Clockers
by Richard Price
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Read in April, 2008
I picked up Richard Price's Clockers because of my love for HBO's The Wire, for which Price writes. The drug dealers of The Wire are clearly influenced by the characters in Clockers, just like the show's police officers borrow from David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Strike, Price's drug-dealing protagonist, spends his days directing his drug crew while sitting on the back of a bench in the middle of a housing project. His anxiety about his chosen ...more
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"Despite his weariness, there was a part of him that loved the charge he generated in others: the lit-up look the pipeheads got on seeing him, the salute of the clockers. Someday it would be the end of him, this recognition, this power, but other than the lifelong tug of war between him and his mother, it was the closest thing to love he had ever experienced"
Price captures the allure of a hustler's life as deftly Jay Z or Ice T in his prime. While Clockers presents two points of vie...more
Price captures the allure of a hustler's life as deftly Jay Z or Ice T in his prime. While Clockers presents two points of vie...more
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Read in April, 2008
Picked this up at a used book store after hearing a couple interviews with Price on Fresh Air, once for his work on The Wire, once about his new book that is out (Fresh City? Free World? something like that). The story of Strike, a young drug dealer in the projects somewhere in New Jersey. We never really get Strike's full story, how he came to hold that "job," but I suppose the business is insidious like that. It took me a long time to get into the story. As I analyze it now, I ...more
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This was one of my favorite books of the 1990s. The cop character was a bit of a cliché but the setting of the novel in an almost post apocalyptic New Jersey housing project was the work of inspired journalism. Price had a lot of great insights in this work that could have only been the result of going out and being a witness to the world he was describing. I’m sure this novel is completely ignored in college classrooms because professors want kids to read books by writers who write about ...more
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Read in May, 2008
I'd had Clockers on my to-read list for a long time and I finally picked it up on Swaptree.com recently and I'm really glad I did. What an amazing novel! Price is a hell of a storyteller. His writing is raw and intense -- this story is told through two perspectives, one a homicide detective and the other a crack dealer. It was so fascinating to see the story through both sets of eyes. Price is neither a cop nor a drug dealer, but he sure as heck must have spent time with both, either that or he ...more
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Alright, you've heard all the hype about this book, now is the time to finally read it because it really is that great. I've heard George Pelecanos and David Simon say that they think this is the "Grapes of Wrath" of our generation, and I have to agree. "The Wire" could not have come about without this book. 100 years from now, this novel will still stand as an in-depth exploration of what it was like to grow up without a prayer of a chance in the inner-city. Price doesn'...more
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Published in 1992, this novel foreshadows more recent entertainment such as The Wire, by placing the reader squarely in the middle of the drug business on the streets of New Jersey. Speaking from alternating perspectives of a weary cop and a nervous "clocker", Price develops wholly realistic characters and settings. More, he shows the frustrations and motivating factors on both sides of the "war on drugs", suggesting why this effort is such an inescapable quagmire, and blur...more
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Read in July, 2008
recommended to Rhonda by:
Armando Bellmas
This was a read for our book club. It isn't something I would have picked up ordinarily but thanks to Armando I did. I found both story lines (Strike & Rocco) to be equally interesting and the book went really fast for its almost 600 pages.
However, I don't know I would recommend this book to everyone. If you enjoy semi-suspenseful crime-related stories with great character development, perhaps this is for you. It is not a happy book but I wouldn't say it is depressing either. Most of the...more
However, I don't know I would recommend this book to everyone. If you enjoy semi-suspenseful crime-related stories with great character development, perhaps this is for you. It is not a happy book but I wouldn't say it is depressing either. Most of the...more
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Read in July, 2008
recommended to Bluedaizy by:
Book Clubrecommends it for: mature people
Whew! I finally finished this book. I don't think I've had a more difficult read since reading The Color Purple back in college.
When I finally got to the "punch line" I was in Longhorne's and they had Bruce Hornsby's The Way It Is playing on the canned music. I was practically sobbing over my baby back ribs reading the last couple of chapters and listening to that song. Thank goodness they had cloth napkins to soak up my tears. I know the people across the aisle thought I was a ...more
When I finally got to the "punch line" I was in Longhorne's and they had Bruce Hornsby's The Way It Is playing on the canned music. I was practically sobbing over my baby back ribs reading the last couple of chapters and listening to that song. Thank goodness they had cloth napkins to soak up my tears. I know the people across the aisle thought I was a ...more
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4 comments
Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in April, 2008
Obviously a big influence on The Wire, but excellent on its own. Walter Benjamin once quoted Bertolt Brecht as saying something about "the art of thinking inside other people's heads." He meant that the only way a piece of writing might begin to influence people toward one political tendency is through a rigorous practice in empathy; without that, any attempt to influence people becomes didactic and/or condescending. Clockers is a...more
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Read in April, 2008
Since I started watching "The Wire" it has been reminding me of this book, to such a degree that in my memory, Clockers was set in Baltimore. After too long of a period of trying to remember what it was called, I looked through the stacks of paperbacks on my bookshelves and eventually found it, and really remembered. It has been years since I have read this book, and I still remember character quirks. This is going high up on my list of books to read (again).
After having re-read...more
After having re-read...more
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Read in April, 2008
recommends it for:
fans of "The Wire" and Nelson Algren
Like so many others, I read this because I was a fan of "The Wire", even though, I wasn't a big fan of the Spike Lee movie adaptation of Clockers, which I thought was just ok.
The book uses two point of view characters, Strike, a drug dealer, and Rocco, a cop. After reading the first section, a "Strike" section, I was sure I'd be giving this book five stars. The "Rocco" sections aren't bad by any means, but they weren't as interesting to me.
There's a ...more
The book uses two point of view characters, Strike, a drug dealer, and Rocco, a cop. After reading the first section, a "Strike" section, I was sure I'd be giving this book five stars. The "Rocco" sections aren't bad by any means, but they weren't as interesting to me.
There's a ...more
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Read in April, 2008
A tremendous book. Characterization is the primary strength, and I found myself wholeheartedly invested in the individuals, completely caring about what happened to them, even though some were less than admirable. I ddn't necessarily like them, but I knew them, and I wanted to know what would happen to them as the story unfolded. Yet while the people were familiar, the book was not predictable, and I really was left guessing (and concerned) about how it would end. I wonder if the world Price des...more
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I am a huge fan of Richard Price. One of the most compelling things I find about him is this complete sea change he made in his writing between The Breaks (1983) and Clockers (1992). Pre-Clockers his books were these fairly light, but always hilarious (Ladies Man is certainly one of the funniest books I've ever read) stories about working class guys struggling w their various foibles. Then he writes Clockers, this epic crime novel so realistic it reads like journalism, without any of the goofine...more
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Read in April, 2008
In an effort to pretend that The Wire isn't completely over, I decided to start reading the novels of the various writers who have contributed to that extraordinary show, starting with Richard Price. This novel is just terrific -- gritty, realistic, gripping, humorous. Although the voice slightly resembles Tom Wolfe's, Price is intellectually honest and generous in the way he fleshes out his characters and their worlds. And as on The Wire, sometimes it's hard to tell who the good g...more
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4 comments
This book is awesome! I could not put it down and flew through it in a few days. This book follows Strike, a round-the-clock New Jersey drug dealer, and Rocco Klein, a burnt out homicide detective that is convinced Strike is the killer in a murder case he is investigating. Spike Lee adapted this into a great movie, though he relocates the story to Brooklyn and spends no time developing Klein's character. The book [as usual] is better. The author gives equal time to the dealers and the cops, ...more
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Read in January, 2002
Read this on a plane to L.A. and forgot I was on a plane to L.A. Sometimes I feel weird about how much I like Richard Price, especially after figuring out his basic plot arc structure (if you are x% into this book and think you know who the murderer is you're wrong; kind of like the 37 minute point of the Xfiles) but happily recommend this one to people. Richard Price has written a few episodes of The Wire and this book has the same appeal- rich characters, complex morality, entertaining scenes,...more
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Price is a careful thinker and writer. He is really an ethnologist of the urban. The show the Wire is based on this book. Bonfire of the Vanities is not half the book that Clockers is -- style be damned.
There is a chapter on heroin addicts who live in a condemned building and who take out and sell the copper tubing in order to get there fix. This chapter is as poetic, as generous, as painful as anything I have read. It would make Charles Dickens envious.
There is a chapter on heroin addicts who live in a condemned building and who take out and sell the copper tubing in order to get there fix. This chapter is as poetic, as generous, as painful as anything I have read. It would make Charles Dickens envious.
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Read in January, 2008
Make no mistake: Price knows the streets. Great command of language, fantastic observations about the undrewolrd. When reading this, I was frequently amazed by Price's ability to embed details that would go off in my head after the fact. The Rocco chapters, however, often drag on, in part because Rocco is nowhere nearly as interesting as Strike. Despite this book being considered Price's "masterpiece" (and it is certainly very well written), I still think that Price can do better -...more
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Read in May, 2008
recommended to Steve by:
Price wrote for The Wirerecommends it for: fans of long character-driven novels
Wow, what a novel. Imagine Dickens crossbred with The Wire TV show. A long complicated portrait of several characters who you eventually stop trying to classify as good or flawed and finally admit that they are human. Even if you aren't normally one for crime novels, I'd recommend this book if you enjoy a lengthy character study. Price writes so well, and is so careful to let the actions of his characters tell the story. He does what a good author should do; back out of the way and let the story...more
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