The illustrious ex-New Republic man of letters, and current Harvard Professor for the Practice of Literary Criticism, James Wood has weighed in in the New Yorker on Richard Price’s _Lush Life. The short of it is that he quite liked the book — but he also made a great show of saying that reviewers who compare Price to a reporter don’t understand that actually he makes up the dialogue! Since my review of Price makes just such a reporter comparison, in the very first sentence no less, our own Dean Rowan wondered if perhaps Wood was responding to me. Now I don’t flatter myself that the distinguished Professor for the Practice of Literary Criticism (the PPLC — sounds a bit like a group of shadowy Latin American freedom fighters) would be talking to me in particular.
But I will respond to Wood’s point: yes, Price’s dialogue is highly stylized, and that’s what makes it a hoot to read. In real life, no one is as witty, poised, or culturally literate as Price’s characters. That said, Price clearly works very hard to try to be current with the slang and habits of the various demographic groups in his books. And like the naturalist writers Crane and Dreiser with whom I tried to draw a parallel, Price zeroes in on particular details of his characters, even as his book suggests that each person is merely a type of character within impersonal sociological groups. The details of personality matter much less in the novel than the character’s particular role within the machinery of society. The characters don’t really get anything from speaking so much and so well — they, and Price, just do it for the joy of saying outrageous, clever things.
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