Clockers: A Novel
by Richard Price
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richard PriceEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-03-04
ISBN: 0312426186
Number of pages: 611
Publisher: Picador
Book Reviews of Clockers: A Novel
Book Review: Richard Price vs. Elmore Leonard
Summary: 4 Stars
When I read Richard Price I find myself mentally comparing his fiction with that of Elmore Leonard. Price works on a somewhat bigger scale and perhaps is more "serious" about his fiction; in contrast, Leonard seems to be aiming more for entertainment. Leonard certainly is more prone to structure his narrative around the joke or witticism. For edginess, Leonard relies a little more on sex and violence, Price more on drugs. Leonard's settings tend towards the glitzy, Price's more towards the squalid. But both depict the seamier sides of contemporary urban America in compelling ways and both are masters of dialogue. Last year, when I read Price's latest novel "Lush Life", I concluded that I liked it better than I liked any of Leonard's novels. So it was interesting to go back and read CLOCKERS, which many regard as Price's best work. (I had started it shortly after it was released in 1992, but due to demands of work never finished it then.)
CLOCKERS is set across the Hudson from New York City, in the fictitious city of Dempsey (seemingly a composite of Jersey City and Newark). The stories of CLOCKERS, for the most part, are the stories of drug use in and around the housing projects. Most of the dozens of characters in the novel fall into two groups: the dealers (and users) vis-a-vis the cops. The principal representatives of the two groups are the two protagonists: Strike, a 19-year-old black youth who sees drug dealing, or clocking (selling bottles of powdered coke at $10 a pop), as "his best shot at having a life, like going into the army or working for UPS"; and Rocco Klein, a 43-year-old Homicide Detective, approaching twenty years service and the temptation to embark on a new career, but at the same time hooked on the absurdities, the adrenalin rushes, and the unusual moral dilemmas of his job. The story is narrated in chapters that alternate back and forth between the perspectives of Strike and Rocco (and thus alternate between the drug dealer and the cop, black and white, nominally bad and nominally good).
There is a third main character, Strike's brother Victor, who does not belong to either group. Victor is a straight-arrow young man, who still lives with his mother in the projects together with a dull and unappreciative wife and two small children and who works two full-time jobs trying to accumulate the stake necessary to move his family out of the projects. The overarching "mystery" of the novel is whether Victor really could have been the one to gun down Darryl Adams, who sold cocaine by weight out of a fried fish restaurant named Ahab's (and is there any symbolism in that name?).
CLOCKERS is a decent read. The overall picture of North Jersey and the "cycle of s**t" is captivating, much like the series "The Wire" (which was influenced by the novel and for which Price was one of the writers). There are many memorable vignettes and characters (who are sketched with understanding and empathy rather than being cardboard stereotypes), and there is much dazzling, spot on dialogue. But there also are weaknesses. For example, the exposition often is rather conventional and is laden with extraneous detail; there is too much explicit moralizing, which occasionally is insultingly heavy-handed; and the motivations for several of the key acts or decisions of the three main characters are not fully persuasive. To an extent these weaknesses are more apparent when CLOCKERS is read after having read "Lush Life," which is a more accomplished and mature novel, with a markedly pared down narrative style and dialogue that is even more brilliantly rendered (as good as dialogue gets in contemporary American fiction).
So I return to my comparision between Price and Leonard. I still think that "Lush Life" is better than any of Leonard's novels, but the best of Leonard is better than CLOCKERS.
Summary of Clockers: A Novel
Novelist and Academy Award?nominated screenwriter Richard Price's bestselling second novel offers "an unforgettable picture of inner-city decay and despair" (USA Today)
At once an intense mystery and a revealing study of two men, a veteran homicide detective and an innercity crack dealer, on opposite sides of an endless war. Clockers is "powerful . . . harrowing . . . remarkable" (The New York Times Book Review).
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