Customer Reviews

Wanderers

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Richard Price manages once again to succeed at capturing the feelings and human experiences of life in the inner city of New York, this time the Bronx of the early 60s. He writes like the literary version of Martin Scorsese, depicting the sudden violence as well as the deep feelings his characters live through. The focus is on the street gang The Wanderers, a tight-knit group of friends in their teens, and their struggles to survive in a land of parental abuse, adolescent sex, and brawls with other gangs. The streetwise novel chronicles their lives in an unflinching way and places the reader directly in the middle of the tension, never judging and always real. This is a fascinating novel that was made into a film, however the book holds many deeper emotions the screen version could not convey.

This is a perfect book. The best "street" dialogue I've read (and you don't have to be from the "street" to recognize its authenticity), and probably the best portrayal of "young adults." Yes, it does take place in the multiethnic Bronx (just before it got way more multiethnic) of the early 60s, but almost all Americans who have attended public high schools can easily identify with the types of characters.

And try to find a hardcover copy of the first-edition just to see Richard Price's 1974 author photo. He looks like a Black Sabbath roadie.

This is one "can't-put-it-down" book that will have you laughing, crying, and every emotion in between. You won't be able to put it down, and you'll read it over and over again throughout the years! WAY better than the movie....READ THE BOOK!!!!

Richard Price, one of America's great writers, started his series of novels off on the right foot. Although THE WANDERERS might be described generically as a coming-of-age book, that simply would not do it justice. The book introduces readers to Price's gritty and unrelenting style that not only shows the underbelly of American culture, but shoves it right into the reader's face.

The story centers around a street gang in the Bronx after which this book is named. The Wanderers is only one of many gangs in the area, each struggling for survival and some understanding about the world in which they exist. They are not even the toughest gang out there. The razor-wielding Ducky Boys are as vicious as their name is ridiculous, providing the members of The Wanderers a good deal more to worry about than just scoring with the girls.

But it would be incorrect to think of THE WANDERERS simply as a street gang book. The true main character here, as in all of Price's subsequent writings, is the atmosphere. Price portrays the street in which the characters live as so gritty, so dehumanizing, that they seem to take on a life of their own. It is a dark environment and becomes even more menacing as the characters grow beyond the gangs and attempt to venture out beyond the confines of their previously self-enclosed world.

What makes THE WANDERERS particularly noteworthy is the numbers of scenes that really stand out and will stay in the reader's head long after the book is put down. The venereal sandwich, the two boys 'trapped' on the roof of the building, the bowling scene, are all deeply disturbing. That such jarring events take place outside of the gang violence would seem to indicate that, for Price, the issues of violence and dehumanization are not limited to separate areas of American society, i.e. the street gang, but instead are to be found throughout it.

Price followed THE WANDERERS with a number of other books, some better than others. But THE WANDERERS is one of his two best, the other being CLOCKERS. It is a stellar work from a master of grasping the zeitgeist of his environment.

I first read this book when I was about 12. Now I'm 38. It was great then and is even better now. The movie does not do it any justice.Read the book. The dialogue is real "street-wise". And the characters are "real". Bronx Urban Legends state that Richie Gennaro is really Richard Price ( take that for what its worth). Also some of the vignettes in the book were supposedly based on actual events.

I really wanted to hate this book---at first. Because at first, much like the very first pages of Catch-22 when we are introduced lovingly to a character we'll never see again, a tall Texan entombed in bandaging, only to meet Yousarian a little later, here you meet Richie Gennaro, High Warlord of the Wanderers street gang. Richie is a dull sort, weak where he should be strong and dumb where he should be smart. As a reader you hope you don't have to spend the whole book with this guy, because then it's going to be a long read. But Price does something surprising and enjoyable. He changes POV's to the other members of the Wanderers, their effed-up families and girlfriends, so that each chapter is like reading Tales of the South Pacific, interconnecting short stories with a scenic sameness to them. There the South Pacific, here the South Bronx. The only real flaw in the book is the over-the-top street fight scenes, which just do not hold up over time.

I have always noticed the difference between books and the movies based on them but wow the changes made from this book into the movie were huge. That being said I really enjoyed the movie and was thrilled to find that it was based on a book. I bought the book on a Saturday and finished it on Sunday. What a great story and much more enjoyable than the movie with its smaller cast. I would say if you are going to read the book then watch the movie don't, watch the movie then read the book, it will be a much better choice