Writing New York: Posts from the Boroughs and Beyond — 2008-2011

Richard Price, American novelist and screenwriter, sits in the first row of the gritty amethyst shaded seats, tapping his feet against the grimy black and burgundy checkered carpet in the Newman Conference Center at Baruch College. His salt and pepper hair reveal his life experience, while his fashion sense illustrate his laid back attitude, and eccentric manner. He is dressed in a powder grey t-shirt under an unbuttoned black, grey, and yellow checkered flannel shirt, paired with indigo blue jeans, canary yellow socks, and black canvas shoes. Richard Price silently sits and reviews his notes through black metal framed glasses which rest on the tip of his nose all the while keeping his hands gently folded on his lap. The audience sitting in the sits, on the floor, and leaning against opposite walls of the room bustle with synergy as they anxiously await the reading of Richard Price’s “Lush Life”.

To say that Richard Price is funny would be an understatement; he should be given the title of mastermind of dry humor and sass. He had audiences tittering with delight as he started his reading, “ok, so they said for me to read for one minute, and open it up for questions for fifty-nine,” joked Price.

As Price places a tight grip on the podium in front of him draped with a Baruch College banner he explains his thought process behind the birth of his 2008 mystery novel “Lush Life” set in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, based on the real life murder of Nicole duFresne.

Price explains that he has always had a connection towards the Lower East Side, because his family like many others who stemmed from Eastern and Southern Europe all took roots in the Lower East Side although never living there himself. “I don’t have any real memories of it but I have always had a sentimental spot for it,” and then like a true New Yorker he denounced all the fluff, “until I got to know it, and then I realized what a nightmare it was ….for them you know everyone is going my bubba, my tata, my pani, my whatever, and the fact of the matter is that it’s a real shit hole,” said Richard Price.

For Price the Lower East Side is the epitome of the American dream, immigrants coming to the United States, and making it out of the slums. “The whole point of landing in the Lower East Side is to get the hell out of there,” said Price.

A self-proclaimed “OCD writer,” Price waited twenty years before he penned “Lush Life” because he felt the only way to capture the essence of the Lower East was to write about it in the first half of the 20th Century, with the first influx of Eastern, and Southern Europeans. However, this proved to be a difficult feat, “I had to think about how people wiped their butt in 1912, did they have napkins, what did they use for napkins, how did they use napkins, did they buy their underwear, did they make their underwear, how did they walk up the stairs with no electricity, it was just too hard so I gave it up,” said Price.

To the untrained ear, Richard Price may come off sounding like a jaded New Yorker; however he’s just plain funny. While explaining how he doesn’t know anything about the Lower East Side, he sure comes off as an expert with humor, and grace, “then you had all the yuppie kids down there, I don’t even know what their called now, the “gazuppies” you know the kids down there, they think they’re in Rent, but with credit cards,” said Price.

It is through a thoughtful lens that Richard Price speaks the sentiment that many New Yorkers practice; to mind their own business. He compares the way New Yorkers go about their lives to the solar system; the nine planets orbiting the sun, working to maintain balance, but never coming together until tragedy ensues. “I thought the only way to write about these planets was to write about this catastrophe which brought these events. The only way to write about these people was to write about what forces everybody to pay attention to each other and to write a police investigation of this,” said Richard Price.

After his reading of an excerpt from “Lush Life,” Richard Price steered clear of his other novels, and screen plays which brought him literary acclaim. Instead he opted for a page of his notes which consisted of ramblings of a prophetess, from his upcoming novel about another Manhattan neighborhood Harlem. Price explained why he wanted to write about Harlem, “I’ve been living in Harlem for the last two years, and I want to write a novel about Harlem,” simple enough, and then Richard Price’s signature humor comes into play, “because I’m black obviously, I’m an Orthodox Jew and Dominican obviously,” quipped Price.

During the question, and answer session many audience members were squirming in their seats waiting for their chance to pick Richard Price’s brain. Price explains that to do character research all he had to do was to hang out with their real life counter parts because he likes “to be a sponge,” and simply absorb all the surroundings, dialects, and way of speech. “I really believe in osmosis. I believe in hanging out, but that isn’t a novel, and then you have to go home and take everything you see and mold it into a novel that tells the truth,” said Price. The coolness of Price’s characters in “Lush Life,” were created with a certain authenticity, even though it is all fictional, “all you need to know is the difference between plausible and absurd, and as long as I’m on the perimeter of plausibility it’s all made up after that,” said Price.

On how he was allowed to hang out with police officers, Price once again showcased his sense of humor, “I had compromising pictures of their girlfriends,” joked Price.

Richard Price offers some insights to the difficulties he encountered while writing, “I go through hell, it seems like I waste whole years without doing anything because I can’t figure out what to write,” and in jest he adds, “I’m like one every five years and two years I’m just mad because I can’t write, and then I finally get down to it, and it’s just awful so the answer is, I don’t know” said Price.

With enthusiasm Prices shares an anecdote with the audience about a time he went to a bar during one of his trips to the Lower East Side, where he thought a ghost was staring at him with daunting eyes, “and I looked down at this drink and I said no more Long Island ice tea for you my son,” until he turned around and realized that he was looking at a photo, while the audience laughed, Price added in typical Price fashion, “but I didn’t see the frame, and I just saw the face and it just scared the shit out of me,” said Price.

Richard Price’s quick witted, sly tongued, satirical remarks may feel foreign to those who spent their lives outside of New York City. However, it is this genuine street savvy, New York swag, rigidness, and complexity that makes him seem real, and his characters come to life. He leaves his audience begging for more, and when the discussion of when readers can expect another novel, Price shakes his head, and says with a chuckle, “oh please I can barely get through the Harlem book.”