Richard Price Review

Richard Price has a natural ability to capture and entertain an audience. Utilizing media ranging from paper to screen he knows what a character needs to say, what a narrator needs to share and how best to keep a crowed transfixed. This ability clearly translates from his oratory skills. Price is fundamentally a storyteller and hasn’t lost the ability to share a captivating story with an open audience.

He held true to his “story teller” title this past Tuesday, as he shared with us not just snippets of Lush Life and a preview of a work in progress on Harlem but also dozens of personal interactions he had with people all over New York City (and Jersey). Price is not by any means show offish- in fact his appeal is subtle. He shares stories of familiar major and minor interactions between people but he does so from a dryly-amusing voice, including vividly minute details that make the story more personal.

Price’s decision to depart from screenplays and return to print is encouraging for he long ago proved his skill in seemingly every creative vehicle. I haven’t read Lush Life but as is often the case, his performance reading made me want to. Furthermore the peek of his work on Harlem sounded hysterical. His talk certainly gained him a bundle of new readers, and allowed him to further establish himself in the Baruch College community as a great writer and a likely equally good teacher. I look forward to reading his works, and perhaps more so to seeing what he comes up with next.