The writer's interest is rooted in the Irish-American community and Kennedy, who is tall, robust, reddish of hair and skin, has, he says, become more Irish as he has aged: 'Being Irish was the only thing I couldn't resign from.

We are in Albany, New York, the location of so many of Kennedy's novels, the most famous of which, Ironweed, won the Pulitzer in 1984 and was made into a film starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson and which is part of the eight-novel 'Albany cycle'. I talked to myself about this when I was trying to write my early short stories and even my first novel.' He smiles.

'It has to be generated out of what is not necessarily the consequence of surface events. 'Fiction has to come up from below,' he says, frowning in the late afternoon light. Kennedy, who turned 84 last month and is publishing his ninth novel, spent years trying to figure out his friend's question marks – the alchemy of a successful novel – and complete the move from journalist to fiction writer. T here is a page on the wall of William Kennedy's townhouse, ripped from the notepad of Gabriel García Márquez, on which the Colombian novelist has written, in a combination of English and Spanish, a list of words describing what goes into fiction: love, humour, politics, nostalgia, tristeza, vida, muerte and, the final ingredient, three question marks.

Ironweed book review