“Lush Life,” the forthcoming new novel of New York City from Richard Price, the author of “Clockers” and many a script for “The Wire,” is superficially a crime mystery but really it’s an acidly funny and hugely successful attempt to get everything that’s happening in the city today between two covers. The collision between confused, stupid and morally blank housing-project dirtbags on the one hand and, on the other, cosseted suburban-grown product who staff and patronize hot restaurants on the Lower East Side while they await certain celebrity, leads to a homicide and then a runway show of the vanities. Price dryly takes it all down: the way a young screenwriter/bartender-for-the-time-being confronts an armed robber by exclaiming, “Not tonight my man” and pays for his foolish movie behavior with his life. The way the young killer almost inadvertently squeezes off the round because he can’t think of anything else to do (then retreats to his unpleasant apartment to write rap lyrics extolling his great secret). The way the well-meaning cops terrrorize the wrong guy with a sneak-attack interrogation intended to wring a confession that instead alienates an innocent man who is the only reliable witness. One felon shakes down a tourist for cash and is instead offered a check; the criminal thinks this a great joke and keeps the check to show off to his friends as an example of humorous folly, never grasping that in doing so he is carrying around evidence against himself. A memorial service for the slain writer/barkeep degenerates into a competitive audition in which his creatively-inclined surviving pals work it for the news cameras on hand. “Lush Life” covers familiar ground without romancing any of it; it’s so vivid and real, it’s like “Rent” as rewritten by Balzac. The book is coming in March from FSG.
May 2012
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Articles
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The Jigsaw Puzzle & the Chessboard
Henry R. NauThe making and unmaking of foreign policy in the age of Obama.
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What the Evangelicals Give the Jews
Michael MedvedThe true, and hidden, virtue of a controversial relationship.
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Three Days that Shook ObamaCare
Tevi Troy -
The War Obama Wanted
Alana GoodmanHow Democrats got the better of Republicans on contraception vs. religious liberty.
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Ryan's Hope
James PethokoukisAre the politics changing when it comes to reining in Medicare?
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Capital Offense
Omri Ceren -
Eisenhower and the End of Greatness
Michael J. LewisFrank Gehry's design doesn't know how to convey a singular truth.
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Deviated: A Memoir
Jesse KellermanA cautionary tale from the brave new world of health-care coverage.
Politics & Ideas
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Class Dismissed
Jeff JacobyA review of Jonathan D. Sarna's "When General Grant Expelled the Jews"
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The Closing of the American Nietzsche
Charles M. StangA review of Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's "American Nietzsche"
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In Tropes They Trust
Jonathan Neumann -
Prudishness Lost
Peter Lopatin
Culture & Civilization
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Beloved by Whom?
D.G. Myers -
The Incredible Shrinking Conductor
Terry Teachout -
Roth’s Complaint
William GiraldiA review of "Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters," edited and translated by Michael Hofmann
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The Game Change Game
Andrew Ferguson
John Podhoretz
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Culture Warrior in Chief
John Podhoretz
Threat Assessment
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The Iran Leakfest
Jonathan S. Tobin
Letters
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Taking the Jewish Vote for Granted
Our ReadersLetters in response to Jonathan S. Tobin's “Jews, Money, and 2012"
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Bickel and Judicial Restraint
Our ReadersLetters in response to Adam J. White's "The Lost Greatness of Alexander Bickel"
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Objectivity and the Haredim
Our ReadersLetters in response to Mati Wagner's "The Ultra-Orthodox on the Warpath"
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What About the Urban Poor?
Our ReadersLetters in response to Bruce D. Meyer and James X. Sullivan's "American Mobility"
Enter Laughing
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