In the following essay, Taylor locates the importance of alcohol as part of the mythic structure of William Kennedy's novel Ironweed.

"Ironweed"—which refers to a tough-stemmed member of the sunflower family—recounts a few days in the life of an Albany skid-row bum, a former major-league third baseman with a talent for running, particularly running away, although his ambition now, at the height of the Depression, has been scaled down to the task of getting through the next 20 minutes or so. The novel is rich in plot and dramatic tension, building as it eventually does, to a violent showdown between a gang of ma...

[William Kennedy, a] lifelong resident of Albany, has shown again how certain talents flourish best in native soil. Ironweed dovetails with its predecessor. The scene is still Albany, the time still 1938. It is Halloween, and Billy Phelan's father Francis is back in his old haunts, meeting ghosts and goblins from his scary past. Francis is a bum and a lush….

["Ironweed" is the] third in a series of novels set in Albany, N.Y., [and] this strong, authentic book bursts with black humor and stinging insights about a segment of American society. Francis Phelan, father of Billy, is a bum. He knows it and so does everyone else. It's 1938, and the landscape is thick with hobos—not just those looking for work, but those on the run. "What was it that did you in?" Francis wonders about a fellow traveler and then wonders about hims...

A good novel announces itself on its opening page: whatever distinctiveness of vision and discipline of language its author can muster will be at once apparent. In "Ironweed," William Kennedy fixes his story's tone—an elegiac tone, undercut by irony—in his opening sentence and moves immediately to set up the delicate blend of realism, myth and satire that will carry his tale to its conclusion…. William Kennedy has written good fiction before, which has gone largely ...