Roscoe [Paperback]

"I have to change my life, do something that engages my soul before I die," Roscoe tells Elisha, who observes that Roscoe has kept his discontent hidden. Roscoe explains, "I have no choice. I have no choice in most things. All the repetitions, the goddamn investigations that never end, another election coming and now Patsy wants a third candidate to dilute the Republican vote. We'll humiliate the Governor. On top of that, Cutie LaRue told me this afternoon George Scully has increased his surveillance on me. They're probably doubling their watch on you, too. You'd make a handsome trophy."

This statement establishes William Kennedy's mid-century Albany in the seventh book of his Albany cycle - a city run by a small, closed circle whose primary function is to maintain power, constantly besieged by similar cabals whose goal is to grab that power for themselves. The weapon of choice is the scandal, of which there are plenty to go around, real or manufactured. And the best defense is a ferocious boomerang of a spin, at which Roscoe excels. The reasons he wants to retire are the same reasons why he can't. Roscoe's life is inextricably entwined with the Democratic Albany machine and both Roscoe and his city are ailing.

Albany is run by a triumvirate of boyhood friends - Roscoe, Elisha Fitzgibbon and Patsy McCall, none of whom hold office. Hours after Roscoe announces his intent to retire, his friend Elisha commits suicide. Puzzled and shocked, Roscoe's political antenna tells him Elisha had a good reason, probably to do with protecting his family. He postpones his retirement to help Veronica stave off a nasty family scandal, his youthful hopes of romance rekindled.

As the Republicans position themselves for attack, and Roscoe plies his skills, Kennedy splices the teeming past into the melodramatic events of the present, history repeating itself with infinite variation. Roscoe's World War I experiences (and his first foray into "spin"), the numerous internecine battles among New York state's and Albany's democrats, the roles of big politicians like Al Smith and FDR and the big criminals like Legs Diamond, the opportunities of Prohibition and the ever-present dangers from muckrakers and power grabbers from outside the machine and feuds and jealousies within among the cops, judges, civil servants and vice purveyors who keep things volatile, all of it feeds the machine. The cast of characters is big and the novel's scope is vast but Kennedy engages the reader with his own fascination for history and ambitious, unscrupulous men.

Kennedy, an Albany native and winner of the Pulitzer for "Ironweed," gives us a portrait of a man and a city, mirror images, both full of heart and wit and delight in clever scheming. Roscoe is Albany, his fate rooted deeply in the city's. His father before him was a cog in the machine and Roscoe's first steps were orchestrated by (and a tribute to) his father's ambitions. When Roscoe says he never had a choice, it's the truth. He can no more escape the clutches and drive of Albany than Albany can shed the machine that makes it run. As the reader recognizes this, Roscoe is driven to greater feats of political brilliance and sleight-of-hand. But no man can control the passions of others or the quirks of fate.

Kennedy's prose is as big and ebullient as his sprawling story. In Kennedy's hands Albany history has a legendary, mythic feel. Though the cast of characters and dizzying panorama of events sometimes taxes concentration, Kennedy's black humor, sharp irony and the perverse likability of rascally Roscoe continually enthralls, right up to the final irony of the perfect ending.

Impishly mixing fact and fantasy, Roscoe tells the story of the infamous Albany political machine of the early 20th century. It was a machine that produced some great men while building its foundations on the actions of some very bad men and it is this juxtaposition that Kennedy gleefully juggles over the course of his narrative. The fictional Roscoe Conway is a Falstaffian-figure that would -- at most -- probably be only a minor comedic henchman in most political novels, a man who has spent his life as something of an errand boy (albiet a very powerful errand boy) for the true leaders of the Albany political machine. He's a drinker, a womanizer, and, if a lifetime of aiding political corruption and general graft has left him with the beginnings of a tortured soul, he manages to handle the pain with an admirable good humor. The book opens with the end of World War II and as the nation celebrates, Roscoe's best friend mysteriously commits suicide. Roscoe's attempts to understand his friend's death leads him on the expected soul-searching journey. What's unexpected are the surreal detours that journey takes. With poetic, freeform prose, Kennedy mixes accounts of Roscoe's rougish past with a present day storyline (involving his dead friend's widow's -- the woman Roscoe loves -- attempts to not lose custody of her adopted son) that at times seems to deliberately read like a parody of a Douglas Sirk film. Throughout it all, Kennedy presents us with dream-like images that include Roscoe's dead friend coming to life just to immediately die once more, a nonsensical conversation with the Pope, and a brief aside that details Roscoe's late father's head blowing up like a balloon and bursting once it floats up to the ceiling. What these images are meant to represent are left up to the reader, an admirable choice on Kennedy's part that will, nonetheless, leave many readers frustrated. Is Roscoe truly remorseful over the sins of the past, does the widow truly deserve his or anyone's love, and is Albany's idealistic and youthful Mayor a brave hero or a self-righteous fool? These are just a few of the questions that Kennedy forces his readers to ponder. The book, to its own brave credit, declines to directly answer but instead leaves it up to the reader to sort through all the images and figure out what adds up to what.

But before I make Roscoe sound overly pretentious, it should be understood that this is a wonderfully entertaining book and the rapidly paced, cheerfully over-the-top storyline will hold the interest of most readers rather their searching for deeper literary meaning or just a good and enjoyable read. If Kennedy leaves the reader with many mysteries, he also provides an all--too believable revisionist history of both New York and our country that manages to include acidic portraits of everyone from Franklin Roosevelt to Thomas Dewey (never named but obviously meant to be the gnomish Republican governor who causes the Albany machine such trouble) to gangster Legs Diamond. Kennedy populates his political world with a lively and truly memorable gallery of humorous grotesques. Every character -- from the lead character to the town's leading hooker to the definitely psychotic but still rather likeable police detective -- comes vividly to life in Kennedy's masterful prose. Kennedy crafts his characters so that they possess enough quirks to keep the reader on his toes, yet he never commits the all-too common sin of mistaking quirkiness for motivation. And, of course, Kennedy's Albany comes to brilliant life so that by the end of the novel even a dyed-in-the-wool Texan like myself can't help but love the city. No, Roscoe is not a perfect novel but it is definitely one that should be read and cherished for both what it is and what the reader makes of it.