Ironweed is a 1983 novel by William Kennedy.
The events take place Oct. 31-Nov. 2, 1938. Francis Phelan, 58, was once a baseball player, and in fact a pretty good one; he played in the major leagues for the Washington Senators. Now he is a homeless, alcoholic bum, missing a finger, missing most of his teeth, scrounging for the occasional dollar to afford a room in a flophouse. He has come back to Albany, New York, the city where he ran out on his family 22 years earlier, after his infant son Gerald died when a drunk Francis dropped him while trying to change his diaper. Francis, who could not deal with the guilt and shame, has been living as a wandering hobo ever since.
He comes back to Albany in the company of his lover Helen, who was once a member of the upper-crust (she was a music student at Vassar), but started coming down in the world when her father killed himself and she had to drop out of school. Now she is a drunken bum like Francis. Francis, back in the city where his wife and children still live, is torn between his shame, his desire to see them, and his responsibility for Helen.
Also, Francis talks to dead people. He is continually haunted by walking, talking visions of the ghosts of his past, including a couple of people he has killed, such as another bum Francis killed in a drunken brawl.
Sequel to another Kennedy novel, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, which focused on Francis's son Billy but featured Francis and Helen as characters. In 1987 this novel was made into a film that starred Jack Nicholson as Francis, Meryl Streep as Helen, and Tom Waits as Francis's friend and fellow bum Rudy.
Tropes:
- The Alcoholic: They're all alcoholic bums. Francis's face is described as having "the familiar scars of alcoholic desperation."
- Ambiguous Ending: The climax of the novel comes when Francis is caught in a citizen's raid on the homeless camp, and his friend and fellow bum Rudy is killed. The whole novel up to that point is told in simple past tense. However, the last few pages are told in the subjunctive, using the word would, starting with "It would be three-fifteen by the clock on the First Church when Francis headed south...". The whole denouement, in which Francis comes to the hotel room to find Helen dead, then hops on a freight train to get out of town, uses would. The last two pages are Francis talking to his wife Annie and thinking about sleeping on a cot in a spare room, but it's not clear if it's actually happening or his imagination.
- Asshole Victim: The bum Francis beats to death in self-defense.
- The Atoner: Francis is racked with guilt over causing the accidental death of his infant son 22 years ago (as well as several other people whose deaths he caused, accidentally or intentionally), and it's clear that he intentionally sabotaged his own once-promising life as self-punishment. He also makes an effort to re-connect with his family, but it's left ambiguous whether this would lead him to ultimately clean up and put his life back on track.
- The Bartender: Oscar Reo, a former singer turned barkeep who seems to be well-known and well-liked by all of the patrons of the bar, including Francis and his circle of bums.
- Bittersweet Ending: Helen dies, as does Francis's friend Rudy. Francis is left riding a freight train out of town, after he finds out that he killed the legionnaire who killed Rudy. But he has seen his family, and reconciled with them, and in the end he may be back home and living with them, although it depends on how one interprets the Ambiguous Ending.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Rudy says some very strange things at various points, even when (relatively) sober.
- Deadpan Snarker: Francis usually has a sarcastic response to just about everything that's said to him. Justified in that he's surrounded by bums and drunks who are mentally even more far gone than he is. Especially so in the film, since, after all, he's played by Jack Nicholson.
- Death of a Child: Francis has been haunted for 22 years by the death of his 16-day-old son Gerald, who fell when a drunk Francis dropped him.
- Driven to Suicide: Helen's long trip down in the world started when she was in college, and her seemingly prosperous father killed himself, because he was actually buried in debt.
- Extremely Short Timespan: Takes place over 48 hours, Oct. 31-Nov. 2, 1938.
- Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: It's a long fall from Major League Baseball player to hobo. There's a straighter example in the person of Francis's friend Oscar, who was once a singer successful enough to be on the radio, but ruined his career through drink and now is a singing bartender in a club.
- Flashback: Many, as that's how Helen's and Francis's pasts are told. There are repeated references to the tumultuous strike when Francis threw a rock and, using the arm strength and accuracy of a Major League Baseball player, killed a strike breaker.
- Future Loser: Francis had a promising career as a baseball player prior to his breakdown. Helen came from an upper class background and was musically gifted. They both wound up as homeless alcoholics.
- Hallucinations: Francis is plagued by recurring hallucinations of the three people he killed. Whether this is due to alcoholic delirium vs. schizophrenia or some other psychiatric illness is never stated.
- Hobos: Francis and all his friends and acquaintances, bums who sometimes sleep in shelters, sometimes in cars, sometimes in flophouses when they have the money, and sometimes in the open air. A homeless woman who is known to Francis freezes to death when she is denied entrance to a shelter because she's drunk.
- Immediate Sequel: The events take place no more than a few days after the end of Kennedy's previous novel, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game. The money Billy gave Helen in that novel is stolen from her.
- I See Dead People: Francis is haunted by walking, talking visions of the people he's known who have died. His infant son Gerald, laying with the other Phelans in the graveyard, tells him to make atonement. Francis apologizes to the bum that he killed during a drunken brawl.
- Lie Back and Think of England: Francis's parents had a difficult marriage, in part because his mother was a cold and unloving person who hated sex and thought it should only be for the procreation of children (and didn't like doing it even then).
- Sexual Extortion: With no other place to go and the weather turning cold Francis finds a parked car for Helen to sleep in. He does this knowing that she'll probably have to provide sexual favors to the other bum in the car, and as it turns out she does, although the bum can't get it up.
- Shout-Out: In the opening scene Francis and Rudy are talking about the prospects of a Martian invasion, because Orson Welles's The War of the Worlds radio show ran the night before.
- Switching P.O.V.: The POV bounces back and forth between Francis and Helen throughout the book.
- Trashcan Bonfire: Helen sees some other bums huddled around a trash can bonfire, and accepts Francis's suggestion of sleeping the night in a parked car, even though she's pretty sure she will be sexually abused by the men already sleeping in the car. (She is.)
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: Where Helen keeps her last $12, money that not even Francis knows about. When having gross and unsuccessful sex with another bum in a car, she tells him not to touch her breasts, because she's scared he'll find the money.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Francis's friend Rudy has been diagnosed with stomach cancer and told he has six months to live. He doesn't seem too troubled by it.
