Richard Price’s novels can be roughly divided into three phases. The first phase includes 1974’s The Wanderers and 1976’s Bloodbrothers, semi-autobiographical tales of teenage Italians growing up in the Bronx. The most recent phase, made up of 1992’s Clockers and everything he’s put out since then, tends to focus on interactions between cops and the residents of impoverished urban black communities. You might expect the middle phase, encompassing 1978’s Ladies’ Man and 1983’s The Breaks, to function as some kind of transition between the other two, but it’s actually the opposite. Phases 1 and 3 at least share third-person narration and an interest in urban violence, but Phase 2 shifts away from both of those qualities, adopting a first-person perspective and a lighter tone even more overtly farcical than that of The Wanderers. And while I love Clockers and the novels that followed it, I kind of wish Phase 2 had lasted longer, because Richard Price’s comedies are funny as hell. Continue reading
LADIES’ MAN (Novel, 1978)
BLOODBROTHERS (Film, 1978)
Directed by Robert Mulligan
Screenplay by Walter Newman, adapted from the novel by Richard Price
Like many novelists turned screenwriters, Richard Price first got involved with Hollywood through a screen adaptation of one of his books–1976’s Bloodbrothers, as it happens. Price isn’t credited as having worked on the script for this adaptation, or on that of the 1979 movie version of The Wanderers, so one could question whether or not those films even belong on this blog. But, first of all, from what I understand of how the film industry works, a screenplay with Price’s name on it isn’t necessarily any closer to Price’s ultimate creative vision than someone else’s adaptation of his book. And, second of all, these films are worth considering both in terms of how they presented Price’s work to a mass audience and how they affected Price’s outlook on the film industry.
Bloodbrothers apparently did not affect that outlook positively. Continue reading
BLOODBROTHERS (Novel, 1976)
Bloodbrothers, Richard Price’s sophomore novel, might be the most painful reading experience he’s produced (with the possible exception of Freedomland), not because it’s bad–it’s well-written, gripping, feels true to life–but because it’s so God damn sad.
That’s a weird thing to point out about a Richard Price book, all of which are at least somewhat sad in one way or another. But while other novels of his might draw their pathos from, say, gang wars or racial strife, Bloodbrothers is about familial violence: Husbands abusing wives, parents abusing children, children rejecting parents. There’s something particularly depressing–or maybe just claustrophobic–about all that hurt being spread around among the people who are supposed to be most devoted to each other. But if that subject matter often makes for a tough read, well, I guess it probably should, shouldn’t it? Continue reading
THE WANDERERS (Novel, 1974)
Although it launched his career and, in some ways, permanently defined what people expect from his writing, The Wanderers is remarkably different from most of Richard Price’s later works. He’s now come to be known for his vivid, true-to-life realism, a style which to some extent demands that the author rein in his or her own voice to keep it from taking the reader’s attention off of the action. But the author of The Wanderers seems more than willing to direct some attention towards his own voice, given how much he elbow-jabs the reader with deadpan wisecracks about the characters and their world. And certain moments–the over-the-top violence of the football field brawl, for example–indicate that realism per se was not this book’s primary ambition. It’s a book about youth written with a young man’s bravado, objectivity and verisimilitude be damned.
The thing that really stands out about The Wanderers‘ style and subject matter, though, is not their larger-than-life nature but the skill with which Price crafts and wields them. His writing would in fact change and evolve as time went on, but here it gives the impression of a talent and a consciousness arriving fully formed. It’s easy to see why this debut, published when he was twenty-four years old, so quickly flash-fried his reputation into that of a writer to watch. Continue reading
Introduction
Welcome! Here are the answers to a few questions you might have:
What is this?
This is a blog about the works of Richard Price, novelist and screenwriter. Each week–assuming I can keep to my schedule–I’ll post a review of something Price wrote, starting with his 1974 debut novel The Wanderers and moving chronologically through all of the books, films and TV shows he’s credited on until I get to his most recent output (currently the TV show NYC 22). You can view a complete list of those works on the “Chronology” page.
This is a project I had been planning to do for a while, but the recent announcement that Price will be putting out a new book, The Whites, in February (albeit under a pen name) spurred me to get started now so that I can have all the posts up just in time for that book’s release.
Richard Price
Priced Out 