Category — In the Spotlight

A nice alternative to no-parking laws.

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As I step out of my dorm every morning, I don’t really think of the history.  I just take in the immediate things that the streets of the Lower East Side have to offer me on my daily walk to class. I don’t think of who lived in these same buildings around me, who walked these same streets before me. But after I began hearing the stories that Richard Price told, I was opened to a world of rich history and wonder.

The Lower East Side is filled with what Richard Price called “Ghosts:” remnants of people’s lives in old tenements and buildings, memories of those who made their way through the dimly lit streets. But what separates the time they lived in from ours? Sure, these “ghosts” lived lives filled with hardships that aren’t often a present day problem, but what has changed the streets? Richard Price attributes the downfall of a neighborhood to the presence of “cappuccino”—but is that all that has brought our time to be so starkly contrasting with the past? It seems that although the pavement may have been re-done, and although the buildings may have been re-surfaced, the ubiquitous history isn’t out of sight—it is all around us. When Richard Price spoke of ghosts, my first thought was of specters and apparitions—but now, I imagine the past people of the Lower East Side, and what they did on these streets: bustling through their daily routines, chastising children, meeting new people at markets, greeting fellow neighbors in their travels…it’s amazing how easy it is to visualize the wonders of the city that have been covered by only a few layers of asphalt.

Yesterday, I took a stroll around the Lower East Side. Well, rather, I walked out of the dorms and got myself lost. But in getting lost, I found a lot more than I had expected.

I was on the lookout for E Houston St, and instead found Chinatown and Fuji-town, a few solemn synagogues, a few empty lots and a lot of ghosts. I took Richard Price’s advice, and looked up at all the history. Right now, if I look out my window, I see high-rise tenements with “For Sale” signs in Chinese, English, and who knows what. I see advertisements for leases, coca-cola and others amid weather-beaten bricks.

So naturally, my mind raced back to the reading. Richard Price’s quirky, sarcastic face popped up right in to my consciousness. His head floated around in my head as he pointed out all those little things I had never seen before, and soon I saw myself pointing them out to the friend I was with as well.

His face and advice are unforgettable to me. Not just because his hilarious story resonates so close to home, but for other reasons. The tone of his voice and his overall demeanor fascinated me. He seemed so familiar to me: a coach, a dad, a neighbor. Something about him was so odd to me; maybe it was how alike he was to my own father (in a complete opposite universe where my dad is a millionaire writer. I wish), and some of my friends as well.

It was apparent that Richard Price had a strong sense of community and that old-style Brooklyn (in his case, Bronx) sense of a close-knit neighborhood. I could see the subtle sadness in his eyes as he answered the questions about LES, and how this communal closeness has gone right out the window.

Tis a shame, but I still love LES just the same.

Photo from: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/03/11/price/

The excerpt from Richard Price’s Lush Life gave me a taste of his fast-paced storytelling. The narrative instantly gripped my attention when it took place right off the Williamsburg Bridge, where my home is in the Lower East Side of NYC. But I didn’t know what to expect from the reading; maybe he would just read a few passages monotonously and then be on his way. When I saw him at the reading, I was surprised by how much of a normal guy he was. Actually, he was so normal that he was wearing the same shirt I had seen him wearing in the LES tour video! His manner of speaking seemed very nonchalant, yet he never spoke nonsense. Even when going off on tangents, he made his words count.

I admire when a respected artist is comfortable poking fun at his/herself, and I knew Richard Price was this kind of person when he introduced his piece by saying the first couple of pages might have to be translated. He knew his heavy use of slang might leave the reader confused. He captured the essence of my neighborhood eerily accurately and it made total sense that he had to write about a murder to get these different groups in the same neighborhood to come out of their bubbles and interact with each other.

After the reading we were all dying for him to “tell us another one.” The second piece he read was written from the perspective of living in Harlem. Price seemed to me like an Anthropologist who wrote his etymologies in poetry. He lives with and studies different groups of people and how they interact, then he writes about it. The storyline needn’t be factual because the culture and the types of people he depicts are truth.

Two things caught my eye about this particular sign located in the Union Square 14th Street Subway Station:

1. Look at the date.
2. It is impossible to read the full sign without being:
   a) in a subway car, at which point it doesn’t matter.
   b) standing on the third rail, at which point the rats (and/or the poison) won’t be what is going to kill you

It’s not often that I have the opportunity to hear a celebrated novelist and screenwriter speak, so I was particularly looking forward to attending Richard Price’s talk last Tuesday.  Relatively unfamiliar with Price’s work, as I was going into the night I was expecting an organized, laid out and serious talk; what we got however was anything but.

At first, I thought that describing his style (at least in public forum) as laid-back or nonchalant would be a criticism or an injustice to his writing ability. Yet as I gave it further thought, I came upon the realization that his blasé demeanor isn’t something to ignore but instead an important part of his personality to understand. It is that same disposition that is likely to credit for his successful works, which often times center around character interactions and dialogue from average people. Whereas many writers of his level of success may be inclined to raise themselves in status among the normal folk, Price seemingly refused to do so. Why? Possibly its because so much of his achievement comes from chronicling the normal, the average, and the less than fortunate, or maybe its just because Price is a little bit normal himself.

Either way, his material makes for great reading (as showcased by his reading selection that night), and I hope to find the time to read one of his novels in the weeks, or months to come.

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.