“I’m working on a screenplay.” Saying it like he was embarrassed.

“For a move?”

“For money.”

I remember his saying in John’s interview that he is first and last a novelist but writes screenplays to buy time to write novels.

Apparently his later novels are much more ambitious, which given how good the one I’m reading now is makes me distinctly keen to read more of his stuff (though I’ll have to see how this one ends first of course, a great first half of a novel need not always mean a great second half, as Baudolino shows).

I think cinematic is fair, mainly because he tells story through dialogue, sets up nice scenes, and propels the plot forward. All of this without the cinematic trickery or sacrificing his characters for cleverness or plot movement.

I’ll probably still start with Clockers, but you do make him sound appealing and I do enjoy the odd crime novel. One for the list I think.

By the way, here is an interview John Self conducted with Price on his blog. Meant to link to it in the main post above (and have amended it so it’s there) but realized it never happened.

Interesting point about the cops having more in common with the projects than with the gifted whites. I think that is true. Most of the cops were from minority backgrounds, even if not the projects. And it’s interesting that, though their job usually makes them deal with the kids from the projects, many of whom they know by name, the police don’t understand the cues Eric sends them during the interview. They mostly misinterpret everything, but they are very gifted at picking apart a kid from the projects.

In an NPR interview earlier this year, Price was asked where he gets the slang he uses in his books. Price replied that he invents a lot of it, because otherwise the slang would be out of date by the time the book was published. Price’s method involves a lot of observation of the police, so this probably applies more to the other characters (particularly those from the Projects).

Reading the depiction of Eric Cash being interviewed, I thought that Price might be saying that the Cops, and not just Yolonda, have more in common with people from the Projects than they do with the “Young, Gifted Whites”. They certainly have a better understanding of their behaviour and motivations.