I trekked out in the snow tonight to hear Richard Price read, and while it was worth the effort, the result was bittersweet, because now I must wait three months to read his forthcoming novel.

Price, best known for Clockers and Freedomland -- as well as for the films based on those books and for his work as a writer on HBO's excellent series, The Wire -- read from Lush Life, his latest novel, due in March. It's still far enough in the future that one link on the web page of his publisher, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, for the book takes you to information about David Hadju's similarly titled biography of jazz composer Billy Strayhorn. Another, luckily, sends you here.

That low-profile won't last long. The book, which Price said tonight is about the contemporary Lower East Side of New York -- a place populated by those who streamed in as they left Ellis Island, and then immediately tried to escape from, he added -- is told through the eyes of two young men who face a life-changing experience. According to FSG's promotional copy, the book "tears the shiny veneer off the 'new' New York to show us the hidden cracks, the underground networks of control and violence beneath the glamour." Few authors could live up to that description, but Price can and, if the passages he read tonight are any indication, does.

I didn't get a Wire fix tonight -- Price read from his book but didn't really talk much beyond that -- but did get one thanks to Amazon.com, which has three short "prequel" video clips on the page selling the fourth season DVD of The Wire. They're interesting looks at Proposition Joe and Omar as kids, as well as a peek at the day McNulty and Bunk became partners in the homicide unit. The fifth and final season of the show starts in January.

Labels: books