MINOR MAJOR

FROM March 19, 2008

Yola! (Da Great!) I really have nothing to say at this VERY moment that isn't going down in The FADER, on the fader blog (where you can tell which ones are mine by the constant cryptic or not-so-cryptic boot camp clik references) and etc. Except it is freezing in new york and by rights of going to Austin, I now have a sunkissed upper region. AND. I am reading Richard Price's excellent Lush Life, which is compelling and mysterious and also very excellent prose - the cop drama / street life / full spectrum to all characters is something I admire in George Pelecanos, but Price is the ultimate king of making these stories, often cast off as contempo pulp, into literary masterpieces. Actually, speed reading is more like it. I can't put it down - I read it on the subway, in line for my 'scripts, outside whole foods waiting for pete sam and chioma to buy their salads so we can go back to the ranch. the setting is a shooting of an attractive, aspiring young white actor by an abused teen dominican projects kid during a botched robbery after the actor got brave and mouthy from booze, and nuevo yorkas will be reminded of the murder of a young white actress outside max fish two years ago, which this tale is most certainly based on. If you have any interest in the "land rush" new york culture and how old ny is colliding with it - how entitlement reacts to disenfranchisement - this is essential reading. it captures the lives of so many of the types of people who live in our cramped, dirty, difficult, hostile, beautiful and humanitarian city, a place that can so often seem like purgatory, but the best purgatory you would ever invent in your mind, given the choice between a god-issued one and a purgatory of your own design. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.