Novelist William Kennedy will be honored Saturday at a daylong F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference.


The event will be held in Rock ville, Md., 375 miles south of the setting of his Albany cycle of novels. "It's a nice award, and I'm very grateful because Fitzgerald is one of my literary heroes," said Kennedy, who will receive the 12th annual Fitzgerald literary award.


Kennedy, who lives in Averill Park, will join the ranks of William Styron, E.L. Doctorow, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Grace Paley, Jane Smiley and other literary luminaries who have received the prize that recognizes "outstanding achievement in American literature."


The award is presented by a nonprofit literary group devoted to Fitzgerald's writing based in Rockville, where Fitzgerald's father grew up among a prominent Montgomery County family. Although the writer was born in Minnesota, where his mother's family lived, the author of "The Great Gatsby" is buried in Rockville with his wife, Zelda.


The Fitzgerald literary confer ence is held each year within a few weeks of Fitzgerald's birthday, Sept. 24, 1896. On that day, devotees make their way to Fitzgerald's grave site in the cemetery of Rockville's Saint Mary's Church to place flowers, cigarettes, martini glasses and gin bottles to commemorate the legacy of the great Jazz Age chronicler.


Kennedy feels a kinship with Fitzgerald on multiple levels.


Struggling to write his novel "Legs," Kennedy was on his sixth or seventh draft and was re-reading "The Great Gatsby" for inspiration when he struck upon a narrative point of view that bore overtones of the way Fitzgerald used Nick Carraway to tell Jay Gatsby's fictional life.


"I'm constantly inspired by Fitzgerald's prose. He's an elegant, spectacular writer and I discover something new each time I reread one of his novels," said Kennedy, who makes an annual pilgrimage through the crystalline prose of "Gatsby."


Kennedy also empathized with the frustrations and disappointments Fitzgerald experienced as a writer-for-hire in Hollywood.


"He was a commodity at the time, almost a slave to the studio system, and he produced what he was told to produce," Kennedy said.


At Saturday's Fitzgerald conference, the more than 200 participants expected will each receive a copy of Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "Ironweed." They'll see a screening of the movie version of the book, which was shot in Albany and its environs, followed by Kennedy's remarks.


Literary critics and scholars will discuss urban literature and Kennedy's fiction in workshops. Participants will tour Fitzgerald's Rockville haunts. High school student recipients of an annual Fitzgerald short story contest will be named.


The day's events run from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.


"I'm pleased to be part of this," Kennedy said. "Fitzgerald is a writer for the ages. It doesn't get any better than `The Great Gatsby.' That's the perfect novel."





Paul Grondahl can be reached at 454-5623 or by e-mail at pgrondahl@timesunion.com.