The Wanderers (Price novel)


The Wanderers is a novel by the American author Richard Price. It was first published as a book in 1974. The plot is set in the Bronx, New York City, from mid-1962 to mid-1963.

Writing and publication

Price was 24 years old when The Wanderers, was published. It was his first novel, and the setting of the story is a housing project in the Bronx, New York, which is similar to that in which Price grew up.
The book contains 12 chapters, which are loosely connected with each other, mainly by reappearing characters. It is more like a collection of short stories—each chapter can stand on its own. A conventional encompassing plot is missing. However, there is a thread: the protagonists are forced to mature, each one in his own way, toward the end of the book.
Parts of the book were published as the story "Big Playground" in Antaeus, New York City, in 1972.
Regarding the year in which the story takes place there is an inconsistency. In the first chapter, it reads 12 September 1962. In chapter 5, Thanksgiving and 27 November 1962 are explicitly mentioned, as well as Valentine's Day in one of the following chapters. Then, in chapter 11, it reads 1 June 1962 on the wedding invitation given out by Buddy Borsalino. It might be an author's inaccuracy or a misprint.
The Wanderers was first published at Houghton Mifflin, Boston, Massachusetts, USA in 1974. Reprints and publications at other publishers followed, such as:
Richie Gennaro is the 17-year-old leader of the Wanderers, an Italian-American youth gang in the Bronx in 1962. His girlfriend is Denise Rizzo. Richie's friends in the Wanderers are Joey Capra, Buddy Borsalino, Eugene Caputo and Perry LaGuardia.
At the beginning of the book, a broad range of events and characters describe the zeitgeist. In addition to the protagonists, many characters appear only once. At first, “gang-business” is on focus: rivalry with other gangs in the neighborhood who come from different cultural and/or ethnic backgrounds. This rivalry is determined by prejudice and machismo. But there is also competition, in terms of sports such as football and bowling. And above all, it is about being cool and trying to have sex for the first time.
Toward the end of the book, the events focus more and more on the protagonists and their problems and challenges of growing up – everyone in his own way. Eugene joins the marines after watching, without interfering, his girlfriend, Nina, being raped. Perry's father had died several years ago; now his mother dies, and he's suddenly on his own. Living with his aunt in Trenton, New Jersey, becomes unbearable for him, so he decides to go to Boston and sail to sea. After the situation escalates, Joey flees from his violent father and joins Perry. And Buddy impregnates his girlfriend, Despie, on their very first date and has to face the challenges of being a 17-year-old husband and father.
The serious side of life is catching up, the gang is falling apart, and Richie is staying behind.

Characters

Major characters

The Wanderers received mostly positive reviews. Conor Tannam best sums it up: " The language is direct and steers clear of grandiose statements. Price writes about these adolescents like he knows where they ha been, like he had just stepped out of the places and potholes of their childhood. And although his primary focus is on The Wanderers, the eponymous youth gang, his peripheral vision is so sharp it allows him to cast a critical eye over the greater American urban landscape.
"There is immediate violence. We are drawn into the fierce territorial disputes that govern gang life, even as the tone borders on a parody of that infamous musical West Side Story. Again and again, Price is quick to remind us that the stuff this novel is made of is violence, not irritating sing-alongs. A local football match soon descends into anarchy when the protagonists rise to the challenge of the Ducky Boys, an Irish gang whose members would not reach five feet if they stood on their razors. But long before these boys have reached manhood, physical confrontation is the means by which masculinity is measured. Price is as unafraid as his cast when it comes to making this point: to be a man is to fight for the glory of the tribalistic gangs. Hence, even though the novel avoids the current trend towards the visceral, it leaves no room for ambiguity about life in the projects.
"Yet Price anchors his novel in a ground so common we have all been to it. As the Wanderers’ awkward sexual encounters capture the insecurity and self-consciousness of adolescence, Price's writing is reminiscent of Ed McBain, not least his blend of humorous levity and human drama. Price weaves the burgeoning sexuality of youth into the city's amorphous community of apartment blocks, and so the panicked bravado of these fumbling encounters not only throws the brutal violence of their childish inexperience into sharp relief. It also shows how precariously we all straddle that gap between Innocence and Fall.
"The Wanderers is yet another example of crime writing that refuses to exhaust its potential and our patience with stereotypes. The main protagonists may be unashamedly violent, but they are also full of shame and fear. Written in 1974, the novel paints an image of a city that is not quite sure how to negotiate the various ethnic groups along the self-destructive path that often leads through contemporary America. "

Adaptions

Film

The Wanderers was filmed in 1979 by Philip Kaufman. The first Avon Books printing from February 1975 refers to the upcoming movie. The artwork of the title on the front cover of the same book may have been the inspiration for the 'Wanderers logo' on the back of the uniform jackets in the film.
The major differences between book and film are Despie is Richie's girlfriend and made Chubby's daughter, Buddy is made a minor character, Eugene and C are nonexistent, Nina becomes Joey's love interest and Nina's rape never occurs. Instead, she kisses Richie in the back of his car, becoming his main love interest which betrays Joey. However disappointed with all their boys lifestyles, Richie sees her "disappear" and becoming more interested and heading into a higher spiritual road along the intellectual Youth Force that will lead the 1960s away from the 1950s in which his gang were still lingering, and way ahead incomprehensible for him at the verge of settling into a married man life. Witnessing the assassination of President Kennedy on a store-window TV set made him realize that change was spinning and speeding up in the nation as a whole, as well as in him and his peers as they transitioned from teens to young adults.