Magnificent Obsession  by Erin Quinn    

I almost resented the fact that he was coming. It was like knowing your love was arriving, only you had no billowing dress or chic hat to greet him with. From the moment I began reading Ironweed, William Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a wino on skid row in Albany, I felt as if I entered a world that I knew with people I recognized and stories that I had heard told and retold at the dinner table or during my father's weekly poker game.

I'm not sure if it is the barroom Irish wit, the infusion of metaphysical thoughts into the mind of a corrupt politician, bootlegger or drunk, Kennedy's love of street characters, gangsters, fast women, devout women, pool hustlers, or the echoes of unrequited love and lost souls that are trying to find their way back home. My affinity to the critically acclaimed author could be nothing more and nothing less than his unyielding allegiance and fascination with one small spot on this the earth, Albany, the state capitol of New York, the mother of Leggs Diamond, the hometown of Mr. Kennedy and his twelve siblings, the streets and alleyways and gin joints that nourished one of the greatest writers of our time and served as the stomping grounds for more than seven novels known best as The Albany Cycle.

After savoring the Flaming Corsage for years, I became anxious for Kennedy's next novel. I feared that maybe he had hung up his hat, decided to spend more time with his wife and kids and their kids or the budding writers at the Writer's Institute he had founded. Maybe he was too busy chatting with Saul Bellow or attending James Joyce conferences in Dublin to be bothered with writing another novel. I had almost given up hope until my husband came home with Roscoe in his hand -- Kennedy's new book -- which has been receiving rave reviews from all the heavy hitters. Within an hour after receiving the new book, my mother called to tell me that Kennedy would be doing a reading at the local bookstore, a half-mile down the street, ten miles from the Hudson River, 50 miles from Albany and a stone's throw from the New Paltz Times office where I worked.

The problem was, I had no time to read the book. I had pretty much abandoned the world of literature ever since our second son was born six months ago. As our magazine subscriptions increased, our home library began to decrease. The only thing I could find time to do was to read the Harper's Index while I nursed or broke out the acrylics and brushes. Our two-and-a-half-year-old son Seamus would not allow me the pleasure of reading novels; but he would allow me to paint at the kitchen table so long as I painted The Wizard of Oz characters intermittently with my still lives of sunflowers.

But the night before the reading I had one of those final-exam nightmares where the owners of the bookstore were quizzing me on the book. I woke up in a cold sweat, shifted the boys over to the middle of the bed and cracked open Roscoe.

"Are you a politician Roscoe?"

"I refuse to answer that on the grounds that it may incriminate me," said Roscoe.

Within a sentence or two, I was back. It was like a homecoming. Kennedy had done it again, and within pages I was transported back to Old Albany -- drifting through the hallucinations, dreams and awakenings of Kennedy's Irish rogues. I felt like drinking whiskey, if only I could stomach it, or getting on a bus that would take me hours away from home so that I could finish the book and be back before breakfast.

No such luck. The next day, instead of cozying up with Albany's bad-boy Roscoe, I had to write about water and sewer, sewer and water, the opening of a pizzeria uptown and the new seats with cupholders that have been installed at the local cinema. An hour before the reading I felt depleted, dishevelled and despondent. There was nothing in my closet that fit my postpartum figure. Not that it mattered, but I just felt the desire to be on top of my game, comfortable in my own skin, resembling someone who was serious and halfway stable. I couldn't think of any profound questions to ask Mr. Kennedy, and I wondered how I would be able to feed the baby between the reading and the question-and-answer period.

My husband could see the Kennedy-worship swelling in me. I had called my mother and begged her to send home an eraser stick to cover the pimple that had erupted on my chin. When she handed it to my husband she said, "Here, this is for Erin."

"No," he said solemnly. "This is for William Kennedy."

Although I'm never on time for anything in my life and certainly never early, I made it to Ariel 30 minutes before the great author's arrival. It was early enough to get a front-row seat, to talk with friends and acquaintances and to notice the hole in my sock that stuck out the back end of my clogs.

More than 120 people gathered to see the acclaimed writer. The room felt hot and sweaty and eager for his arrival. When he walked out of the back room, it was like someone put his book-jacket head shot on a very tall and dignified body. He shook hands with people and flashed a smile that seemed as genuine as the characters in his books.

"Roscoe should be spiritually illegal," he mused about his novel's central character. "He is a bootlegger of the soul." As he spoke, I was immediately transported to that place where you can become unhinged from your own reality, free to float and dwell in the lives of other fictional beings and twisted souls.

"I have to admit that I fell a little bit in love with Roscoe," said Susan Avery, co-owner of Ariel and literary critic, in her introduction of Kennedy.  "Even though I knew he was all wrong for me."

I think we all fell a little bit in love that day, whether with Roscoe, or Albany, Francis Phelan or Billy Phelan, the loss of the departed, the pain of the living, or with Kennedy's grace and ease, the way the stories just seemed to pour out of him, void of any force or pretension, melodious and magnificent, possibly comparable to the soft and inviting head of foam on top of a pint of Guinness, more likely something grander, like the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

The journalist turned author read various excerpts from his book and then patiently answered questions -- some predictable, some intriguing and some just a little bit silly.

As people lined up to get their books signed, I dashed home to feed the baby, discovered that Seamus had swallowed a sample bottle of cheap perfume, alerted my husband that I would just be a bit longer than I had thought and that he could wait with the kids in the cafe next door. I ran back down the street, still exhilarated from listening to the prose master speak his truth, when a black cloud shaped like Francis Phelan's distended liver in Ironweed burst open, unleashing a downpour of rain. As I dashed through the bookstore's pleasantly wide doors wiping my eyes, I worried that I might have missed my chance...

The crowds had subsided, but he was still there, perched in a corner, kindly signing books and listening to fans tell tales of their Irish husband who cheated on them, or their grandmother in County Cork, or their curiosity as to whether or not his writing has been influenced by Eastern philosophies.

I was told that he would have time after the signing to answer a few questions, and I stood on line trying to think of just what it was I wanted to ask him. The only thing I could come up with was whether or not I should tell him that I named my dog Phelan in honor of the Phelan family in his books and whether or not that might be something he would find flattering or quite possibly offensive.

Or maybe I could steal him away into some hidden cafe and talk with him about his love of Albany and my love of New Paltz, and what it means to write about a place as a journalist and then as a novelist, and how wide or short that gap is, and what it feels like to swim across the divide or did he just catch a ferry? I wanted to ask him everything and anything, but as the line finally drew to a close, and it was just fellow Kennedy-devotee Jack Murphy and me not wanting to leave until the author made his final exhale in New Paltz, the store owner placed three very large stacks of books in front of him and asked if he might sign them for people who were not able to attend the reading.

As I sat waiting for Kennedy to sign book after book for people he had never met and probably would never meet, I suddenly had a flashback to the day my husband and I closed on our house. "This reminds me of my house closing when I had to sign my name for a straight hour-and-a-half and ended up with a four-figure debt and a hand cramp," I said to no one in particular.

"Well, until you publish your first novel Erin, that is as close as you're going to get," said the other owner.

By the time Helen was able to introduce me, I could only say feebly, "I sent you a letter once. You wrote back. It hangs in my office."

"Erin Quinn?" he said, and tried to come up with something in place of any real memory of my letter. "What paper do you write for?"

"The Herald," I said weakly. Not that I was ashamed of the paper, in fact, I am fiercely proud of it and love it dearly, but I wanted to talk about other things.

"It's the New Paltz Times now," Jack Murphy corrected me.

"Oh yeah," I said. "It's just the local paper...but I'm a great fan of your work and I wondered if I could just ask you a few questions."

Although I could tell he was tired -- worn out and talked out from the event and all the attention -- the old journalist in him did try to give me a thoughtful response or two.

Because of his ability to answer each question in such great detail, we didn't get much past his love of Albany or why he set Quinn's Book in the 19th century.

"I have to go now," he said gently. "My wife and about 25 other people are waiting for me for dinner."

I watched him walk away, pulling out into the night like some shadow at the end of a movie. And as I headed home to my own, much smaller, entourage, I felt that old familiar flicker beginning to ignite me. That odd beautiful mixture of warm fulfillment and cold emptiness that one feels after reading a great novel; a belief that all is possible, and that nothing is lost and as Kennedy said to the literary-minded New Paltzians, "Every time you write a line there are a thousand that you didn't write."

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