Lush Life would have to be read twice to receive a proper review, like most detective fiction. The first time is too exciting and plot-oriented to appreciate fully how the author leads you to the conclusion of who killed the white kid on the Lower East Side. There were times when I was so caught up I almost missed some of the strikingly beautiful language. Richard Price has an excellent command of poetic prose that fits seamlessly into the dialogue and tone of the book. Sometimes I would read over something so focused on who is guilty that I would miss over a phrase like, "The restaurant...was still a work in progress, all hammer bang and power whine.” Wow.
The book deals with a common theme in LES history: what happens when there is a plethora of desperate people crammed into one bulge with little sufficient transportation. It is written with the energy of all the different voices bouncing around like hot molecules, and the voices of the struggling actor/waiters at the café are perfect. The cops are perfect. The only element that feels different is the voice of the project kids. There is a feeling of distance with them. I can’t tell is this is something Richard Price is doing on purpose or if he hesitates on going in depth with that world because of lack of experience, which would be ridiculous since he grew up in a housing project. He recreates the movement of a restaurant flawlessly, but the PJs are stagnant, there is even a sense of distance when the point of view is on Tristan.
Price provides evidence of awareness of this distance. He describes it himself through Tristan: “What did that cop say the night him and Little Dap ran up here? A billion-dollar view on top of ten-cent people.” Human inequality is a tense presence. I finished the book with complete sympathy of all the characters; even the annoying father from Riverdale, but all I really felt for the immigrants and people living in the projects was an intense frustration because they delayed the ending by not complying. Which is not even true. In actuality it was the mistakes of the cops and the power of lawyers who delayed the connection. I was embarrassed at my own lack of sympathy and my own buy-in into the cycle of racism/classism.
My absolute favorite aspect of the book is the ghostly presence of Jewish culture. One of the Jewish characters calls the LES “our ancestral home,” which seems ridiculous. No matter what side of the Zionist debate a person is on, everyone agrees that the LES is not the Promised Land. Or it is the closest to one in the world because that is how people remember it? Price shows that the Jewish world of the LES has literally and figuratively collapsed. All that is left are the names, Lemlich, Cahan, the old Forward building, even Katz. With the Lemlichs and Cahans being names of the Projects, the comparison of person to place is both fitting and sad. The morals Clara Lemlich and Abraham Cahan stood for have been forgotten. Morality is so central to the characters but at the same time, it is transient. You dedicate your life towards a community, and then get a building named after you only to have kids deal drugs and shoot each other in the building. Everything is corruptible.
The amazing Clara Lemlich, one of my favorite people in history. The reason for the New Deal labor reforms.
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