Richard Price is not your standard coffee shop novelist– thank God. The author and screenwriter carries himself like a rumpled middle-aged man and barks out slick lingo straight from the New York City jungle. Soft-spoken, he is not. Price’s speech is unmottled by the fancy metaphors and flowery abstractions that make other writers unrelatable. Unlike many of those writers, you always know where Price is coming from.
In no place was this more apparent than at Price’s reading at Baruch College two weeks ago, where the author fulfilled part of his duty as this semester’s Harman writer-in-residence. From the moment he ascended the podium, he had a wisecrack ready. He was told “to read for one minute and answer questions for fifty-nine,” he quipped.
Price started the night off by reading an excerpt from his most recent novel, 2007’s “Lush Life,” which revolves around an investigation of a murder in Manhattan‘s Lower East Side, based on the real-life murder of Nicole DuFresne.
Like his appearance and countenance, Price’s writing is also un-stifling. The prose is sparse, crisp, peppered with insider’s slang. He’s not the type of author who explains the ‘way things are’ in the story, but he’s the type of writer who makes the reader understand, anyway.
In Price’s work, New York City is a constant presence. “It’s all I’ve known. I’ve never lived anywhere else,” the author said. He continued, “If I grew up in Colorado, I’d probably feel the same way about the mountains, or if I grew up in California, I’d probably feel the same way about the ocean.”
One New York neighborhood that particularly draws Price’s interest is Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The author finds the neighborhood to be at once fascinating and despairing. “The whole point of landing in the Lower East Side is to get the hell out of there,” he said. For Price, the Lower East Side is a symbol of the ultimate bottom, from which to rise to success.
It is this seedy, yet beautiful and hopeful vision of the Lower East Side that Price portrays in “Lush Life.” The author emphasizes the fact that the various groups that make up the Lower East Side’s diverse neighborhood rarely comingle, and only seem to converge when there is a terrible crisis– an accident, a robbery, or, like in “Lush Life,” a murder.
After reading from a novel and leading a discussion on New York politics, a typical author would most likely read an excerpt from another one of their books, possibly even their newest unpublished work. But Price is not a typical author.
For his second reading, he eschewed the novels and acclaimed screenplays that make up his large body of work, and instead read a piece from his notes. The segment, a draft of a fictional speech by a Manhattan prophetess, had the sort of piercing urgency of stream of consciousness rants, spoken word poetry and ritualistic chanting that captured readers in its hypnotic rhythm.
Seeing as his prose is as visual and immediate as watching action through a camera lens, it seems natural that Price is also known for his screenplays. His plays include “The Color of Money” (which earned him an Oscar nomination in 1986), “Life Lessons,” the 2000 “Shaft” sequel, and work on acclaimed, now-defunct TV show “The Wire.”
Though his screenwriting credits have earned him fame, Price’s attitude about the industry and his work remains refreshingly free of baloney. When the night’s discussion turned to screenwriting as a process, the author explained that one of the most difficult things about screenwriting is handing over the script for others to interpret. In typical Price fashion, he advised up-and-coming screenwriters to instead aspire to become directors– “So the only person screwing up your script is you.”