The Breaks

I'd been eagerly anticipating new novels lately from Jonathan Franzen, Paul Russell, and James Howard Kunstler. While waiting, my itch for some lit lead me to look back through Richard Price's catalog. The internet says he is most known for Clockers and The Wire, but I know him best from the awfully good novel a professor gave all her students as an end of semester gift.

That novel, Lush Life, starts with what to me is very cliche--a novel about a struggling writer living in New York City--yet paints a rich masterpiece of a great city in flux and the souls bumbling through it.

The Breaks, on the other hand, is about Peter Keller and his quarter life crisis. He's a lower middle class Jew from the Bronx who just graduated from an upstate college (first in his family), but fails to get into the law school of his choice and moves back home. He scores sky high on his second attempt at the entrance exam, but by then he's lost his legal aspirations and drifts for a year through dead end jobs.

Peter on a whim moves back to his upstate college town and through friendship with the English Department Chair, lands a job teaching Freshman Comp. He is completely unprepared to teach, but through his resourcefulness, intelligence, and knack for performing to a crowd, is fairly successful. The Chair welcomes him to continue teaching next semester and enroll as a graduate student if he wishes.

He begins dating Kim Fonseca, a single mother 5 years his senior. To his surprise, he gets on fairly well with Anthony, the 5 year old son. The trouble is that the abusive husband she is separated from is Tony Fonseca, an eccentric professor and failed writer in Peter's own English Department. Peter is scared shitless that Tony will find out and harm him, but they become friends and Tony assures him he has no problem with the relationship. But Tony is a sour character that burns a hole through the pages as Peter tries to find some footing in the world. Long story short, Kim returns to Tony despite the likelihood of continued abuse. Peter breaks the fucker's collarbone, but that does not stop Kim from resuming her marriage to him.

As the novel closes, Peter remains somewhat aimless. He is intent on fleeing to New York City to try acting and comedy, but the Chair seems to have convinced him to at least finish his semester of teaching. I don't know where that leaves him. Can he remain in his college town with Kim and Tony together again? He certainly took a respectable stand against Tony's abuse, and that is worth something. Maybe Tony and Kim will flee, leaving Peter to grow roots in the town. The damn book should have an epilogue.

Now I am on to the new Franzen novel.