January 16, 1928. William Kennedy was born in Albany, New York. "I grew up in a very isolated pocket of Albany called the North End.... My father was involved in politics and wound up as deputy sheriff. He had been a gambler in his early life, a bad barber, worked in a foundry, sold pies. Oh, and he was an accountant. My mother worked all her life as a secretary. I'm just an only child--the only child in practically the whole family. It was that phenomenon that made me want to write my first novel--what happened to this family, why are there no kids."¹

"...[We were] Catholic working-class, Irish on all sides. We weren't poor but we never had much money.... I had a wonderful relationship with my father."²

"One of the great things about your life is [that] relationship ... what else shapes you more than that? Even today, I...