Ricky Gervais - "This Might Be The Best Chat show Ever!" Overview. 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. Showing all 2 items Jump to: Summaries (2) Summaries.

New York State Writers Institute 1,188 views.

Ironweed is a 1983 novel by William Kennedy. It received the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and is the third book in Kennedy's Albany Cycle. Ironweed is a 1987 American drama film directed by Héctor Babenco.It is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by William Kennedy, who also wrote the screenplay.It stars Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, with Carroll Baker, Michael O'Keefe, Diane Venora, Fred Gwynne, Nathan Lane and Tom Waits in supporting roles. ''IRONWEED,'' THE PU-litzer Prize-winning novel by William Kennedy, seems to belong to Albany as much as the ghost of Mayor Corning. Author William Kennedy takes us into the mind and heart of a homeless vagrant and explores the situations which have brought Francis to this heartbreaking station in life. William Kennedy Discusses Adapting The Novel Ironweed To Film - Duration: 22:19. Ironweed is the remarkable story of Francis Phelan, once a talented major league baseball player, husband, and father of three, who has fallen so far from grace that his home for the past twenty-two years has been the street. Published in 1983, Ironweed is the third entry in William Kennedy’s cycle of historical fiction set in Albany, New York; it garnered critical acclaim and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award. 22:19. Ironweed (1987) Plot. But, in a quirk of the movie business, the book … At first we cannot quite make out his face, and when we can and see that the character is played by Jack Nicholson, there is a shock, for even in that first moment he seems to have been enveloped by the character. At first the shape simply seems to be some old debris, blown up against the side of a building, but then the shape stirs and we see that it is a man. An alcoholic drifter spends Halloween in his home town of Albany, New York after returning there for the first time in decades. It is included in the Western Canon of the critic Harold Bloom. Plot summary.