Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Legs (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
    Legs (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
    Legs (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
    Ebook85 pages1 hour

    Legs (SparkNotes Literature Guide)

    By SparkNotes

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Legs (SparkNotes Literature Guide) by William Kennedy
    Making the reading experience fun
    Created by Harvard students for students everywhere, SparkNotes is a new breed of study guide: smarter, better, faster.   Geared to what today's students need to know, SparkNotes provides:   *Chapter-by-chapter analysis
    *Explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols
    *A review quiz and essay topics Lively and accessible, these guides are perfect for late-night studying and writing papers  
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSparkNotes
    Release dateAug 12, 2014
    ISBN9781411476165
    Legs (SparkNotes Literature Guide)

    Read more from Spark Notes

    Related to Legs (SparkNotes Literature Guide)

    Related ebooks

    Book Notes For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Books

      Jul 17, 2023

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Aug 7, 2019

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Murder The Strange Case Of Walter Sickert And Jack The Ripper

      May 19, 2022

      Whitechapel, London, the autumn of 1888. Through the midnight streets stalks a dark figure, wrapped in a long, checkered coat. As the secretive figure makes his way along Copenhagen Street, he attracts the attention of a group of young girls. Talk of

      15 min read

    • Article

      Shooting Star

      Aug 10, 2018

      by nick scott Emerging with a minor flesh wound from the 30-second shootout between lawmen and outlaws that occurred at the O.K. Corral livery in Tombstone, Arizona in 1881 was a miracle akin to the “divine intervention” experienced by Vincent and Ju

      3 min read

    • Article

      Must See, Must Read

      May 23, 2023

      Must See, Must Read
      9 min read

    • Article

      Most Wanted

      Jan 25, 2023

      Kate Clark had craved adventure since she was a little girl. Born in 1873, her parents Emaline and John worked hard to make ends meet on their small farm. But flame-haired Kate had a rebellious streak. She later idolised the train-thieving Dalton Gan

      3 min read

    • Article

      What To Read?

      May 26, 2023

      BY ELEANOR CATTON GRANTA Described by one critic as “a Kiwi Jonathan Franzen”, this fantastic novel explores what happens when a hippie collective clashes with a ruthless billionaire. Mira and Shelley run Birnam Wood, a guerrilla gardening group tha

      3 min read

    • Article

      Focus on True Crime

      Apr 24, 2024

      By Nancy J. Hajeski. 2024. 224p. illus. Firefly, $24.95 (9780228104759). 364.3092. This information-crammed compendium is sure to delight true-crime aficionados. Specific chapters address broad areas (“Crimebusters,” “Bootleggers,” “Cannibals,” “Kidn

      7 min read

    • Article

      Necrolog

      Nov 2, 2023

      On the evening of 11 October 1973, the then 19-year-old Calvin Parker had the experience that would come to dominate the rest of his life. Along with his work colleague Charles Hickson, he was fishing from a pier near Ingalls Shipyard on the Pascagou

      4 min read

    • Article

      ‘Look Out or You’ll Be Poisoned’

      Apr 1, 2023

      The attempted murder happened on an ordinary spring day at the Carmel artist colony in 1914. The novelist Alice MacGowan went to get something to eat from the cooler on the back porch of her home overlooking the bay. When she took a bite of leftover

      14 min read

    • Article

      Previews

      Nov 10, 2019

      Previews
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Secret Life Of Jackie O

      Aug 18, 2023

      The Secret Life Of Jackie O
      8 min read

    • Article

      The 10 Best Books Of February Reckon With The Past – And Present

      Feb 27, 2024

      Float Up, Sing Down, by Laird Hunt In Laird Hunt’s collection of stories, residents of an Indiana farming community in 1982 go about their routines, with secrets and regrets roiling beneath the surface. “Things grew where they grew and flew where the

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Truth About The Kennedy Curse

      Jun 17, 2020

      The Truth About The Kennedy Curse
      8 min read

    • Article

      Gangs of New York

      Feb 23, 2023

      Gangs of New York
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Truth About The Kennedy Curse

      Jun 17, 2020

      The Truth About The Kennedy Curse
      8 min read

    • Article

      BILLY & JESSE

      Oct 26, 2021

      BILLY & JESSE
      8 min read

    • Article

      Must See, Must Read

      Aug 9, 2022

      Must See, Must Read
      14 min read

    • Article

      Editorial

      Mar 21, 2024

      Welcome to our Easter issue, in which we are pleased to publish a major new article by FT founder Bob Rickard tackling the thorny issue of ‘explaining’ the apparently miraculous. Saint Joseph of Copertino was a 17th century Capuchin friar – untutored

      2 min read

    • Article

      Must See, Must Read

      Mar 1, 2022

      Must See, Must Read
      14 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Ybarra, Berman, Lepore, Epstein, and More

      May 28, 2019

      Fresh off the presses this week, a Gladwellian argument for why generalists kick butt, and historian Jill Lepore's book-length essay on American nationalism. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Ybarra, Berman, Lepore, Epstein, and More appear

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Legs (SparkNotes Literature Guide)

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Legs (SparkNotes Literature Guide) - SparkNotes

      Cover of SparkNotes Guide to Legs by SparkNotes Editors

      Legs

      William Kennedy

      © 2003, 2007 by Spark Publishing

      This Spark Publishing edition 2014 by SparkNotes LLC, an Affiliate of Barnes & Noble

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

      Sparknotes is a registered trademark of SparkNotes LLC

      Spark Publishing

      A Division of Barnes & Noble

      120 Fifth Avenue

      New York, NY 10011

      www.sparknotes.com /

      ISBN-13: 978-1-4114-7616-5

      Please submit changes or report errors to www.sparknotes.com/.

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Contents

      Context

      Plot Overview

      Character List

      Character Analysis

      Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3, Part I

      Chapter 3, Part II

      Chapter 4, Part I

      Chapter 4, Part II

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapters 9 & 10

      Important Quotations Explained

      Key Facts

      Study Questions and Suggested Essay Topics

      Review & Resources

      Context

      William Kennedy was born in Albany, New York, in 1928. He began a career in journalism working as a sports reporter in Glen Falls at the Post Star. He was drafted in 1950 and began working for an army newspaper in Europe. After being discharged, he worked for the Times-Union in Albany until 1956, when he moved to Puerto Rico, where he studied under the writer Saul Bellow. In 1959, he became the managing editor of the San Juan Star, but quit two and a half years later to write fiction full time. He moved back to Albany in 1963, and wrote a series of articles about the city that garnered him a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize. These articles formed the foundation for his nonfiction book, O Albany!. Kennedy went on to write three novels about Albany, the first of which is Legs.Billy Phelan's Greatest Game and Ironweed, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983, followed. Kennedy's Albany cycle has been lauded as a singular literary achievement of twentieth- century America.

      Legs tells a fictionalized version of the story of Jack Legs Diamond, was a real gangster who deserted the army, bootlegged liquor, and survived four shootings. During prohibition, Jack moved to Greene County, New York with his wife, his mistress, his gang, and his bodyguard. For a time he was adored by both the press and the public. A newspaper article announcing his death suggested that the killers found the elusive Legs by trailing his mistress, Kiki Roberts.

      In one sense, Legs is the story of an infamous criminal who has spent most of his life cheating people, stealing, seducing women, laundering money, and dealing drugs. Legs is also a tale chronicling the fall of the storybook underworld scene of Prohibition America, a time when a puritanical law banning alcohol incited a great social revolution. Americans imagine the time detailed in Legs as an idyllic period of speakeasies on every street corner ruled by mobsters with charming nicknames and intimidating submachine guns, a period when Bonny and Clyde, Al Capone, and hardened private eyes thrived. Jack was in the newspaper headlines almost every day during this period. Despite his reputation for heartless violence, Jack was revered by the people of upstate New York, and, indeed, by the whole country. Prohibition made it cool to be bad, like Jack was.

      By the time Marcus Gorman, the novel's narrator, became Jack's lawyer, the era of romanticized gangsters had begun to fade. The repeal of prohibition was just around the corner, as was the Great Depression, a time that made the lavish excesses of the previous decade seem like a mistake. Jack still held sway over the local imagination in upstate New York, which allowed him to win his two trials there. But he did not have a chance against the federal agents. The official rhetoric of the state turned against the gangsters and against Jack in particular. Marcus had a difficult time trying to muster political support for Jack. Marcus's Republican connection, Van Deusen, warned him that the political tide was turning against Jack's kind. The end of the novel sees the end of the prohibition rebellion.

      Plot Overview

      It is 1975, and Marcus Gorman, a real-life Albany lawyer who once defended the infamous New York gangster Jack Diamond, meets with some old friends: Packy Delaney, a bar-owner, Flossie, a whore, and Tipper Kelley, a newsman. The group is at the Kenmore Hotel, swapping memories of Jack. Marcus narrates the novel, which is composed of stories he has pieced together about Jack.

      Marcus meets Jack and his brother, Eddie, in 1925. They are at the Kenmore, and Marcus butts into a conversation they are having about Al Jolson. Five years later, Jack invites Marcus to lunch and asks Marcus to be his lawyer. Joe Speed Fogarty, Jack's right-hand man and driver, picks up Marcus and takes him to Jimmy Biondo's farm in East Durham, which Jack rents and uses to store illegal booze. There Marcus meets Jack's wife, Alice, and the three of them take turns firing machine guns in the barn turned booze storage space. Afterward, they drive to Jack's farmhouse in Acra. Jack and Alice get in a fight over their canaries when Alice discovers that Jack calls one of them Marion after

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1