Publication
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (2009)
Original publication date
1992
Collections
Subjects
Awards
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — Fiction — 1992)
Description
Crack-dealers known as "Clockers" are at the bottom of the drug-dealing ladder, and they must commit murder to rise higher.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Vicki_Weisfeld
When I read Richard Price’s new crime novel The Whites earlier this year, I knew I needed to loop around and read this 1992 novel, widely considered his “best.” It really is knock-your-socks-off. In alternating chapters, it adopts the point of view of Strike, a young drug-dealer in housing
Strike is a lower-level dealer who wants to get out of it, but without even a high school education, he can’t see any other path forward. Rocco is a seen-it-all investigator working in the county prosecutor’s office. What brings these two together is the murder confession by Strike’s straight-arrow brother Victor. Strike was supposed to make the hit, and didn’t, but he doesn’t think Victor did it either, and he wants to save his brother whatever way he can. Rocco figures Strike for the shooter, but can’t get Victor to change his story.
It’s a story about poor people, mostly black, and lost fathers, in which a few heroic mothers struggle to maintain family order. Strike’s cocaine- and crack-fueled world (he himself never uses the product) is under constant yet ineffectual harassment by federal, state, and local police, housing police, and narcotics officers. The homicide detectives, who are a little higher on the law enforcement pecking order, are less frequent visitors to this milieu. They have their own agenda and sometimes cooperate with the other authorities, and sometimes not. Strike can never be sure where loyalties lie, even those of his own runners, who may ally with rival drug lords at any time. He certainly can’t trust Rocco, who is always playing games of his own.
What makes the book so powerful are the deep portraits of the characters. Both the main players are both strong and weak, the reader likes and loathes them in almost equal measure. Supporting characters—Rocco’s partner Mazilli and Strike’s boss Rodney, especially—are fully drawn and absolutely believable. The writing, including the characters’ dialog, is pitch-perfect.
Price was one of the writers for the best-tv-ever series [!!], The Wire, and reading this book after seeing the show, I certainly saw echoes of some of its notable characters: D’Angelo sitting on his perch in the projects, managing a team of young runners; Omar, the invincible hit-man cut down by a child; Officer Thomas Hauc, the violent and racist enforcer.
Even though the narcotics picture has changed in the past 23 years, this remains a riveting book because of the strength of its story and the social dysfunctions it lays bare, which are still, by and large, unresolved.
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projects of fictional Dempsy, New Jersey, across the river from Manhattan, and homicide detective Rocco Klein.Strike is a lower-level dealer who wants to get out of it, but without even a high school education, he can’t see any other path forward. Rocco is a seen-it-all investigator working in the county prosecutor’s office. What brings these two together is the murder confession by Strike’s straight-arrow brother Victor. Strike was supposed to make the hit, and didn’t, but he doesn’t think Victor did it either, and he wants to save his brother whatever way he can. Rocco figures Strike for the shooter, but can’t get Victor to change his story.
It’s a story about poor people, mostly black, and lost fathers, in which a few heroic mothers struggle to maintain family order. Strike’s cocaine- and crack-fueled world (he himself never uses the product) is under constant yet ineffectual harassment by federal, state, and local police, housing police, and narcotics officers. The homicide detectives, who are a little higher on the law enforcement pecking order, are less frequent visitors to this milieu. They have their own agenda and sometimes cooperate with the other authorities, and sometimes not. Strike can never be sure where loyalties lie, even those of his own runners, who may ally with rival drug lords at any time. He certainly can’t trust Rocco, who is always playing games of his own.
What makes the book so powerful are the deep portraits of the characters. Both the main players are both strong and weak, the reader likes and loathes them in almost equal measure. Supporting characters—Rocco’s partner Mazilli and Strike’s boss Rodney, especially—are fully drawn and absolutely believable. The writing, including the characters’ dialog, is pitch-perfect.
Price was one of the writers for the best-tv-ever series [!!], The Wire, and reading this book after seeing the show, I certainly saw echoes of some of its notable characters: D’Angelo sitting on his perch in the projects, managing a team of young runners; Omar, the invincible hit-man cut down by a child; Officer Thomas Hauc, the violent and racist enforcer.
Even though the narcotics picture has changed in the past 23 years, this remains a riveting book because of the strength of its story and the social dysfunctions it lays bare, which are still, by and large, unresolved.
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LibraryThing member uvula_fr_b4
Richard Price's epic (over 600 pages in the mass market paperback edition) novel Clockers sinks the reader deeply -- perhaps far more deeply than he thought he wanted to be -- into the daily life of a street-level drug dealer (or "clocker," in Price's street argot) and a homicide detective with a
Strike is a 19-year-old clocker, ulcer-sufferer (he constantly chugs vanilla Yoo-Hoo) and protege of his dealer / convenience store-owner boss, the Jheri curled O.G. Rodney, who is charged with executing a wayward employee of Rodney's; Rocco is a forty-three year-old homicide detective longing to retire or change careers who finally gets recharged by his investigation of the above-mentioned murder. What follows is both more and less than what one might expect after a lifetime of TV cop (and, latterly, forensics) shows, Hollywood movies, crime novels, police procedurals and pulp thrillers, and this is both Clockers' glory and, ultimately, downfall: while the dialogue scans as utterly believable (if a little more profanely literate and witty than most of us could manage over the course of a normal day) and the events unfold with a homely realism, the anti-climactic conclusion may well leave some readers with a nagging sense of dissatisfaction. Price's real genius here may well be in demonstrating just how much the reader has been programmed by pop cultural treatments of this type of subject matter to want a definite conclusion to their cops-n'-criminals stories, whether good or bad.
The term "clockers" is ingenious, as every single one of the characters -- and, ultimately, the reader -- is "nailed to the face of time" (p. 582 of the mass market pb; Chapter 33) by circumstances over which they have laughably little control.
And yes, at least one sequence from Clockers was used in the HBO TV series The Wire: the "Goodnight, werewolves" bit at the end of Chapter 2.
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perhaps too young wife and a severe case of mid-life crisis. Essentially a slice-of-life covering just two weeks, Clockers is less a crime novel or mystery than it is a naturalistic (think Theodore Dreiser) look at a segment of the American underclass in a declining, fictional, mid-sized New Jersey city. Strike is a 19-year-old clocker, ulcer-sufferer (he constantly chugs vanilla Yoo-Hoo) and protege of his dealer / convenience store-owner boss, the Jheri curled O.G. Rodney, who is charged with executing a wayward employee of Rodney's; Rocco is a forty-three year-old homicide detective longing to retire or change careers who finally gets recharged by his investigation of the above-mentioned murder. What follows is both more and less than what one might expect after a lifetime of TV cop (and, latterly, forensics) shows, Hollywood movies, crime novels, police procedurals and pulp thrillers, and this is both Clockers' glory and, ultimately, downfall: while the dialogue scans as utterly believable (if a little more profanely literate and witty than most of us could manage over the course of a normal day) and the events unfold with a homely realism, the anti-climactic conclusion may well leave some readers with a nagging sense of dissatisfaction. Price's real genius here may well be in demonstrating just how much the reader has been programmed by pop cultural treatments of this type of subject matter to want a definite conclusion to their cops-n'-criminals stories, whether good or bad.
The term "clockers" is ingenious, as every single one of the characters -- and, ultimately, the reader -- is "nailed to the face of time" (p. 582 of the mass market pb; Chapter 33) by circumstances over which they have laughably little control.
And yes, at least one sequence from Clockers was used in the HBO TV series The Wire: the "Goodnight, werewolves" bit at the end of Chapter 2.
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LibraryThing member stratu23
Clockers is an awesome book. I'm a big fan of the TV series The Wire, and reading this book , I kept thinking that the show's writers must be big fans of this book. It also reminded me of the excellent writing and characters in the '90s series Homicide: Life on the Street.
Anyway, Clockers was the
Anyway, Clockers was the
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first Richard Price book I've read and it was one of those rare, great ones that has made me wanna track down his others. Show Less
LibraryThing member br77rino
This is the story of Strike, a black drug seller in Dempsey, NJ, his boss Rodney (played by Delroy Lindo in the movie), the white cop Rocco (Harvey Keitel), and Strike's brother Victor.
There are lots of symmetries going on. Strike and Victor chose two separate paths from their good home: Strike to
Great book. Great characters. I don't know if it's Price's best, but it is better than Bloodbrothers, and I don't know how it could have been better. It's at that level where it doesn't need to be any better, like The Godfather or Lonesome Dove.
There are lots of symmetries going on. Strike and Victor chose two separate paths from their good home: Strike to
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crime, and Victor to a strict law-abiding-ness. There's the cops vs robbers motif, of course, but then there's another interesting symmetry between Rodney and Strike. Strike, with his ulcer, is the moral bad guy, and Rodney is the completely amoral bad guy. Rocco mentions once how most bad guys pretend to be bad, but that Rodney is the real deal. Great book. Great characters. I don't know if it's Price's best, but it is better than Bloodbrothers, and I don't know how it could have been better. It's at that level where it doesn't need to be any better, like The Godfather or Lonesome Dove.
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LibraryThing member Larou
Right from its very first page - when it lifts the curtain on a street corner in the fictional city of Dempsey in the USA and describes in great and and apparently well-researched detail the low-level drug dealing going on there - this novel will seem very familiar to everyone who ever watched a
Both TV show and novel attempt to give a realistic, even naturalist view on inner city drug dealing in contemporary USA (and I assume that not much has changed there in the twenty years since Clockers was first published), and both are very successful at it. Of course one might wonder, especially in regard to the novel, whether naturalism (as well as the generally heavy-handed symbolism that tends to come along with it – Strike’s stomach ulcer is as eye-rollingly obvious a metaphor as ever Nana’s smallpox was) are really capable of getting a grip on that phenomenon or whether a realistic depiction is not doomed to reproduce nothing but its surface… but that would be rather beyond the humble scope of this blog post.
What makes Clockers fall a bit short compared to The Wire is that it confines itself to just two points of view, those of small time drug dealer Strike and almost burned-out cop Rocco, so that, in spite of its massive length, the picture the novel presents is somewhat limited in scope. On the other hand, the novel delves into much more detail than a TV show, even one running over several seasons, could, and Price paints with a really fine brush, or, to use a more appropriate metaphor, he zooms in very close, until the familiar urban landscape begins to look bizarre and takes on an almost alien quality.
This is rather detrimental to the story’s pacing, however, which never really gets off the ground and without gaining any real momentum just slogs along over 600 pages of tiny, eyesight-destroying print (I really wish there had been a Kindle edition of this available). But given its subject matter, maybe we’re not supposed to enjoy the ride Richard Price takes us on (and The Wire, too, was hard to stomach at times and quite depressing overall), and the mistake might have been mine to expect something like your standard crime novel from this book. Maybe the best way to read Clockers is not as a novel at all but as fictionalized journalism, a report not only on the state of American cities but on the state of the American soul.
The latter because Richard Price is not only very adept at describing the look and feel of his fictional Dempsey but also excels at characterisation, not just of his protagonists but also of a host of minor characters populating the streets, their lives revolving in one way or another around drugs and violence. He avoids cliché and facile explanations, shows how the enviroment shapes his characters’ minds and behaviour but never simply reduces them to a mere product of their surroundings. The two narrative viewpoints are used quite deftly to get different perspectives on the same characters, and while the main protaginists carry sometimes rather heavily on all the symbolism Price heaps on them, they never are overwhelmed by it. Clockers is very much not the fast-moving crime novel I was expecting when I started it, but in spite of some lingering reservations, I cannot say that I am disappointed with the sprawling description of inner city life that I got instead.
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season of the TV show The Wire. And that is no coincidence, as not only was Richard Price one of the writers on that show, but Clockers supposedly was one of its major inspirations.Both TV show and novel attempt to give a realistic, even naturalist view on inner city drug dealing in contemporary USA (and I assume that not much has changed there in the twenty years since Clockers was first published), and both are very successful at it. Of course one might wonder, especially in regard to the novel, whether naturalism (as well as the generally heavy-handed symbolism that tends to come along with it – Strike’s stomach ulcer is as eye-rollingly obvious a metaphor as ever Nana’s smallpox was) are really capable of getting a grip on that phenomenon or whether a realistic depiction is not doomed to reproduce nothing but its surface… but that would be rather beyond the humble scope of this blog post.
What makes Clockers fall a bit short compared to The Wire is that it confines itself to just two points of view, those of small time drug dealer Strike and almost burned-out cop Rocco, so that, in spite of its massive length, the picture the novel presents is somewhat limited in scope. On the other hand, the novel delves into much more detail than a TV show, even one running over several seasons, could, and Price paints with a really fine brush, or, to use a more appropriate metaphor, he zooms in very close, until the familiar urban landscape begins to look bizarre and takes on an almost alien quality.
This is rather detrimental to the story’s pacing, however, which never really gets off the ground and without gaining any real momentum just slogs along over 600 pages of tiny, eyesight-destroying print (I really wish there had been a Kindle edition of this available). But given its subject matter, maybe we’re not supposed to enjoy the ride Richard Price takes us on (and The Wire, too, was hard to stomach at times and quite depressing overall), and the mistake might have been mine to expect something like your standard crime novel from this book. Maybe the best way to read Clockers is not as a novel at all but as fictionalized journalism, a report not only on the state of American cities but on the state of the American soul.
The latter because Richard Price is not only very adept at describing the look and feel of his fictional Dempsey but also excels at characterisation, not just of his protagonists but also of a host of minor characters populating the streets, their lives revolving in one way or another around drugs and violence. He avoids cliché and facile explanations, shows how the enviroment shapes his characters’ minds and behaviour but never simply reduces them to a mere product of their surroundings. The two narrative viewpoints are used quite deftly to get different perspectives on the same characters, and while the main protaginists carry sometimes rather heavily on all the symbolism Price heaps on them, they never are overwhelmed by it. Clockers is very much not the fast-moving crime novel I was expecting when I started it, but in spite of some lingering reservations, I cannot say that I am disappointed with the sprawling description of inner city life that I got instead.
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LibraryThing member datrappert
This 550+ page novel is simply brilliant from beginning to end. At first, you'll be struck by the similarities to HBO's The Wire--and no wonder, since Price worked (many years later) on the Wire with David Simon. There is a scene in Clockers, for instance, where the drug dealers and off duty cops
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meet at a movie theater and are amazed to see that each other have lives outside of their opposing businesses. This scene was echoed in The Wire. But fairly early on, the stories diverge quite a bit. Unlike the sprawling multiple story lines that The Wire followed, Clockers focuses its alternating chapters on two characters--Strike, the boss of the "clockers" (small-time drug dealers who sell to people on the corner). Strike is the one who gets to sit in the middle of things on a bench as the overseer, working for the scary but shrewd Rodney Little. The police chapters focus on Rocco Klein, a tough but honest homicide cop who is the investigator of a murder that Strike's brother has confessed to--but he knows something doesn't make sense. As the story proceeds, the two characters come into more frequent contact, and the ending of the book--which is not what you might expect--is excellent. Price apparently spent fives years researching on the streets before he wrote this book, and it shows. The heart of this book is not the crimes, but the people, and we are introduced to some extraordinary characters who run the gamut of the scale from honest to dishonest. Price's writing is colorful but never obtuse or difficult to understand. You'll feel like you're on the streets or at the station house, liquor store, or corner store with Strike and Rocco. All in all, it isn't nearly as violent as The Wire, which couldn't resist the sudden gun-to-the-head wasting of some of its more memorable characters. But the murders in Clockers, especially the last one, bring the story home in a visceral manner to any reader with a heart and soul. Highly highly recommended. This is a pretty flawless book and well worth the investment of your time. Show Less
LibraryThing member crule627
One of the better 'crime' novels I've read. Richard Price is one of the writers for The Wire and some great scenes in that show are drawn from this book. If you liked The Wire, you'll really like this book. The characters are really well crafted, the storyline compelling and captivating, and the
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dialogue is just fantastic. Show Less
LibraryThing member jorgearanda
An intense, illuminating, extremely realistic murder mystery. Wonderful characters.
LibraryThing member Joycepa
Strike is a black teeneager in Dempsey, New Jersey, a “crew chief” for a major drug distributor. He runs a group of “clockers”, young teenagers who sell bottles of cocaine, although he himself doesn’t touch the stuff--he has enough trouble with his ulcer.
Rocco is a Dempsey Homicide
These are the two main protagonists, and for 593 pages, we read of life on the streets for both drug dealers and users, of “dirty” cops, of drug raids and everyday harassment, of racial profiling, of lines of cars filled mostly with whites picking up their bottles from the clockers on the streets.
This is neither an edifying nor particularly uplifting story, although there is a surprise ending. It’s mostly a matter-of-fact, very well written detailed account of life on the streets and of too many cops who bend or break the rules in their efforts to deal with the impossible problem of drugs. The characters are not particularly likable; it’s hard to feel any empathy for any of them, even Victor. Strike and his boss Rodney are the most believable, the best drawn, but Rodney is scum, no matter how he pictures himself as a businessman who tries to teach his young charges a better way of living through drug dealing.
The story line is really a documentary--a well-written and well-produced documentary, but having the emotional distance and impersonality of a documentary. I have no doubt of the reality of Price’s scene, but it did not move me. In particular, I am pretty sick of boozy, well-meaning quasi-dirty cops in literature, and Rocco is a totally unsympathetic character as far as I’m concerned.
Well written, well told, but somehow lacking in any kind of passion--it just simply failed to engage me.
Rocco is a Dempsey Homicide
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detective, who is a borderline alcoholic. He becomes obsessed with Strike when Strike’s brother Victor turns himself in for killing another drug dealer; Rocco is convinced that Victor is lying to cover for his brother.These are the two main protagonists, and for 593 pages, we read of life on the streets for both drug dealers and users, of “dirty” cops, of drug raids and everyday harassment, of racial profiling, of lines of cars filled mostly with whites picking up their bottles from the clockers on the streets.
This is neither an edifying nor particularly uplifting story, although there is a surprise ending. It’s mostly a matter-of-fact, very well written detailed account of life on the streets and of too many cops who bend or break the rules in their efforts to deal with the impossible problem of drugs. The characters are not particularly likable; it’s hard to feel any empathy for any of them, even Victor. Strike and his boss Rodney are the most believable, the best drawn, but Rodney is scum, no matter how he pictures himself as a businessman who tries to teach his young charges a better way of living through drug dealing.
The story line is really a documentary--a well-written and well-produced documentary, but having the emotional distance and impersonality of a documentary. I have no doubt of the reality of Price’s scene, but it did not move me. In particular, I am pretty sick of boozy, well-meaning quasi-dirty cops in literature, and Rocco is a totally unsympathetic character as far as I’m concerned.
Well written, well told, but somehow lacking in any kind of passion--it just simply failed to engage me.
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LibraryThing member Humbert_Humbert
I never thought I could feel sorrow for a crack dealer, but Price made me do exactly that. Twisting your views of the slum world of drug dealing you can't help but to put yourself into the shoes of the protagonist.
LibraryThing member deldevries
Dense and detailed dialog. Not easy to read and the topic and characters didn't engage or catch my interest. It may be a New Classic because of a different genre it fits?
LibraryThing member oparaxenos
This was an enthralling - and profoundly depressing - story about the small-time drug trade in a gritty New Jersey city. The author's use of language in describing the story's gritty setting is excellent. This is well worth a read
LibraryThing member tercat
I'd like to give this 3 and a half stars.
LibraryThing member mjlivi
Let's get this out of the way first: this book is too long. It's 600 pages, the plot is relatively straightforward, and it really needed a bit of an edit to tighten things up.
Having said that, Price is a dynamite writer - anyone who's read Lush Life knows that - and he knows the drug war as well as
Having said that, Price is a dynamite writer - anyone who's read Lush Life knows that - and he knows the drug war as well as
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anybody - anyone who's watched his episodes of The Wire knows that. This is a powerful, sad book about the inexorable forces behind the drug war in the US and the little people (on both sides) who get ground up by them. Show Less
LibraryThing member mrgan
An excellent, deeply researched story, a richly painted world. The procedural stuff is good, but it drags on a bit, and it doesn't have the power of the simple observations about life on the corner and in a cheap cop suit.
This one stays with you, largely due to one of its many similarities to The
This one stays with you, largely due to one of its many similarities to The
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Wire: gripping stories, clearly plucked from real life. Show Less
LibraryThing member LastCall
A brilliant book bar genre. Was also highly influential on the first season of The Wire. He has written episodes for the third season of The Wire.
LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
Dig down. Dig beneath the slang and bravado and you will find a gritty story about two very different human beings trying to survive the poverty stricken streets of New Jersey and New York. Rocco Klein has been a homicide detective for too long. He has seen it all and maybe he is too jaded because,
As an aside: Clockers is code for drug runners. Cocaine dealers, to be more specific
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as of late, the drug deaths he encounters inch him closer and closer to a yawning apathy. It might be time to retire. That is, until he meets young, barely out of his teens, Victor Dunham. Victor seems to be too innocent to be readily and eagerly confessing to a murder. Klein knows better. Who is Vincent covering for? Could it be his always in trouble drug-dealing brother? The cat and mouse game cops and crook play makes for an adventure (albeit a little long).As an aside: Clockers is code for drug runners. Cocaine dealers, to be more specific
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Language
Original language
English
ISBN
0747598207 / 9780747598206
Physical description
608 p.; 5.08 inches
Pages
608