The man is Roscoe, a weary and overweight political fixer in the fictional, or not-so-fictional, world of William Kennedy’s Albany. From the writer who gave us gangster Jack Diamond in “Legs” and the bum Francis Phalen in “Ironweed” now waddles Roscoe Conway, well-dressed master of the sort of political machine that once powered much of local American politics. “We are Democrats,” Roscoe assures his boss in the early 1930s. “We own the city, the county, the state, and the country. Things could be worse.”
Guests:
William Kennedy, author of “Roscoe,” and seven other novels about Albany politics
John J. McEneny, member of the New York State Assembly and author of “Albany, Capital City on the Hudson”
and Joseph Gagen, Albany filmmaker.