Riding the Yellow Trolley Car: 2selected Nonfiction

This engaging miscellany of some 80 articles, interviews and reviews should delight fans of noted novelist Kennedy ( Ironweed ). From newspaper pieces printed in his hometown of Albany, N.Y., in the 1950s to more polished essays in national magazines, these selections suggest how Kennedy's literary voraciousness contributed to the growth of his distinctive, sinuous style. He interviews and reviews writers Malamud, Bellow and Doctorow, celebrates Irish forebears Joyce and Beckett, and pronounces himself still ``tickled silly'' by Damon Runyon. Once a resident of Puerto Rico, Kennedy developed a subspeciality in Latin American fiction; his observations about Garcia Marquez and Fuentes hint at a source of his fabulist style. Sections on pop culture and on Albany contain some dross, but there are lively pieces on Louis Armstrong and the pleasures of screenwriting, and touching reminiscences of the author's working-class grandfathers. For Kennedy, good-natured humility accompanies literary purpose, and this ``oblique autobiography'' is a good warm-up for a full memoir. (May)