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Clockers
by Richard Price
by Richard Price
Richard Price captured the greed and commingled desperation/hopelessness of characters whose desire to leave their doomed surroundings is only surpassed by their fear of reprisal if they do. The book seems perfectly tailored for a TV or movie adaptation given it's fast-paced and gripping plot-line, which had me staying up well past my bedtime to continue reading. And, since finding out that Price has written for the Wire as well as several screenplays, I'm more inclined to believe that was his original intention. Be warned though, the movie doesn't do the book justice in my opinion.
I am partial to tales of urban blight, and particularly interested in the psychological and environmental factors mitigating criminal behavior. This book really delves deeply into the character's motivation for their behavior and inner conflicts with their conscious, often to their own demise. Poverty often causes people to make decisions that are based more on survival and less on future goals—a perfect example would be Rodney Little's characterization of many of the Clockers who "buy a gold chain and spend all their money."
I'm not sure how many ride-alongs Price did with the police, but he has such an accurate ear for dialogue and situations that's it's hard to believe that he resides in the Hamptons. There's a scene where Rocco is telling the actor who's trailing him for his movie role, about a woman who handcuffed her child to a hot radiator, only to disappear. When they catch the woman, Rocco's sergeant says, "It's a cycle—her father beat her brother to death." It's powerful and sad, but also gives you insight into the deep recesses of humanity.
Although I'm not a fan of preachy or overly proselytizing books, there were a lot of unexpected insights.
If you were poor, posters followed you everywhere—health clinics, probation offices, housing offices, day care centers, welfare offices—and they were always blasting away at you to do this, don't do this, be like this...
A crowd usually meant a spectacle of misery—an arrest, a fight, someone having a seizure.
The Royal was less a motel than a kind of hospital ship, a quarantine ward of the soul
Probably one of the best books I've ever read, hands-down.
I am partial to tales of urban blight, and particularly interested in the psychological and environmental factors mitigating criminal behavior. This book really delves deeply into the character's motivation for their behavior and inner conflicts with their conscious, often to their own demise. Poverty often causes people to make decisions that are based more on survival and less on future goals—a perfect example would be Rodney Little's characterization of many of the Clockers who "buy a gold chain and spend all their money."
I'm not sure how many ride-alongs Price did with the police, but he has such an accurate ear for dialogue and situations that's it's hard to believe that he resides in the Hamptons. There's a scene where Rocco is telling the actor who's trailing him for his movie role, about a woman who handcuffed her child to a hot radiator, only to disappear. When they catch the woman, Rocco's sergeant says, "It's a cycle—her father beat her brother to death." It's powerful and sad, but also gives you insight into the deep recesses of humanity.
Although I'm not a fan of preachy or overly proselytizing books, there were a lot of unexpected insights.
If you were poor, posters followed you everywhere—health clinics, probation offices, housing offices, day care centers, welfare offices—and they were always blasting away at you to do this, don't do this, be like this...
A crowd usually meant a spectacle of misery—an arrest, a fight, someone having a seizure.
The Royal was less a motel than a kind of hospital ship, a quarantine ward of the soul
Probably one of the best books I've ever read, hands-down.
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