The Warriors [Paperback]

Sol Yurick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2003

The basis for the cult-classic film The Warriors chronicles one New York City gang's nocturnal journey through the seedy, dangerous subways and city streets of the 1960s. Every gang in the city meets on a sweltering July 4 night in a Bronx park for a peace rally. The crowd of miscreants turns violent after a prominent gang leader is killed and chaos prevails over the attempt at order. The Warriors follows the Dominators making their way back to their home territory without being killed. The police are prowling the city in search of anyone involved in the mayhem. An exhilarating novel that examines New York City teenagers, left behind by society, who form identity and personal strength through their affiliation with their "family," The Warriors weaves together social commentary with ancient legends for a classic coming-of-age tale. This edition includes a new introduction by the author.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"It seems to me the best novel of its kind I’ve ever read, an altogether perfect achievement." -- Warren Miller, author of The Cool World

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (April 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802139922
• ISBN-13: 978-0802139924
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #486,893 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A real, instead of surreal, depiction of gang life, March 10, 2005

By 

trainreader (Montclair, N.J.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Warriors (Paperback)

I was very excited to find this out of print book because I, like many others, love the movie, which is about a small Coney Island based gang falsely accused of killing a messiah-like leader named Cyrus, who intends to unite all the gangs. In the movie, the Warriors struggle to get back from the Bronx to home turf while being chased by various bizarre gangs (some of which are unforgettable) who are seeking revenge. Other than Ajax, the members in the Warriors seem fairly decent and unthreatening.

The movie is based very loosely on the book, and certain scenes are roughly parallel. However, Sol Yurick's goal is to portray the violence and banality of gang-life. The principles (here called the "Coney Island Dominators") commit acts of shocking violence, including gang rape of a young woman, who, in the movie, is unscathed, and ends up as Swan's girlfriend. At the end of the book, there is no dramatic scene on the beach where the truth is learned, but rather, the author spotlights one of the gang-members who is unable to satisfy his insatiable hunger, which I assume is a metaphor for an empty, meaningless life.

In sum, I recommend this book, but don't expect to read a script for the movie, which, to be honest, I enjoyed quite a bit more.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Belongs with Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies, May 25, 2006

By 

Squatting Monkey (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Warriors (Paperback)

This novel is actually quite good. In the beginning it feels a bit campy and maybe reads like an uninformed idyll. I couldn't imagine today's gangs coming together in a park and I have doubts as to whether or not street gangs of the sixties could even entertain the notion. I guess the mechanism used is a bit clumsy but it does get the story going and create the parrallels between a "modern" day street-gang and the isolated greek warriors of The Anabasis, which inspired this novel.

Once we get away from the structure of the novel and into the moment to moment exchanges betweeen the characters and their environment, it all becomes rather real. There is something incredible about the way the story moves from covering the collective "group" perspective into filtering through and following the individual remnants that leaves both Catcher in the Rye (with its singular perspective) and Lord of the Flies (with its various group perspectives) feeling a little flat.

By the time the main character, Hinton is strolling through the Times Square arcades, he is every bit as well realized as Mr. Caulfield and the environment is as vivid as any ever penned.

Yurick like Salinger, knows his subject, and although at first glance some of the behavior may seem foreign and far-fetched, it is really a matter of being reminded of both how young these "Warriors" actually are, and like the Geek soldiers that they imitate, how the blood on their hands does little to diminish their actual innocene. It is really a process of realizing how fast we mature and the devastating effect of maturity on our imagination.

I highly recommend the book but be warned, if your expecting the baseball furies to pop out at the park with bats-a-swinging, you may be a bit dissapointed, although shot on location in New York, Hollywood definitely has its influence.

There are moments where the movie does appear to reflect the novel, and these moments only set you up for great surprises when the watered-down movie takes the easy way out, the novel trudges forward; bold and unashamed.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Just as good as the movie, perhaps better., June 25, 2008

By 

d. carroll "sekari" (Ann Arbor, MI, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Warriors (Paperback)

I just recently saw the movie and became obsessed with it, so the next logical step was to read the book. It took me a few days to find it though, and in the meantime I read a lot of things about it, which might have been a mistake but whatever. Aparently it was a lot more violent than the movie, and a lot of people found it less satisfying because of this. Views on it are pretty polarized. Either people love it and put it up there with (or even above) Lord of the Flies, or they just don't get it and are turned off by how different it is from the film.
The edition I found has a new introduction by the author that talks about how it came to be written and his reaction to the film when it was made. He didn't like the film. He thought they made to many changes and that it only coincidentally resembled his novel. Things like making the gang mixed instead of all black, not using the slang that he worked so hard to portray accurately (apparently he sat in a rented van for weeks observing urban gangs talk and interact) and he thought the acting was generally poor. I can see where he's going with these things. it's his vision and they missed it, but I don't really agree. The changes that were made to the movie were pretty necessary. I don't really think it would have worked or had the same appeal if it was done exactly like the book. If for no other reason that it was written in the mid 60's and the movie made in the late 70's, times had changed a lot.
This sense of anachronism was something that I had to keep in mind as I read it. At first it was hard to get a hang of the narrative, but I got used to it. I think it helped a little that I was prepared by the author and other reviews. I had a better idea of what was meant to be important while I read it.
The plot points were more or less the same as the film. The only major difference is that in the book the gang is not directly blamed for the death that happens in the beginning. In the movie this is used as the driving force behind the numerous antagonists. But in the book it felt as though the entire city was already against them. The looming feeling of danger was all around them and it didn't need to have a coherant motive or reason to oppress them. I thought this was more subtle, but a lot more effective once I noticed it.
Since the danger is mostly intangible, and formed from their own perception of the world, it's much harder for them to overcome it. Instead of fighting other gangs to get home, they have to wrestle with one another and themselves to try and figure out what home is.
I had been warned about the violence, and it was there. But there was something strange about it. It was almost as if the violent acts were commited by the gang as a whole, and not the sum of it's parts. These were the things that the gang did to survive or keep face. But when each of them is taken away from that entity, they do not share the burden or guilt of it's actions. I will admit that they do some pretty terrible things, but in the end I did not hate them for it. They acted like a gang, not like a bunch of young boys. There's even a clear distinction of this in the text. The act of wearing or concealing the gang emblem had a real effect on the characters. A lot can be read into that, but I won't go into it here.
The end of the book was another thing that a lot of people took issue with. Some reviews I read said that it wasn't nearly as satisfying as the movie, that it just kind of stopped. I disagree with this completely. In the movie they reach their home and look back on it with a new kind of respect, and also the understanding that it is not the whole world. It's hinted that they will give up this life and leave. Maybe even grow up and become part of that bigger world.
In the book it doesn't just end. There's is something similar to that restlessness and need for change, but as with so many other things in the book, it's a lot more subtle.
I originally read this book to fuel my obsession with the movie. I wanted more of those characters and that city. Instead of getting just more though, reading the book was almost a whole different experience, and just as rewarding. In the end I thought it was very good. I greatly apreciate it's differences from the fim. In his introction to the book the author says that even though the movie is a cult classic and helped define a generation, no one really knows that it was based on a book. This amuses him because without the book there would have been no movie. I'm glad that I tracked it down and am part of that smaller minority.