Richard Price

If you haven’t read books by Richard Price, you are missing one of our best living writers.  In addition to a number of tremendous novels, he has been a scriptwriter for TV shows like The Wire, The Night Of…, The Outsiders and others.  He wrote the screenplay for The Color of Money.  His novels tend to have urban settings and openly address issues like race in a unique manner.  His most recent book is The Lazarus Man.  I won’t say much about the plot, but it is an interesting attempt by Price to deliver some message, some lasting message.  As any of us get older, we think about some summing up of our lives–what was it all about, what would we tell others about what we learned.  Price’s message appears to be that we can all control our lives, accept, even take pleasure in, the good and the bad.  That we can all be redeemed and uplifted from our lows; that grace and spirit can fill us, not from some outside agency, but from what is within each of us.  Worth a read.