Particularize Books Concering Legs (The Albany Cycle #1)
| Original Title: | Legs |
| ISBN: | 0140064842 (ISBN13: 9780140064841) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | The Albany Cycle #1 |
William Kennedy
Paperback | Pages: 320 pages Rating: 3.81 | 1598 Users | 91 Reviews
Description As Books Legs (The Albany Cycle #1)
Legs, the inaugural book in William Kennedy’s acclaimed Albany cycle of novels, brilliantly evokes the flamboyant career of gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond. Through the equivocal eyes of Diamond’s attorney, Marcus Gorman (who scraps a promising political career for the more elemental excitement of the criminal underworld), we watch as Legs and his showgirl mistress, Kiki Roberts, blaze their gaudy trail across the tabloid pages of the 1920s and 1930s.
Mention Regarding Books Legs (The Albany Cycle #1)
| Title | : | Legs (The Albany Cycle #1) |
| Author | : | William Kennedy |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 320 pages |
| Published | : | January 27th 1983 by Penguin Books (first published May 28th 1975) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Mystery. Crime. Literature. American. New York. American Fiction |
Rating Regarding Books Legs (The Albany Cycle #1)
Ratings: 3.81 From 1598 Users | 91 ReviewsWrite-Up Regarding Books Legs (The Albany Cycle #1)
An intimate yet soaring novel about the last years of notorious booze-runner, Legs Diamond. William Kennedy's first entry into the Albany Cycle, this novel is narrated by the playful and sharp-tongued attorney, Marcus Gorman, and the in typical Kennedy fashion, the story bounces around from past to present, sometimes within the same sentence. What may infuriate some traditional readers made me re-read passages with awe and wonder. There is such a beauty to Kennedy's rhythm to this tale of aProbably at least a 3.5, this is an entertaining portrayal of an iconic gangster that explores the iconography of gangsters which I would have perhaps rated higher if I hadn't read Doctorow's similarly-themed Billy Bathgate at the start of the year; the stylistic voice and analyses of crime and human violence captured in that novel, reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy at his best, overshadowed Kennedy's book for me.
People like killers. And if one feels sympathy for the victims its by way of thanking them for letting themselves be killed. Eugene Ionesco. (The epigraph of Legs.)This is a fictionalized portrayal of the final days of gangster Jack Legs Diamond, who died in a shootout with his enemies in an Albany boarding house in 1931. The book is ironically entitled Legs even though everybody who knew the guy called him Jack. The press invented the sobriquet Legs because Jack outran death. Surviving
I had been interested in reading William Kennedy's trilogy about upstate New York for a long time, but this is one of those novels that has less of a plot than a biography that is written like a novel. I think when novelists rise to a certain stature, no one asks them to cut the fat anymore. This is a three-million-times told story of the fancy gangster with the hot mistress and the loving wife and people who love him even tho he's really bad. Nothing remarkable here, to me. The narrator is the
Legs: life on the other side of the law; fake romanticism of the criminal world; vulgarity and greed, sentimentality and cruelty, sanctimony and villainy of mobsters; corruption and hypocrisy of society; fraudulence of publicity and prostitution of journalistsConsider the slightly deaf sage of Pompeii, his fly open, feet apart, hand at crotch, wetting surreptitiously against the garden wall when the lava hits the house. Why he never even heard the rumbles. Who among the archaeologists could know
Feels like a classic gangster movie with flashes of Scorsese and Tarantino spliced in. The book is self-aware of its tawdry subject matter, yet it still can't resist the pull to glamorize the lives of a psychopathic hood and his female companions. Occasionally slips into poetic ruminations, which are generally corny in the extreme.The moral ambivalence of the narrator (a lawyer who goes on Legs Diamond's payroll), and his worshipful admiration of his client, combined with some untrustworthy
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