Greg's Reviews > Lush Life

There is a scene in the middle of Lush Life where the New York Post runs a story about one of the characters, a mid-thirties LES wanna-be someone but never will be anyone (or an aging failed hipster); the story is page three, pretty prominent placement usually reserved for stories like "Jacko has gone Wacko". Within hours of this story hitting the New York Post every slimy greasy hipster of the Rivington St. area has seen this story and turns this guy into a social pariah. Wanna be actors and filmmakers and writers and artists, they all read this story and shun the man. I read this scene in the book and I thought I was going to get an aneurysm from the exploding yells of BULLSHIT! going on in my head. Hipsters would never read the New York Post, they wouldn't know first thing in the morning what is exclusively on page three of that rag. If you don't know what the New York Post is like or no idea of the newspapers in NYC, just trust me, no one that would be hip and living downtown or in Williamsburg or wherever else is going to be reading The Post first thing in the morning, never mind a whole neighborhood of annoyingly creative individuals.

This might have been bullshit but it was needed for the plot to move forward so I grudgingly accept it in the story and if this same scene had taken place in Baltimore I probably would have accepted it, why? Because I'm not familiar with those papers except that HL Mencken once lorded over the country's conscience while writing for one of them.

When this came out everyone seemed to be wetting themselves over this book. Maybe it was just a New York thing, but it was like this was the greatest thing ever, or so it felt like in the bookstore at the time. Maybe it was because everyone was having The Wire fever and this was a novel by one of The Wire people, but set in the Lower East Side and featured hipsters rubbing up against project kids. Maybe us New Yorkers felt like it was our own little bit of the game going on, one where us whitey's could safely stand on the sidelines and watch from that awful retro 70's living room looking bar The Johnson's or at Moby's vegan eatery in between getting some ironic tattoos and maybe slumming it at a hardcore show at ABC No Rio. Maybe we could feel like we might be from some bumfuck conservative Mid-West town but, yo, we could be hangin with Omar, dawg!

Sorry, I'm quiet annoying with this review.

Whatever.

What I'm trying to say was, everyone was creaming themselves over this book, and it was good, it was a little more involved than the usual George Pelecanos novel (which are good, I wouldn't say great but a solid good), but it wasn't nearly as good as Clockers. It was a good read but the novel never really grabbed me the way I wanted Price's story to grab me after loving Clockers so much, and I kind of felt like the hype machine surrounding this book made this out to be his best novel ever.

I did love the hipster funeral / memorial service. Price might have missed the mark on the periodical reading habits of hipsters but his portrayal of them in this scene was callously great. It made me laugh. It made me want to throw napalm onto Bedford Avenue. Good stuff.