The Wanderers [Paperback]

Richard Price (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 1999

A teenage gang comes of age in the 1960s Bronx. Written when the author was twenty-four, this story was the basis for a major feature film.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Richard Price is the finest writer about contemporary urban America on the planet' Daily Mail 'Price gives us all the raw details of the street' Time Out 'A deeply moving account of confused and spiritually underprivileged youth' William Burroughs 'I haven't read a better fictional account of the dark side of the American Dream in years' John Fowles --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Richard Price spent four years with dealers and cops on the streets of urban America researching the raw material for Clockers. His first novel, The Wanderers, was a literary sensation when it was published in 1974. Price has become one of Hollywood's most successful screenwriters. Clockers was made into a film directed by Spike Lee and starring Harvey Keitel and John Turturro. Richard Price's most recent novel is Samaritan. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 239 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; 1st Mariner Books ed edition (April 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395977746
• ISBN-13: 978-0395977743
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #636,101 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, January 18, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Wanderers (Paperback)

This is probably Price's best work ever. He effectively re-creates the atmosphere of early-1960's street gang life, populating it with a memorable cast of characters. All the elements are here - humor, tragedy, gritty realism, with an occasional touch of the truly bizarre. Most readers will find it impossible to read this novel only once; it is one of the few which deserves repeated readings. If you have seen the movie, read the book - it's even better. I know very little about Mr. Price, but he must have been a street kid; no one else could have told this story as effectively.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gangs Back In the Day, September 25, 2007

By 

Lleu Christopher "www.liminalworlds.com" (Hudson Valley, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wanderers (Bloomsbury Classic Reads) (Paperback)

I first read this book not long after it came out in the 70s, when I was barely a teenager (if even that, I don't recall the exact year) and it quickly became one of my favorite books. Since then, Richard Price has gone on to write many more novels, a few of which (including The Wanderers, of course) were made into movies. I don't think any of his books, however, can be better than this, his first one. I should mention here that someone called this a collection of short stories. This is not accurate. It's a novel; I've read it at least three times, I should know :) Someone probably got confused because Price named the chapters, not a very common practice, so perhaps it sounded like they were stories.

This novel is not for the squeamish; it is full of sex, violence and profanity. Perhaps even more disturbing to some readers might be the prevalence of racial slurs. The characters in The Wanderers speak the language of the streets, and there is no attempt to censor or prettify anything. This, indeed, is the primary strength and distinction of the novel. It's an uncompromising look at a particular place and time, namely a poor section of the Bronx in the early 1960s. In one way, despite all the violence, The Wanderers has a certain innocence, at least compared to what street gangs became in later years. There are no drive by shootings (or any shootings that I can remember) or drug dealing, which became commonplace on urban streets by the 1970s. Still, while you are reading it, you are transported back to the era in which it is set, and you get a real sense of the danger of the streets, even back then.

The Wanderers is a kind of coming-of-age tale for a street gang of the same name. In the first chapter, we are introduced to the world in which these teens live; street gangs are numerous, and based on ethnic identity. There are Italian, Black, Irish and Chinese gangs. Perhaps the most bizarre of the gangs described are the Ducky Boys, a whole neighborhood of dwarf-like Irish kids who carry straight-edge razors. I was sure that this was something Price had made up, but someone from the Bronx of that time once told me there really was such a gang. The novel follows the lives of the gang members, Richie, Perry, Joey, Eugene and Buddy as they try to figure out their lives in this rough environment. Although you may think of street gangs as being made up of thugs, criminals or at least tough characters, the Wanderers are really just teenagers trying to make the best of things in challenging circumstances. Like teenagers everywhere, they go to school, fall in love and worry about their future.

There is an unusual honesty about this novel. People and events are presented in an uncompromising way without the usual filters of a moralizing narrator or a neat (and artificial) story line where everything always works out for the best. One example of this, which I already alluded to, is the rampant racial and ethnic prejudices of just about everybody in the book. This is not presented as something evil or twisted, just the way things were in that neighborhood at that time. Then there is Joey's father, Emilio, the closest thing to a real villain in the novel. He is a sadistic bully who abuses his wife and son. We might wish to see him punished in some way for his actions, but he never is. Price makes us feel like he is simply telling a story the way it really happened and not adding any superfluous commentary.

Possibly the most revealing thing I can say about The Wanderers is that it is one of those books that transcends its genre. It tells us a lot, not merely about gangs in the Bronx in the 1960s, but about growing up and living in general.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark side of pre-Beatles teenage America, March 18, 2006

By 

mojo_navigator - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wanderers (Paperback)

Anyone who has felt even the slightest pangs of nostalgia for the early '60s should read this marvellous novel. It will shatter their idyllic view of that era forever. The Wanderers is a raw depiction of working class Italian-American life in The Bronx circa 1960 and makes you realise how unglamourous and miserable living in the ghetto must have been back then (probably still is). Bad homes, rough girlfriends, violence lurking on every street corner - it's the ultimate punk rock novel. Yet amidst the despair, this is an outrageously funny book and Price, himself a native of the The Bronx though far more cultivated than he'd like everyone to believe, captures the nuances of the lingo perfectly.

There was a film made of The Wanderers but it's thoroughly lightweight with a really nauseating sub-theme of different races uniting, nauseating because it rings totally false. On the subject of racism as with many other themes of the novel, Price doesn't air-brush - he gives you the prejudices that existed unadulterated. And the novel is far richer for it.