BOOKS
The Wanderers are an Italian street gang in the Bronx during the early Sixties. Existing in an era when most of the large New York street gangs had been wiped out by heroin, the Wanderers, like Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch, are a group whose time has passed.
BOOKS
THE WANDERERS by Richard Price (Avon)
The Wanderers are an Italian street gang in the Bronx during the early Sixties. Existing in an era when most of the large New York street gangs had been wiped out by heroin, the Wanderers, like Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch, are a group whose time has passed.
With his first novel, twenty-five year old Richard Price has created a tough urban American Graffitti. A native of the Bronx, Price has a fine ear for the street dialogue of his boyhood. All his characters - the Wanderers, their girlfriends, parents, friends, and foes - ring true.
Named after the song by Dion, folk heroes of their turf, the Wanderers resemble the characters found in Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics. The various gang members - warlord Richie Gennaro, lovesick Buddy Borsalino, athletic Joey Capra, tough guy Perry LaGuardia, and superstud Eugene Caputo who worries about being impotent - are the kind of guys who used to send letters to CREEM threatening physical harm to anyone foolish enpugh to say an unkind word about Laura Nyro.