open and bloody, but not bleeding, their unchanging wounds obviously healed over and as much a part of their aerial bodies as their eyes, which burned with an entropic passion common among murdered men"

The dialogue is sharp and realistic as in the other two, but the tone here is more atmospheric and contemplative. There are many wonderful passages that are too long to share in a review. Kennedy does an extraordinary job of making poetry out of a life of regrets.

[your brilliant friend]

I shall try to show you, by copious quotation, that William Kennedy's Ironweed is really one of the greatest novels ever written. It is humane and it is sophisticated and stylish, and it's characters are as human and real as anyone in Ulysses. It's a book about bums (it's perhaps the commonest noun in the book), but we come to love them, or at least be compassionate about them. This is closer to Denis Johnson than anything else I've read; perhaps it's even better. It is also Carver, but with that playful streak that is essentially Irish, that occasional quirky turn of phrase that in vivid fashion reminds you of Joyce and Beckett, while evading their elusiveness and difficulty.

◾

I shall bring together highlights about Francis, then Helen, and their friends randomly in the mix. I hope that reading these you'll be drawn to the whole two hundred pages of the book, and perhaps even love it as much as I do.

◾

Francis (our man)—Rudy (a friend he's only known for about two weeks, a bum, and an idiot)—Oscar (once a radioman, then fallen from glory into the not-so-bad position of a barman):

◾

Francis remembered trolleys as intimately as he remembered the shape of his father’s face, for he had seen them at loving closeness through all his early years. Trolleys dominated his life the way trains had dominated his father’s. He had worked on them at the North Albany carbarns for years, could take them apart in the dark. He’d even killed a man over them in 1901 during the trolley strike. Terrific machines, but now they’re goin’.

◾

These reminiscences by Francis evoked from Rowdy Dick an envy that surpassed reason. Why should any man be so gifted not only with so much pleasurable history but also with a gift of gab that could mesmerize a quintet of bums around a fire under a bridge? Why were there no words that would unlock what lay festering in the heart of Rowdy Dick Doolan, who needed so desperately to express what he could never even know needed expression?

◾

“I think you could be a charmin’ man,” Jack said, “if you’d only get straight. You could have twenty dollars in your pocket at all times, make fifty, seventy-five a week, have a beautiful apartment with everything you want in it, all you want to drink, once you get straight.”

◾

What was it, Oscar, that did you in? Would you like to tell us all about it? Do you know? It wasn’t Gerald who did me. It wasn’t drink and it wasn’t baseball and it wasn’t really Mama. What was it that went bust, Oscar, and how come nobody ever found out how to fix it?

◾

And further, the attention that the bums, the swells, the waiters, were giving the man, proved that this drunk was not dead, not dying, but living an epilogue to a notable life. And yet, and yet… here he was, disguised behind a mustache, another cripple, his ancient, weary eyes revealing to Francis the scars of a blood brother, a man for whom life had been a promise unkept in spite of great success, a promise now and forever unkeepable. The man was singing a song that had grown old not from time but from wear. The song is frayed. The song is worn out.

◾

“That’s the fella,” said Pee Wee. “He blew the big time on booze, but he dried out and tends bar now. At least he’s livin’, even if it ain’t what it was.”
“Pee Wee and me pitched a drunk with him in New York. Two, three days, wasn’t it, Pee?”
“Mighta been a week,” Pee Wee said. “None of us was up to keepin’ track. But he sang a million tunes and played piano everyplace they had one. Most musical drunk I ever see.”
“I used to sing his songs,” Helen said. “‘Hindustan Lover’ and ‘Georgie Is My Apple Pie’ and another one, a grand ballad, ‘Under the Peach Trees with You.’ He wrote wonderful, happy songs and I sang them all when I was singing.”
“I didn’t know you sang,” Pee Wee said.
“Well I most certainly sang, and played piano very well too. I was getting a classical education in music until my father died. I was at Vassar.”
“Albert Einstein went to Vassar,” Rudy said.
“You goofy bastard,” said Francis.
“Went there to make a speech. I read it in the papers.”
“He could have,” Helen said. “Everybody speaks at Vassar. It just happens to be one of the three best schools in the world.”

◾

By then the bus was at Madison Avenue and Broadway, and Rudy and Francis stepped out into the frosty darkness of six o’clock on, the final night of October 1938, the unruly night when grace is always in short supply, and the old and the new dead walk abroad in this land.

◾

He (Rudy) was simple, hopeless and lost, as lost as Francis himself, though somewhat younger, dying of cancer, afloat in ignorance, weighted with stupidity, inane, sheeplike, and given to fits of weeping over his lostness; and yet there was something in him that buoyed Francis’s spirit. They were both questing for the behavior that was proper to their station and their unutterable dreams. They both knew intimately the etiquette, the taboos, the protocol of bums. By their talk to each other they understood that they shared a belief in the brotherhood of the desolate; yet in the scars of their eyes they confirmed that no such fraternity had ever existed, that the only brotherhood they belonged to was the one that asked that enduring question: How do I get through the next twenty minutes? They feared drys, cops, jailers, bosses, moralists, crazies, truth-tellers, and one another. They loved storytellers, liars, whores, fighters, singers, collie dogs that wagged their tails, and generous bandits. Rudy, thought Francis: he’s just a bum, but who ain’t?

◾

He walked with an empty soul toward the north star, magnetized by an impulse to redirect his destiny. He had slept in the weeds of a South End vacant lot too many times. He would do it no more.

◾

Helen (our heroine, Francis's woman, once a promising student of music, who still can experience great art (she swoons to Beethoven's mighty Ninth on page 131) now also a bum, yet she can still sing. She has a tumor in her the size of a pregnancy, and on the night of the book she's readying herself for death in one of Old Donovan's boarding rooms):

Helen … has always appreciated the fine things in life: music, kind words, gentility, flowers, sunshine, and good men. People would feel sad if they knew what Helen’s life might have been like had it gone in another direction than the one that brought her to this room.

◾

She went through her life feeling: I really do believe I am doing the more-or-less right thing. I believe in God. I salute the flag. I wash my armpits and between my legs, and what if I did drink too much? Whose business is that? Who knows how much I didn’t drink?

◾

Why was it, really, that things never seemed to work out?
Why was Helen’s life always turning into some back alley, like a wandering old cat?
What is Helen?

◾

Francis is somewhere now, alone, and even Helen doesn’t love him anymore. Doesn’t. For everything about love is dead now, wasted by weariness.

[Katerina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Я уже писала, что считаю литературу главным инструментом обучения эмпатии. «Железный бурьян» очень показан жителям современного мегаполиса, которые отворачиваются от бездомных на улицах и брезгливо считают их всех пройдохами и алкашами. Это книга о людях, которые частенько плохо выглядят и плохо пахнут, но которые, тем не менее, остаются людьми — так же, как все остальные, заслуживающими сострадания, заботы и помощи.

Главный герой Фрэнсис Фелан когда-то был талантливым и успешным бейсболистом, семьянином, гражданином. Однажды он пришёл с работы слегка подшофе и случайно уронил своего новорожденного сына; тот выскользнул из подгузника и разбился насмерть. Не в силах справиться с чувством вины, герой уходит из дома и начинает бродяжничать и пьянствовать. На своём пути (книга — завершающая часть трилогии, предыдущие я не читала) он встречает много людей, живых и мертвых, и ведёт со всеми диалоги о смысле жизни и о том, где бы раздобыть выпивки и ночь перекантоваться. Его спутница — Хелен, тоже девушка из приличной семьи, которая могла стать пианисткой, а вместо этого ночует с кучкой бомжей в заброшенной машине.

Эта книга была для меня пропуском в мир, где всегда есть место человеческому достоинству, даже если его обладатель сегодня валяется пьяный на улице и не может связать двух слов. Она — про закономерности и случайности, про то, как человек не может справиться с ударами судьбы — и оттого бичует себя ещё больше. Она — про добровольно наложенные епитимьи и про страх от них отказаться, ведь, однажды поверив в возможность искупления (или в отсутствие его необходимости?), можно предположить, что все лишения были зря, и от того ещё больнее и горше.

Ненадолго вернувшись к семье, Фрэнсис вдруг узнаёт, что его жена Анна так никому и не сказала, что именно он невольно послужил причиной смерти сына. Анна почти не удивлена, увидев на пороге дома кое-как выбритого, потрепанного мужа — но в новой белой рубашке («Зачем бомжу белая рубашка?» — изумляется старьёвщик; вот зачем). Анна готовит принесенную им индейку («меня учили не ходить в гости с пустыми руками»), внук тащит с чердака сундук с заботливо упакованными вещами и потрёпанную бейсбольную перчатку. В этом романе, наравне с гротескно смешными жутковатыми диалогами, вообще полно тихих душераздирающих сцен. Вот, например, поиграв с внуком, Фрэнсис разговаривает с сыном:

“He’s out playin’ with the ball and glove you gave him,” Billy said.

“I didn’t give him the glove,” Francis said. “I give him the ball with the Ty Cobb signature. That glove is yours. You wanna give it to him, it’s okay by me. Ain’t much of a glove compared to what they got these days. Danny’s glove’s twice the quality my glove ever was. But I always thought to myself: I’m givin’ that old glove to Billy so’s he’ll have a touch of the big leagues somewhere in the house. <...>

Billy nodded and turned away from Francis. “Okay,” he said, and then he jumped up from the bench and left the kitchen so that the old man could not see (though he saw) that he was choked up.

Однажды признавшись в своём грехе собутыльнику и не получив ожидаемого презрения и ужаса, Фрэнсис не прощает себя, а ещё больше корит, теперь уже за расточительную откровенность. Вот и вся книга, как тот случайный бродяга-собеседник, — не оправдывает насилие, но и не презирает павших. В конце концов, им было, откуда упасть. И, вероятно, на той вершине их все ещё ждут люди, которые их любят и жалеют.

Пожалеем и мы.

[Narges Aliyari]

کتاب با نام " گل آفتابگردان" و توسط آقای غلامحسین سالمی ترجمه شده.
کتاب رو وقتی در حال زیر و رو کردن سایت فیدیبو بودم پیدا کردم و تنها چیزی که باعث شد برای خوندن انتخابش کنم دریافت جایزه پولیتزر 1984 بود و الا تا قبل از اون حتی اسم ویلیام کندی رو نشنیده بودم.
داستان در مورد " فرانسیس فیلان" بازیکن سابق تیم بیس بال آلبانی (شهری نزدیک نیویورک) هست که به علت قتل یک کارگر معترض راه آهن تحت تعقیب قرار میگیره و مجبور به ترک خانواده میشه ، بعد از مدتی دوباره به خونه برمیگرده ولی اینبار یه حادثه دیگه باعث میشه که برای 22 سال دیگه از خانواده خودش فرار کنه و اون حادثه مربوط به مرگ پسر 13 روزه اش میشه که از دست فرانسیس لیز میخوره و گردنش میشکنه.
البته در این داستان فقط به این دو اتفاق اشاره ای شده تا بگه چرا فرانسیس فیلان تبدیل به یک ولگرد شد و کل داستان مربوط به زندگی و اتفاقاتی هست که برای فرانسیس در طول زندگیش در خیابونهای آلبانی اتفاق میفته.
داستان تا فصل 3 اصلا خوب پیش نمیرفت ، کند و بسیار پر ابهام رسما به صورت سینه خیز خودم رو تا فصل 4 کشیدم و در این بین حتی 2 تا کتاب کوتاه دیگه هم خوندم تا روحیه ام رو واسه ادامه کتاب حفظ کنم ، ولی از فصل 4 کتاب تغییر چشم گیری داشت به طوری که فصل 4 تا 7 رو 1 روزه خوندم ،
البته طبق تحقیقاتی که کردم فهمیدم که آقای کندی چند تا کتاب دیگه هم داره که در مورد خانوده "فیلان " ها ست و شاید یکی از عللی که باعث شد من دیر با فرانسیس ارتباط برقرار کنم همین بوده ، به هر حال بد نیست بدونیم که:
"گل آفتابگردان" 36 جايزه‌ي بين‌المللي را از آن خود كرده، يكي از بهترين آثار ويليام كندي است كه در سال 1984 برنده‌ي جايزه‌ي پوليتزر شد و دستمايه‌ي ساخت فيلمي با عنوان «جان سخت» قرار گرفت که در جشنواره‌هاي کن و ونيز، جوايز متعددي را به خود اختصاص داد. ويليام كندي را مي‌توان در زمره‌ي نويسندگان بزرگي چون ارنست همينگوي، ويليام فالكنر و جورج اورول برشمرد.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ironweed was a much better book than I expected, although I don’t really know why I had low expectations to begin with. Mr. Kennedy engagingly describes the destitute former major league baseball player Francis Phelan, now living on the street in Albany, NY, ending the story with a whiff of hope. Phelan's attraction is right up there with Joyce’s Buck Mulligan, Döblin’s Franz Biberkopf, and Grass’ Oskar Matzerath. I thought about how thin and porous that boundary can be between ‘us’ and ‘them.’

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Francis Phelan, a bum day laboring in an Albany cemetery, inadvertently stumbles upon his baby son's grave. The same son who slipped through Francis' fingers years ago. Six feet below, the child stirs and decides that Francis' path to redemption and self forgiveness is about to begin. This begins the brilliantly written tale of Francis and his hobo girlfriend Helen. They spend most of their time trying to find shelter, money, and drink. But Francis' past is always calling. Evocative imagery, poetic language, and a charming main character are the highlights of this Pulitzer winner. Certain elements of the story, particularly the wrap up, are a little pat but it is still a must read.

[Elliot King · Rating 5 out of 5]

As homelessness gets into the news more often now, it is important to remember that the homeless are often demonized, even though their own demons haunt them. Ironweed is a beautiful book about the damages of alcohol and the ghosts of past disasters. It is a harsh book but a good one. An important work of 1980s literature. One of my all-time favs.

[Lucia · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 🌟

[John David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though it’s just been a few months since I read this wonderful book, I find myself barely able to remember what actually happened in it. I do remember actually laying in bed at night and crying during several passages, though, and thinking that it was one of the best things that I had read in a long time. The fiction that I’ve been randomly pulling off my shelves has been really good to me this year.

This is part of William Kennedy’s multi-volume Albany Trilogy, which would now be better-named the Albany Cycle. The subject matter didn’t immediately speak to me, and sounded depressing (which it is). A Depression-era man named Francis Phelan lives in Albany, New York who leaves his family in shame after accidentally dropping and killing his infant son, and has decided to live on the streets. The rest of the novel is about meeting characters from his past, both alive and dead. In fact, one of the major themes is summed up by Kennedy in the first extraordinarily beautiful paragraph of the book:

“Riding up the winding road of Saint Agnes Cemetery in the back of the rattling old truck, Francis Phelan became aware that the dead, even more than the living, settled down in neighborhoods. The truck was suddenly surrounded by fields of monuments and cenotaphs of kindred design and striking size, all guarding the privileged dead. But the truck moved on and the limits of mere privilege became visible, for here now came the acres of truly prestigious death: illustrious men and women, captains of life without their diamonds, furs, carriages, and limousines, but buried in pomp and glory, vaulted in great tombs built like heavenly safe deposit boxes, or parts of the Acropolis. And ah yes, here too, inevitably, came the flowing masses, row upon row of them under simple headstones and simpler crosses. Here was the neighborhood of the Phelans.” I was unable to put it down after those few sentences.

The dead have a life uniquely their own, which they sometimes use to haunt the living. In fact, some of the major characters in the novel are dead.

James Atlas has said that “his [Kennedy’s] cycle of Albany novels is one of the great resurrections of place in our literature.” I can’t help but agree. Robert Towers, in the New York Times Book Review, said it’s “a kind of fantasia on the strangeness of human destiny, on the mysterious ways in which a life can be transformed and sometimes redeemed.” Sometimes, despite all the mulling I do over what I read, I simply have to leave it to people who have the words – better words than I have, certainly.

[Sher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some time ago, a man in our area took his little boy deer hunting on a cold winter morning. The boy must have been about 4 years old. He had fallen asleep and was secured into his car seat when the dad left for a while to go deer spotting. When he got back, the boy was gone. He was found sometime later, not too far from the truck, frozen to death. I can only imagine the grief this poor man must have experienced. On top of that, he was charged with negligent homicide. On the morning of his arraignment, the man told his friends he would be back in time for it, but he just wanted to go up to the spot where his baby had died. When he got there, he took his own life. I do not judge this man for what he did. Fact is, I would probably have done the same thing if it had happened to me. How could you resume your life as a responsible, contributing adult after something like that?

That is the feeling tone of “Ironweed.” It is a dark, dirty, sordid and sad story. Francis Phelan was on a long journey away from the circumstances of his existence, but eventually found himself trying to go home. We worry about so many stupid things, but Fran and his compatriots only worried about two: 1) Where will I sleep tonight? And 2) Where and when will I find something to eat? Those are pretty basic levels on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Still, Fran shows some hope for a more normal life in the face of acceptance and love from the family he abandoned 22 years earlier. I do not recommend this book to just anyone. It is beautifully written, but deals with a dark and somber story among the seedier members of society. Not much about it is light hearted or happy. It is a long ride through much pain and sorrow before even a glimmer of hope is found. Nevertheless, the book ends with us having reason to hope that Francis at last finds a modicum of peace within the shelter of his family’s love. I learned so much from this book on so many levels. I am glad I read it, even though it is a dark novel and somewhat depressing. I just can’t even imagine living the kind of life that these homeless people live. I am so sad for them.

[Seattle Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a disclaimer: when I finished this book, I discovered it was the last in a trilogy. I have not read the two preceding works. Nonetheless, here's my reaction to it as a stand-alone novel.
The book is difficult to characterize because the main character both engages and repels. He comes from an Irish-American, Catholic, working-class family and neighborhood in Albany, NY, in the early decades of the 20th century. He is haunted by his past; he caused several deaths--some intentionally, some not. He has been a respected baseball player, a hooligan, a "bum" (his favorite word), and a fugitive from the police. We see him both among the homeless and among his family. We feel tenderness yet plenty of revulsion, and to be honest, some of the revulsion is at the squalid circumstances of his day-to-day existence.
The author uses a fair amount of Faulknerian-Joycean movement among events and memories and even hallucinations. I was a little disappointed by the ending (no spoiler coming), but otherwise, I think the novel moves us as much as it can with a main character we feel ambivalent about.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I made a decision a few weeks ago that I would read all the Pulitzer Prize winners for fiction, beginning in the year I was born (1984) and continuing through the present. I always know what's next, the mix of authors and material is varied, and I will finally get around to reading some things I know I should have gotten to long ago. Ironweed, as you may have figured out, was the 1984 winner.

In it, Kennedy tells the story of a bum who was once a well liked ball-player and family man but lost everything as a result of a series of accidents and poor decisions. The novel explores the ways that humanity, wealth, comfort, religion, morality, intimacy and identity all exist relative to poverty and his characters' closeness to it, and are colored by it. This novel is tragic, humorous, gritty and hopeful at turns, but accomodates all of these contradictions gracefully, because Kennedy is incredibly adept at giving the reader a lens through which to understand each and every perspective he offers.

[Dawn Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did this as a buddy read with my friend Dean and it was lovely to have someone to talk to about this book while reading it. It is a short book, but it is packed full of many things, most of them unpleasant. I did not enjoy most of it, but I also can see why it won the Pulitzer and why people recommend it. It is a tale of despair and how something that happens early in one's life can change the whole direction of it and how how someone can withhold from someone and change their lives as well. I know that sounds vague, and that is on purpose. For if you choose to read this book, you need to come into it not knowing anything about Francis and Helen and the supporting cast of this book. That is the best way I think.
I listened to this book and the narrator was good at evoking the emotions that the characters were feeling. It was a good narration and I probably liked it better than I liked the book as a whole.

Thank you to Dean for buddy-reading this with me. I appreciated your insight and willingness to break the book down. It helped so very much!! I hope we can do it again soon!

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Pulitzer Prize winning novel is just like a Tom Waits song. The prose is lovely and the characters are down and out. It is the story of Francis Phelan, an alcoholic bum who returns to his hometown, Albany, in 1938. There he meets up with his companion of many years, Helen, another alcoholic drifter. In Albany, Francis ends up confronting the ghosts of his past, his guilt, remorse, and sorrow. Kennedy gives Francis and Helen's brokenness a warmth and beauty completely free of judgement and sentimentality.