Richard Price's Reading List

"my favorite writer of fiction is Isaac Babel, primarily for one book, "Red Cavalry." I find that book endlessly haunting for its blunt yet somehow elusive style. It's a masterpiece of negative space: Whenever I read this book it invariably leaves me feeling off balance and on edge. And I can't stop rereading it."

"In fiction, Edith Wharton's "House of Mirth," and at the opposite end of the social spectrum, Henry Roth's "Call It Sleep.""

"In fiction, Edith Wharton's "House of Mirth," and at the opposite end of the social spectrum, Henry Roth's "Call It Sleep.""

"James Baldwin's "Go Tell It on the Mountain.""

"Abraham Cahan's "The Rise of David Levinsky.""

"George V. Higgins, mainly for "The Friends of Eddie Coyle," with its low-stakes streetpolitik and its ear-perfect (and endless) dialogue."

"James M. Cain for the brutal economy of his prose and the cold fatalism that suffuses his three best books: "The Postman Always Rings Twice," "Double Indemnity" and the lesser-known "Serenade.""

"Hubert Selby's "Last Exit to Brooklyn," read when I was 17. "Last Exit to Brooklyn" showed me how to marry bebop lyricism to the stolid urban realism that I loved so much. These two books, for better or worse, gave me my voice."