Cheap Ladies' Man (Book) (Richard Price) Price

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Customer Reviews of Ladies' Man

This was written by Price?
After reading Price's newer novels based on crime and detective work, Ladies Man comes as a decidedly junior effort when comparing writing styles. The first half of the book was a bore sprinkled with a depressing story line. The second half marks a shift to a greater introspection into the character's lives, albiet still depressing. The ending is very abrupt. Quite possibly his worst novel.

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A wrenching look at urban loneliness
Kenny Becker, the protagonist of Richard Price's "Ladies' Man," will appeal to some readers and exasperate others. He had both effects on me, simultaneously.
As the novel traces one grueling week in this 30-year-old New Yorker's life, it becomes clear what his problem is: He seems to have a near-pathological aversion to any kind of commitment. His love life is a series of depressing affairs that invariably end badly; he's lost touch with his old school friends; his job is a bad joke; he practically has to have a gun to his head just to call his parents. This book contains one of the most heartbreaking paragraphs I've ever read: After reminiscing fondly about the bonding he did with his fraternity brothers back in college, Kenny concludes, "Of course, after three months I lost interest and dropped out of the fraternity, but that's just me, Cut-and-Run Becker."
We watch through Kenny's eyes as one life-changing event after another hits him during this week. As he gives voice to his restlessness, loneliness and longing, one thing keeps the story from becoming too whiny or self-involved: Price's nearly anthropological familiarity with the details of modern urban loneliness. It's all here -- the excruciating singles-bar scene, the daydreams about other paths one might take, even the feeling that when you come home at night the newspaper on the doormat is mocking your lack of plans for the evening.
One thing is for sure: If you have healthy, sustaining relationships with other people, you'll never take them for granted again after reading "Ladies' Man."

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Definitely a book of its time
This is, in my opinion, Price's worst book. Price is an amazing writer -- "Freedomland" is one of my favorite books -- but this isn't him at his best. "The Wanderers" was his childhood and it had a clear-sighted verisimilitude. "Ladies' Man" reveals that the author knows his town (New York) like no one else, but reading it today it becomes mind-numbingly dated and the ending, as noted, shoots off the charts. Anyone who doesn't want to read about the "hideous, dirty, sick" ways homosexuals hung out back in the '70s will want to skip this book, too. The ending winds up in an underground gay club and Price really lays it on thick with people locked tightly into a room and groping freely. The homophobia and mixed messages here speaks, I guess, more so of the author than of his character.

I would only read this if you're a fan of Price and want to see how he rose from the lean-meat prose of "Wanderers" and ascended to the literary heaven of "Freedomland." Otherwise, I think you'll be hugely disappointed. Pick up "Land" or "Clockers" instead.

This is a minor misstep in the career of a monumentally talented man.