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.
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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.
The Wanderers are, quite simply, losers. Searching for sex and manhood, they usually find violence and humiliation. Their dreams of true love end in the mundane reality of pregnancy and marriage. Projecting a tough macho image, their courage often falls short of the mark.
Their attempts to come to some understanding of their situation are almost as futile and frustrating as the ridiculous counsel offered by one mother that “the two greatest joys of being a man are beating the hell out of someone and getting the hell beaten out of you.” This advice leads one Wanderer to enlist in the Marines.
In the end, at the wedding party of one of the Wanderers, they realize that the gang’s days are numbered and gather together in the center of the room to sing their theme song. “Soon all of them stood with arms around each other’s shoulders, fingers pressing into flesh, trying to make a circle which nothing could penetrate - school, women, babies, weddings, mothers, fathers.” With that sentence, Price captures the romantic appeal of the gang lifestyle.
Tom McCarthy
