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Ladies' Man
Kenny Becker just dumped his girlfriend--the reasons are a little complex. Young and newly unemployed, his main assets at the moment are six-pack abs and a healthy libido--he's ready to get out, find a little action, and maybe find himself too. But New York is no place for the lonely, and with one meaningless sexual encounter after another, Kenny begins to wonder if the singles scene is not itself a complete con job, with his heart and his future at stake. Raunchy, funny, and surprisingly heartfelt, this 1978 clubland slice-of-life displays Richard Price in gritty good form.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
About the author
Richard Price
63 books863 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
Also writes under the pen name Harry Brandt
A self-described "middle class Jewish kid," Price grew up in a housing project in the northeast Bronx. Today, he lives in New York City with his family.
Price graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1967 and obtained a BA from Cornell University and an MFA from Columbia. He also did graduate work at Stanford. He has taught writing at Columbia, Yale, and New York University. He was one of the first people interviewed on the NPR show Fresh Air when it began airing nationally in 1987. In 1999, he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature.
Price's novels explore late 20th century urban America in a gritty, realistic manner that has brought him considerable literary acclaim. Several of his novels are set in a fictional northern New Jersey city called Dempsy. In his review of Lush Life (2008), Walter Kirn compared Price to Raymond Chandler and Saul Bellow.
Price's first novel was The Wanderers (1974), a coming-of-age story set in the Bronx in 1962, written when Price was 24 years old. It was adapted into a movie in 1979, with a screenplay by Rose and Philip Kaufman and directed by the latter.
Clockers (1992) was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. It has been praised for its humor, suspense, dialogue, and characterizations. In 1995, it was made into a movie directed by Spike Lee; Price and Lee shared writing credits for the screenplay.
Price has written numerous screenplays, of which the best known are The Color of Money (1986), for which he was nominated for an Oscar, Life Lessons (the Martin Scorsese segment of New York Stories) (1989), Sea of Love (1989), Mad Dog and Glory (1992), Ransom (1996), and Shaft (2000). He also wrote for the HBO series The Wire. Price was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2009 ceremony for his work on the fifth season of The Wire. He is often cast in cameo roles in the films he writes.
Price also wrote and conceptualized the 15 minute film surrounding Michael Jackson's "Bad" video.
Additionally, he has published articles in the The New York Times, Esquire Magazine, The New Yorker, Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and others.
Also writes under the pen name Harry Brandt
A self-described "middle class Jewish kid," Price grew up in a housing project in the northeast Bronx. Today, he lives in New York City with his family.
Price graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1967 and obtained a BA from Cornell University and an MFA from Columbia. He also did graduate work at Stanford. He has taught writing at Columbia, Yale, and New York University. He was one of the first people interviewed on the NPR show Fresh Air when it began airing nationally in 1987. In 1999, he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature.
Price's novels explore late 20th century urban America in a gritty, realistic manner that has brought him considerable literary acclaim. Several of his novels are set in a fictional northern New Jersey city called Dempsy. In his review of Lush Life (2008), Walter Kirn compared Price to Raymond Chandler and Saul Bellow.
Price's first novel was The Wanderers (1974), a coming-of-age story set in the Bronx in 1962, written when Price was 24 years old. It was adapted into a movie in 1979, with a screenplay by Rose and Philip Kaufman and directed by the latter.
Clockers (1992) was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. It has been praised for its humor, suspense, dialogue, and characterizations. In 1995, it was made into a movie directed by Spike Lee; Price and Lee shared writing credits for the screenplay.
Price has written numerous screenplays, of which the best known are The Color of Money (1986), for which he was nominated for an Oscar, Life Lessons (the Martin Scorsese segment of New York Stories) (1989), Sea of Love (1989), Mad Dog and Glory (1992), Ransom (1996), and Shaft (2000). He also wrote for the HBO series The Wire. Price was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2009 ceremony for his work on the fifth season of The Wire. He is often cast in cameo roles in the films he writes.
Price also wrote and conceptualized the 15 minute film surrounding Michael Jackson's "Bad" video.
Additionally, he has published articles in the The New York Times, Esquire Magazine, The New Yorker, Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and others.
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January 29, 2020
”Kenny makes a move.”
Kenny Becker is having trouble with his girlfriend. She used to turn him inside out with the force of her passion, but recently she has been as cold as an icicle in a snowstorm. The whiplash from “let’s get it on” to “I’m just not interested” leaves Kenny about to come unglued. The more she pushes him away, the more he wants her. As he tries to explain: ”The need to get laid is an honorable need.”
It isn’t just about lustful sex, though that is still the main objective, but with a guy like Kenny in the midst of reevaluating his life on a daily basis, it is also about being desired by someone. He is insecure enough to do 150 sit ups every night, turning his stomach into a rippling topography that looks like the knobby tires on a dirt bike. He knows he is reasonably attractive...so...what gives?
When he catches her pleasuring herself, it is like being slapped in the face by a 500 pound silverback gorilla. La Donna, the girlfriend, moves out, and Kenny, who thought he was lonely before, discovers there are whole subterranean levels of loneliness. He is thirty years old, and though everything you read will tell you that 30, 50, 70 are just numbers, they are only numbers if you are ecstatically happy with your life. To see them as just arbitrary markers you must be able to believe that misery and expectations are something long ago eradicated, like the plague or polio . Kenny dropped out of college 25 credits short. I can’t even begin to tell you how many people I’ve met in my life who have told me they were one semester or two short of getting their degree.
I always think to myself, what do you want me to say?
Kenny is, not surprising, in a dead end job selling Bluecastle products door to door. I’ve done that type of work for short spans in my life. It can be rewarding financially, but ultimately it becomes soul crushing work. Your best customers are the loneliest people on the planet, widowed women with twenty cats. They buy, but what they are buying is your time, a brief interlude of conversation for the cost of hand lotion they don’t really need or scented candles that they will never burn.
He quits. ”Kenny makes a move.”
With the girlfriend out of the equation, his apartment begins to feel more and more like that Death Star garbage compactor in Star Wars. Thus begins his odyssey; there are Trojans, but they aren’t Greeks, through the peep show, massage parlors, singles bars looking for “love in all the wrong places.” He thinks his driving need is sex, but as we follow along with Kenny, it becomes more and more clear that what he wants is intimacy. He wants his love all in one place. He wants a girlfriend, but as he clumsily tries to pick up women, he shows more interest in making new friends with the other desperate guys he meets. Even when he is successful, it is disastrous. ”Something was pissing me off. I felt this mood of time being wasted. An enraged silence.”
What is the alternative? Get a cat?
His friend from high school, Donny, appears out of the mist like a battered life preserver in the middle of an ocean of despair. ”Donny. Who the fuck was Donny? He was a memory. A character from some novel I’d read years before.” Donny has gone through some cha-cha-changes. Donny takes Kenny some places that make him uncomfortable. Kenny is going to piss some readers off with his flagrant use of the N word and the colorful words regarding sexual orientation, but there is so much bluster wrapped around all these utterances that I realized very quickly that all of his prejudices, like they are for most people, are borrowed. None of them are based off personal experience, but concocted from fears appropriated from the previous generation. They are as fake as a spray on tan.
This is an honest novel. Richard Price has stripped away the layers of this character and left him completely exposed to the reader. We see into his mind. We see his embarrassing impulses. We cringe over his awkward interactions. We feel panic for him as his frolicking mind misses third and floats in neutral, leaving him unable to make a rational decision. He has no role models in his life. He only has the mythology of a paint by numbers guide (education, career, wife, kids etc.) of how to be successful. Going back to school is just a fall back position, a last beacon of hope that a magical piece of paper will land him the castle he desires. We have seven days with Kenny, and when I found myself untethered from Kenny, I kept thinking to myself he is so close to a transformation that could prove to be completely liberating or completely disastrous.
Kenny will make a move.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
Kenny Becker is having trouble with his girlfriend. She used to turn him inside out with the force of her passion, but recently she has been as cold as an icicle in a snowstorm. The whiplash from “let’s get it on” to “I’m just not interested” leaves Kenny about to come unglued. The more she pushes him away, the more he wants her. As he tries to explain: ”The need to get laid is an honorable need.”
It isn’t just about lustful sex, though that is still the main objective, but with a guy like Kenny in the midst of reevaluating his life on a daily basis, it is also about being desired by someone. He is insecure enough to do 150 sit ups every night, turning his stomach into a rippling topography that looks like the knobby tires on a dirt bike. He knows he is reasonably attractive...so...what gives?
When he catches her pleasuring herself, it is like being slapped in the face by a 500 pound silverback gorilla. La Donna, the girlfriend, moves out, and Kenny, who thought he was lonely before, discovers there are whole subterranean levels of loneliness. He is thirty years old, and though everything you read will tell you that 30, 50, 70 are just numbers, they are only numbers if you are ecstatically happy with your life. To see them as just arbitrary markers you must be able to believe that misery and expectations are something long ago eradicated, like the plague or polio . Kenny dropped out of college 25 credits short. I can’t even begin to tell you how many people I’ve met in my life who have told me they were one semester or two short of getting their degree.
I always think to myself, what do you want me to say?
Kenny is, not surprising, in a dead end job selling Bluecastle products door to door. I’ve done that type of work for short spans in my life. It can be rewarding financially, but ultimately it becomes soul crushing work. Your best customers are the loneliest people on the planet, widowed women with twenty cats. They buy, but what they are buying is your time, a brief interlude of conversation for the cost of hand lotion they don’t really need or scented candles that they will never burn.
He quits. ”Kenny makes a move.”
With the girlfriend out of the equation, his apartment begins to feel more and more like that Death Star garbage compactor in Star Wars. Thus begins his odyssey; there are Trojans, but they aren’t Greeks, through the peep show, massage parlors, singles bars looking for “love in all the wrong places.” He thinks his driving need is sex, but as we follow along with Kenny, it becomes more and more clear that what he wants is intimacy. He wants his love all in one place. He wants a girlfriend, but as he clumsily tries to pick up women, he shows more interest in making new friends with the other desperate guys he meets. Even when he is successful, it is disastrous. ”Something was pissing me off. I felt this mood of time being wasted. An enraged silence.”
What is the alternative? Get a cat?
His friend from high school, Donny, appears out of the mist like a battered life preserver in the middle of an ocean of despair. ”Donny. Who the fuck was Donny? He was a memory. A character from some novel I’d read years before.” Donny has gone through some cha-cha-changes. Donny takes Kenny some places that make him uncomfortable. Kenny is going to piss some readers off with his flagrant use of the N word and the colorful words regarding sexual orientation, but there is so much bluster wrapped around all these utterances that I realized very quickly that all of his prejudices, like they are for most people, are borrowed. None of them are based off personal experience, but concocted from fears appropriated from the previous generation. They are as fake as a spray on tan.
This is an honest novel. Richard Price has stripped away the layers of this character and left him completely exposed to the reader. We see into his mind. We see his embarrassing impulses. We cringe over his awkward interactions. We feel panic for him as his frolicking mind misses third and floats in neutral, leaving him unable to make a rational decision. He has no role models in his life. He only has the mythology of a paint by numbers guide (education, career, wife, kids etc.) of how to be successful. Going back to school is just a fall back position, a last beacon of hope that a magical piece of paper will land him the castle he desires. We have seven days with Kenny, and when I found myself untethered from Kenny, I kept thinking to myself he is so close to a transformation that could prove to be completely liberating or completely disastrous.
Kenny will make a move.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
January 23, 2024
First published in 1978, Ladies' Man is an early novel by contemporary American author Richard Price (yes, the author of the recently released The Whites by aka Harry Brandt and also author of Clockers). Anyway, in this book Price does an excellent job capturing the loneliness and desperation of first-person narrator Kenny Becker, a thirty-year-old New York City door-to-door salesman. The novel is seven chapters long, each chapter titled for each day of the week, and the opening chapter (Monday) finds Kenny sharing his apartment with his good-looking girlfriend, La Donna, a clerk at a mid-Manhattan bank and aspiring singer of Dionne Warwick-style songs.
As a way of background, here is a quick note on Kenny's past: Before living with La Donna, Kenny relates how he lived with four La Donnas in the past six years - each one a heavy, bad relationship. And before that, he lived in what he calls "Kenny-Solo," that is, living alone in howling loneliness. And before that, Kenny tells us he lived with a bunch of guys, "Kenny Groupo," which he found disgusting and a continual violation of his privacy. We can ask: When did Kenny ever experience any happiness? Answer: We find out a couple of chapters later that he had a taste of happiness when he was known as "Kenny the Riffer," class clown and know-it-all wise guy back in high school.
There are spots of humor in the novel when Kenny makes caustic observations about what he encounters as he journeys through the urban landscape, but the tenor of Kenny's story is grim, very grim. Here is Kenny's reflection on Tuesday morning after a fight with La Donna: " But I trudged down Broadway, dragging my sample case to the bus stop. I was never so clear on the monotony of it all. And the sad fact was that I realized one of the reasons I didn't change channels was because everything else felt like a rerun." Later that same day, Kenny returns to his apartment and blows up in a rage when he catches La Donna using a vibrator. Humiliated and unnerved, La Donna vacates the premises.
Left alone, Kenny turns on the television to occupy his attention, noting how Jackie Gleason and the Honeymooners is one of his anchors. Then, tossing and turning, unable to sleep during the night, Kenny turns on the television again at 5:00 a.m. and becomes emotionally engrossed in a call-in show. A couple of hours later at breakfast, Kenny can hardly believe how much rage he experienced at one of the callers of the call-in show. Indeed, the more we read about Kenny, the more anger and rage we realize he has to deal with in his life.
One of the most telling parts of the novel is when Kenny runs into a couple of his high-school buddies, Donny and Candy. The three guys reconnect with their high school days; they even travel back to one of their old playground hangouts. Watching Donny and Candy play handball, Kenny reflects on their high school years: "It was over. It had been the best and now it was over and nothing had ever felt as good. We had peaked back then, and all we'd been doing since was dying."
We follow Kenny on his downward spiral. After a visit to a live porno show, Kenny has a realization: "And it hit me; I didn't feel anything anymore. I didn't feel anything. Nothing got to me anymore. I had to do that (masturbate at a live porn show) for anything to get to me. I was dying. . . . I was in desperate need of some clean beauty."
And Kenny finds some clean beauty at an uptown pick-up bar in the person of Kristin, who he smooth-talks into accompanying him to his apartment and then his bed. However, the next day when Kenny receives a phone call from Kristin, he ops not to see her again and rather ops to go back down to Times Square for another hit of live sex thrills. We get the feeling Kenny is a flesh-and-blood pinball rapidly bouncing back and forth between bumpers; for example: when he alone, he wants to be with a woman; when with a woman, he wants to be alone; and same thing with Donny -- he seeks out Donny's company, but when with Donny, he wants to be alone.
Let's pause and consider what the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, said about what he calls the aesthetic life, that is, a life lived for the moment, flitting from one pleasure to another, a life of seeking out fresh sensations so as to flee from boredom; and as the aesthete seeks ever more intense sensations to quench their thirst for enjoyment, they becomes jaded to the simple joys of everyday life. This description seems to certainly fit Kenny like a custom-made Italian suit.
But are we being too harsh in this judgment? Toward the end of the novel, Kenny reveals to Donny (and to us as readers) how, as a kid growing up, he was on the receiving end of serious emotional abuse at the hands of his mother and father. Additionally, Kenny acknowledges he needs help. As readers we concur. Kenny does indeed need help, perhaps from a therapist, perhaps from a teacher at a meditation or yoga center, perhaps from some other source, but Kenny really needs help in making the transition out of the trap of his present life, a transition enabling him to get a grip on himself and lead him to a more harmonious and wiser mode of living.
Anybody interested in the psychology of personal identity and the transition from boyhood to manhood would do well to give this work by Richard Price a careful read. Ladies' Man is a serious novel treating a serious subject head-on.
August 5, 2016
MONDAY
It's circa 1978 and Kenny isn't sure of much except that he has killer washboard abs and a big dick and he needs sex on the regular. He loves his girlfriend La Donna or maybe it's "loves" because he isn't sure about a lot of things except he's not satisfied. Not with his live-in girlfriend, not with his job, not with life. Ever hear of anomie, Kenny, especially the free-floating kind, the kind with no easy answers? There, I've diagnosed you. So what does Kenny need? At this point I think he needs a bj.
TUESDAY
It's amateur night and it's time for La Donna to shine on stage. Kenny is a supportive boyfriend in his own way, meaning he tries, meaning he at least tries being supportive in his head but that support doesn't come out of his mouth in a really believable way, meaning he's not really that supportive of a boyfriend. Sorry, Kenny - but I will give you points for good intentions. The author Richard Price gets right up in Kenny's head and it's amazing to see because Kenny is just about as alive as anyone I know. Price knows some things about the way people think and talk. He also knows that people are people and maybe it's just due to the time period but maybe it's not just that, but Kenny uses words like "nigger" and "faggot" on the regular and readers will just have to get used to it. That's Kenny and he may be harmless, at least I think he is, but I know that some readers will just loathe him right off the bat because of the way he talks and thinks. Not me though. He's just another human being trying to get by with a modicum of self-respect and satisfaction in life. So what does Kenny need? At this point I think he just needs someone to take the time to understand him. Despite the fact that he barely understands himself.
WEDNESDAY
Kenny finds himself footloose and fancy free, well as much as an angsty person like Kenny could ever be footloose and fancy free. He accidentally meets up with some childhood friends and at first it's really great and then it's really not and then it becomes all about living in the past and resenting the present and resenting the people who come into our lives and inadvertently make us feel like our life is all about going through the motions. All those complicated emotions that Kenny can barely process. So what does Kenny need? At this point I think he needs some real friends.
THURSDAY
His old childhood friend Donny from yesterday calls him up and suddenly morose, angsty, I-don't-know-what-I'm-upset-about-but-I'm-fucking-upset Kenny is stoked because yes! he has a friend! and they have plans tonight! It's awfully endearing and the whole book is awfully endearing in its mopey, angry, forlorn, super real way. But it all goes shitward because sometimes smoking pot when you are in the middle of some kind of existential crisis means despite having company over and chicken in the oven, you may just trip out in a bad way about how fucked you are feeling and you don't even know why so you and your friend just sorta pass out and then there's no dinner and the big night was a small, sad night and you feel like shit and you don't even know why. Poor guy(s)! So what does Kenny need? At this point I think Kenny not only needs to get in touch with his emotions in a real way, he needs someone to listen to him without judgment. Maybe therapy?
FRIDAY
It's Friday and Kenny hates his job. He's a 30 year old guy who is a door-to-door salesman and even though that may mean he could get lucky with the ladies, that old fantasy (but probably not because there's a reason they are called "fantasies"), he still hates it. I'd hate it too. Kenny went to college and dropped out. He was in a frat at college but he dropped out. He was in the Reserves but the military is not for him. He was going to get married a while back but he made sure that didn't happen. He likes to read and so he thinks that means he could be a teacher but does he really read all that much and does he even have the skill set to be a teacher? Richard Price doesn't know and neither does Kenny and neither do I. Kenny feels he has one real skill in life and that skill is "making a move" but Kenny and Richard Price and I all know that his version of making a move is bailing on a situation for some reason or another. But that's neither here nor there and other cliches. Kenny hates his job and even more than that, he hates not having sex on the regular especially because he is a not-bad-looking guy with killer abs and a big dick, or at least that's his perspective. So what does Kenny need? At this point I think Kenny needs a new job and he definitely needs to get laid. There's too much pressure building up and guys needs sex. Well, who doesn't.
SATURDAY
Kenny realizes he really needs more sex even though he just had some last night and it wasn't with his girlfriend. So he goes to see a whore and gets some more sex. Kenny is still unsatisfied. Poor Kenny? Yes, poor Kenny. I feel for the guy. Sometimes we don't know what is specifically driving us up the wall, maybe it's the job or the girlfriend or the hornininess or the lack of real friends but probably it's all of the above and so there's no perfect fix to that problem of having an imperfect life. Richard Price knows that and so do I and I sure wish Kenny knew that too. Kenny and Donny find themselves on Christopher Street and then they find themselves going to a bunch of different gay bars because reasons, and Kenny is completely uncomfortable about being around so many faggots and yet he's surprisingly not homophobic, just nervous and horny, and let me tell you, as a queer it was a real relief to know that Kenny is not a hateful guy, he's not going to judge me, he's just confused and horny like 9 out of 10 guys his age or any age. So what does Kenny need? At this point I think Kenny needs to have a real heart-to-heart with his girlfriend, the kind of talk that is truly open and honest and emotionally naked and almost impossible for 9 out of 10 guys to have who are his age, or any age.
SUNDAY
If "angst" had a name it would be "Kenny" but at least he does the right thing and I'm proud of him. It was hard and he almost talked himself out of it but he did it. Good for you, Kenny. Small steps baby, small steps. And then Donny calls and he realizes yes! he has an actual friend! People need friends, it's a human requirement. The novel is minor note and full of free floating anxiety and angst and anomie but it's a minor note that strikes the human chord if you know what I mean. Minor note in the best sort of way, the real way, a book about a real person with real problems and I see myself and every guy I know in Kenny and I want things to end on a hopeful note because there's hope in life, it's a real thing. So what does Kenny need? How the fuck should I know, what does anyone need, you can't put a finger on it and you can't say ___ = your happiness, right there is the secret recipe, just follow the instructions and you'll be perfectly happy. Who's perfectly happy anyway? That's not life. Still... c'mon mark, try to help this dude out, what does Kenny need? I dunno. Maybe he needs a hug. I mean, who doesn't? I sure do. Not right now but you know, sometimes.
It's circa 1978 and Kenny isn't sure of much except that he has killer washboard abs and a big dick and he needs sex on the regular. He loves his girlfriend La Donna or maybe it's "loves" because he isn't sure about a lot of things except he's not satisfied. Not with his live-in girlfriend, not with his job, not with life. Ever hear of anomie, Kenny, especially the free-floating kind, the kind with no easy answers? There, I've diagnosed you. So what does Kenny need? At this point I think he needs a bj.
TUESDAY
It's amateur night and it's time for La Donna to shine on stage. Kenny is a supportive boyfriend in his own way, meaning he tries, meaning he at least tries being supportive in his head but that support doesn't come out of his mouth in a really believable way, meaning he's not really that supportive of a boyfriend. Sorry, Kenny - but I will give you points for good intentions. The author Richard Price gets right up in Kenny's head and it's amazing to see because Kenny is just about as alive as anyone I know. Price knows some things about the way people think and talk. He also knows that people are people and maybe it's just due to the time period but maybe it's not just that, but Kenny uses words like "nigger" and "faggot" on the regular and readers will just have to get used to it. That's Kenny and he may be harmless, at least I think he is, but I know that some readers will just loathe him right off the bat because of the way he talks and thinks. Not me though. He's just another human being trying to get by with a modicum of self-respect and satisfaction in life. So what does Kenny need? At this point I think he just needs someone to take the time to understand him. Despite the fact that he barely understands himself.
WEDNESDAY
Kenny finds himself footloose and fancy free, well as much as an angsty person like Kenny could ever be footloose and fancy free. He accidentally meets up with some childhood friends and at first it's really great and then it's really not and then it becomes all about living in the past and resenting the present and resenting the people who come into our lives and inadvertently make us feel like our life is all about going through the motions. All those complicated emotions that Kenny can barely process. So what does Kenny need? At this point I think he needs some real friends.
THURSDAY
His old childhood friend Donny from yesterday calls him up and suddenly morose, angsty, I-don't-know-what-I'm-upset-about-but-I'm-fucking-upset Kenny is stoked because yes! he has a friend! and they have plans tonight! It's awfully endearing and the whole book is awfully endearing in its mopey, angry, forlorn, super real way. But it all goes shitward because sometimes smoking pot when you are in the middle of some kind of existential crisis means despite having company over and chicken in the oven, you may just trip out in a bad way about how fucked you are feeling and you don't even know why so you and your friend just sorta pass out and then there's no dinner and the big night was a small, sad night and you feel like shit and you don't even know why. Poor guy(s)! So what does Kenny need? At this point I think Kenny not only needs to get in touch with his emotions in a real way, he needs someone to listen to him without judgment. Maybe therapy?
FRIDAY
It's Friday and Kenny hates his job. He's a 30 year old guy who is a door-to-door salesman and even though that may mean he could get lucky with the ladies, that old fantasy (but probably not because there's a reason they are called "fantasies"), he still hates it. I'd hate it too. Kenny went to college and dropped out. He was in a frat at college but he dropped out. He was in the Reserves but the military is not for him. He was going to get married a while back but he made sure that didn't happen. He likes to read and so he thinks that means he could be a teacher but does he really read all that much and does he even have the skill set to be a teacher? Richard Price doesn't know and neither does Kenny and neither do I. Kenny feels he has one real skill in life and that skill is "making a move" but Kenny and Richard Price and I all know that his version of making a move is bailing on a situation for some reason or another. But that's neither here nor there and other cliches. Kenny hates his job and even more than that, he hates not having sex on the regular especially because he is a not-bad-looking guy with killer abs and a big dick, or at least that's his perspective. So what does Kenny need? At this point I think Kenny needs a new job and he definitely needs to get laid. There's too much pressure building up and guys needs sex. Well, who doesn't.
SATURDAY
Kenny realizes he really needs more sex even though he just had some last night and it wasn't with his girlfriend. So he goes to see a whore and gets some more sex. Kenny is still unsatisfied. Poor Kenny? Yes, poor Kenny. I feel for the guy. Sometimes we don't know what is specifically driving us up the wall, maybe it's the job or the girlfriend or the hornininess or the lack of real friends but probably it's all of the above and so there's no perfect fix to that problem of having an imperfect life. Richard Price knows that and so do I and I sure wish Kenny knew that too. Kenny and Donny find themselves on Christopher Street and then they find themselves going to a bunch of different gay bars because reasons, and Kenny is completely uncomfortable about being around so many faggots and yet he's surprisingly not homophobic, just nervous and horny, and let me tell you, as a queer it was a real relief to know that Kenny is not a hateful guy, he's not going to judge me, he's just confused and horny like 9 out of 10 guys his age or any age. So what does Kenny need? At this point I think Kenny needs to have a real heart-to-heart with his girlfriend, the kind of talk that is truly open and honest and emotionally naked and almost impossible for 9 out of 10 guys to have who are his age, or any age.
SUNDAY
If "angst" had a name it would be "Kenny" but at least he does the right thing and I'm proud of him. It was hard and he almost talked himself out of it but he did it. Good for you, Kenny. Small steps baby, small steps. And then Donny calls and he realizes yes! he has an actual friend! People need friends, it's a human requirement. The novel is minor note and full of free floating anxiety and angst and anomie but it's a minor note that strikes the human chord if you know what I mean. Minor note in the best sort of way, the real way, a book about a real person with real problems and I see myself and every guy I know in Kenny and I want things to end on a hopeful note because there's hope in life, it's a real thing. So what does Kenny need? How the fuck should I know, what does anyone need, you can't put a finger on it and you can't say ___ = your happiness, right there is the secret recipe, just follow the instructions and you'll be perfectly happy. Who's perfectly happy anyway? That's not life. Still... c'mon mark, try to help this dude out, what does Kenny need? I dunno. Maybe he needs a hug. I mean, who doesn't? I sure do. Not right now but you know, sometimes.
June 5, 2020
4.5. Hilarious and depressing in roughly equal measure.
December 29, 2013
From the moment he published his first novel, The Wanderers, Richard Price has been praised for his incredible talent for writing dialogue. His prowess is so great in that area, in fact, that many of his other literary skills are sometimes overlooked, including his remarkable talent for revealing the inner workings of his character's minds. It is a talent that is put on display in Ladies Man perhaps more than any of his other works.
The convoluted and contradictory internal world of "ladies' man" Kenny Becker is illustrated masterfully. It is sometimes frustrating, sometimes hilarious, and usually a little bit of both at the same time. Kenny doesn't know what the hell he wants. He wants relationships to assuage his loneliness, but he doesn't want to be bothered by others' needs. He's always horny, always on the prowl for sex, yet the moment he finds he becomes full of uncertainties and fearful analyses. He is, in short, the prototype of the modern man, and while the book offers a fascinating exploration of New York's 70's party scene, the book is perhaps most interesting in how it provides a glimpse at the origins of modern manhood.
Kenny is insightful and wise, in a way, but those things offer him no ultimate conclusions or ideas of how to live his life. He is aware of his destructive need for sex and the damage that his narcissism causes in his life, but none of that changes the failed routine he is caught in. There were times when I literally yelled at the book. Laying there alone in bed, reading, I actually shouted things like come on Kenny, get your head out of your ass, man! At other moments, I laughed like a lunatic. After reading the novel's peep show scene, I had trouble falling asleep because I was laughing so hard, and the moment I woke up the next morning, started laughing again.
The late-70's perspective is also interesting from our modern vantage point, because we can see the shadow of HIV looming over the events. As Kenny penetrates deeper into the underground party scene, attending sleazy sex parties, I couldn't help but think about the specter of that deadly disease that was floating around the city even then.
Thematically, Ladies' Man resembles another of Price's early novels, Blood Brothers. Like Brothers' Stony De Coco, Kenny is drawn to a dream that does not fit with the masculine expectations of his upbringing. He wants to be an English teacher, but is plagued with doubts because of the perceived insignificance and the career's unimpressive financial prospects. But his internal struggle is really just part of who Kenny is. He analyzes everything in his life and then places the worst aspects of it under the microscope, until that is all he sees.
At times, he catches glimpses of the fear of death that drives most of his behavior, but he either does not know how to explore its significance, or simply chooses not to. It's much easier to run to the next lay, to the drink, to the next laugh, and so that's what he decides to do. Over and over and over again, he runs in this hedonistic circle of desire, appeasement, and guilt. Hell, looking at him that way, his life might just be a metaphor for America.
Ladies' Man is one of the funniest books I've ever read. It's also an amazing look inside the brain of the modern man. I couldn't help but see aspects of myself in there. It's a book that I walked away from feeling like I had a better understanding of myself and of life in general. I can't think of any higher compliment that I could possibly pay a work of literature.
The convoluted and contradictory internal world of "ladies' man" Kenny Becker is illustrated masterfully. It is sometimes frustrating, sometimes hilarious, and usually a little bit of both at the same time. Kenny doesn't know what the hell he wants. He wants relationships to assuage his loneliness, but he doesn't want to be bothered by others' needs. He's always horny, always on the prowl for sex, yet the moment he finds he becomes full of uncertainties and fearful analyses. He is, in short, the prototype of the modern man, and while the book offers a fascinating exploration of New York's 70's party scene, the book is perhaps most interesting in how it provides a glimpse at the origins of modern manhood.
Kenny is insightful and wise, in a way, but those things offer him no ultimate conclusions or ideas of how to live his life. He is aware of his destructive need for sex and the damage that his narcissism causes in his life, but none of that changes the failed routine he is caught in. There were times when I literally yelled at the book. Laying there alone in bed, reading, I actually shouted things like come on Kenny, get your head out of your ass, man! At other moments, I laughed like a lunatic. After reading the novel's peep show scene, I had trouble falling asleep because I was laughing so hard, and the moment I woke up the next morning, started laughing again.
The late-70's perspective is also interesting from our modern vantage point, because we can see the shadow of HIV looming over the events. As Kenny penetrates deeper into the underground party scene, attending sleazy sex parties, I couldn't help but think about the specter of that deadly disease that was floating around the city even then.
Thematically, Ladies' Man resembles another of Price's early novels, Blood Brothers. Like Brothers' Stony De Coco, Kenny is drawn to a dream that does not fit with the masculine expectations of his upbringing. He wants to be an English teacher, but is plagued with doubts because of the perceived insignificance and the career's unimpressive financial prospects. But his internal struggle is really just part of who Kenny is. He analyzes everything in his life and then places the worst aspects of it under the microscope, until that is all he sees.
At times, he catches glimpses of the fear of death that drives most of his behavior, but he either does not know how to explore its significance, or simply chooses not to. It's much easier to run to the next lay, to the drink, to the next laugh, and so that's what he decides to do. Over and over and over again, he runs in this hedonistic circle of desire, appeasement, and guilt. Hell, looking at him that way, his life might just be a metaphor for America.
Ladies' Man is one of the funniest books I've ever read. It's also an amazing look inside the brain of the modern man. I couldn't help but see aspects of myself in there. It's a book that I walked away from feeling like I had a better understanding of myself and of life in general. I can't think of any higher compliment that I could possibly pay a work of literature.
July 3, 2008
Richard Price had already begun to get into screen work when this book appeared, about 1980, and he went on to fame for his movies, and for novels like CLOCKERS. But this one, written in great heat -- in every sense of the word -- at the end of his 20s, has a liveliness that surpasses that of his more famous multi-vocal depictions of greater New York in transition. New York is the subject again, of course, Price can't get away from that, but in this case he works in disarming minor key: a late-twenty-something first-person urban-breakup narrative. Things aren't working out with LaDonna (marvelous name!), and so the heartsore tale-teller plunges into the filthy fantasyland of Manhattan back when Times Square still had nothing to do with Disney. The carnival rides this aging child wanderer prefers are heterosexual, but the more fascinating loop-de-loops occur while gadding about with the old friend who reveals, about mid-novel, that he's gay. So readers visit another vanished Atlantis, the demimonde before AIDS left it decimated, and before cable TV pulled its teeth. LADIES MAN suffers the occasional moment of flat dialog, not quite rendering a nervous system in sonic terms, and its straightforward storytelling can seems once or twice too much so. But this novel is the one that proves Price is a natural, burning to get across, and proves to that, while ever alert to the least shift in fashion and surface, he never fails to see deeper, and to reveal what really hurts.
May 4, 2015
Really enjoyed this book Ladies' Man by Richard Price.
Not written for kiddies or sweet little old ladies, here is a piece of fiction written by a real man for real men or those women like myself who want to know the inner workings of how some men, most men think.
New York born and raised protagonist Kenny Becker's a confused, frustrated, semi-misogynist-romantic approaching middle age and the dreaded mid-life crisis... a lousy dead end job, flaky girlfriends, friends (more like acquaintances) from school days and the old neighborhood, nothing to look forward to and little to go back on. Add to the meaningless mix, a lively city with the hustle bustle of hundreds of people passing by focused on themselves with little connection to each other.
By turns depressing, hilarious and over-the-top downright dirty, this book has it all...
(I read part of the Saturday chapter to my guy and watched him turn beet red!)
In hindsight the correlation of names "La Donna" and "Donny" I realize is no coincidence.
Highly recommend this book to all the guys but if my two grown sons read it, they'd probably throw it against the wall, out the window,
into the trash, burn it or tear it up and try to flush it down the toilet. It's that good.
Four stars plus.
Not written for kiddies or sweet little old ladies, here is a piece of fiction written by a real man for real men or those women like myself who want to know the inner workings of how some men, most men think.
New York born and raised protagonist Kenny Becker's a confused, frustrated, semi-misogynist-romantic approaching middle age and the dreaded mid-life crisis... a lousy dead end job, flaky girlfriends, friends (more like acquaintances) from school days and the old neighborhood, nothing to look forward to and little to go back on. Add to the meaningless mix, a lively city with the hustle bustle of hundreds of people passing by focused on themselves with little connection to each other.
By turns depressing, hilarious and over-the-top downright dirty, this book has it all...
(I read part of the Saturday chapter to my guy and watched him turn beet red!)
In hindsight the correlation of names "La Donna" and "Donny" I realize is no coincidence.
Highly recommend this book to all the guys but if my two grown sons read it, they'd probably throw it against the wall, out the window,
into the trash, burn it or tear it up and try to flush it down the toilet. It's that good.
Four stars plus.
January 16, 2008
I found this while in a post-divorce haze. It helped. So did the sit-ups, women and beer.
Read
October 2, 2020He's probably still best known for Clockers, but I discovered Richard Price via his work on The Wire, then read a couple of his novels, Clockers among them – and, more than Pelecanos (whom I tried for the same reason), loved them. They did what crime novels do best, a sort of state of the nation report without feeling the need to be all ostentatiously Great American Novel about it; capacious, without being formless. This early effort isn't that. It's New York City in the late seventies, the city not quite the dark and broken place we always hear about re: the birth of punk and hip hop, but certainly scuzzier and richer in neon sleaze than it would subsequently become. Kenny Becker, the narrator, is a door-to-door salesman in a faltering relationship, and even by the standards of 1978, clearly not intended as a role model. Fragile and toxic masculinity were not terms in general currency, but I suspect if a social justice chronomancer were to go back and say them to Price at the time, he'd have recognised them as a good summary of his theme here. Kenny doesn't want to be sexist, though this only occurs to him after he flips out at finding his girlfriend with a vibrator, and stomps on it; he's prone to muttering 'Faggot' at a volume where it's not clear whether the subject is meant to hear, despite coming his hardest at a memory of a mystery hand-job during his time in the forces. It has that fascinating balance of being deeply of its time, yet also incredibly recognisable now; there's even a scene with a late-night 'phone-in show which is entirely familiar as the average comments thread on a local Facebook group. Set against which, all this unprotected casual sex, then, can't help but make a modern reader wince at the storm on the horizon which neither characters nor author could have expected (and, counterparting that tragedy as farce, the brothel flyer where a nude poses with Kenneth Clark's Civilisation makes a strange kind of sense in light of his son Alan's diaries). Price's very noir gift for summing even the most minor characters up in an introductory line is already apparent: "He was short, fiftyish, blubberized and toupeed. His nervous darting wall-eyes made Peter Lorre look like a squinter." All the same, I don't think I'd press Ladies' Man on someone like I would the later work, not least because I still somewhat resent the promotion in certain quarters of 1960s-70s books about horny, alienated American guys stuck in their own heads as the peak of the novel form. But fuck it, I don't mind a very occasional one as part of a balanced literary diet, and if the 2020s aren't a perfect time for stories of anger and loneliness, when is? "Something was pissing me off. I felt this mood of time being wasted. An enraged sadness." You and me both, Kenny.
September 7, 2013
I went back to the late 70s for this Picador reprint and quite enjoyed the trip. This is not, however, a pleasant novel. Price, who later wrote for The Wire and had such best-sellers as Clockers and Samaritan, writes tough. In this case his subject is loneliness and losers, chiefly Kenny, a man of determined ambitions but little accomplishment. As we meet him he has taken a sabbatical from college and is selling household supplies door-to-door. We soon suspect that household supplies has more future for him than college. His girlfriend is La Donna, a hapless singer who waits in line for open mic sessions and never impresses very much. This leads to a breakup that sets Kenny free to fail with other women and himself. Kenny descends into abject loneliness, ending up in a porn parlor’s booth, finding love the only place that’s left—masturbating to a pro behind the quarter-driven window. Yes, he is pathetic, but no more so than his friends, his gay buddy Donny or La Donna whose top selection for open mic night is “Feelings.” With Donny Kenny tours gay bars and singles bars and at least he finds some standards, however low they must be. But he does not find confirmation that all the work on his abs is doing any good because, essentially, Kenny is lonely because he’s a loser. It’s hard, in Price’s hands, to feel sorry for him and instead was look on, appalled, as Kenny descends further and further from a real future in order to pursue his fantasies of appeal to anybody, women preferred. The writing is very atmospheric: if you missed the 70s, you can get a good feel for what it was like here, at least Manhattan. It was a time of intense self-delusion and little focused ambition. We were coming off a period of fantasy so delusional that we convinced ourselves that Ronald Reagan was a statesman and that we were still Number One. The most pathetic thing about Kenny as the story unwinds is that he thinks a return to La Donna would fulfill him. He cannot see that she is perhaps even more of a loser than he is. It’s effective, chilling reading as Kenny comes apart before our eyes and worth a read, even today when so many things have changed yet losers remain the same and just as desperate as they always were.
October 16, 2013
I came across this Richard Price novel that I hadn't read in a second hand shop, and was eager to read another earlier novel of his - before he developed the expanded, detail oriented story telling of Clockers, Lush Life, Freedomland etc.I can see why other writers like Harry Crews loved this character study of a 30 year old New Yorker, written and set in the late 70s going through relationship, work and personal breakdowns on the space of a few days. Kenny Becker goes through extreme emotions and transgressional acts as his life falls apart, but satire and black comedy are not Price's best traits. I enjoyed the intensity of the writing, and this post Taxi Driver / pre-Patrick Bateman snapshot of New York life, but ultimately, I didn't believe in Becker as a character - his internal monologue never really convinced, the sequence of behaviour he's put through leaving little chance of connecting with him and his experience - unlike Price's more recent dysfunctional protagonists.
September 30, 2024
If Holden Caulfield never would've been able to solve his mental problems. Kenny is a guy with abandonment issues, and deep anguish, that makes him feel lonely and uses people who he doesn't like or love for a quick shot of distraction and comes back at being crazy and selfish when he feels his gut narrowing when that stops working. He goes through New York looking for quick fixes to his problem after his girlfriend left him, without being able to find any meaning to anything, completely ignoring what would make him get a grasp of humanity. Even though he's in his 30s he can't seem to see (being a jew aswell) that his porposeful ignoring of moral values, self-centeredness and easy escapades is making him more miserable and guideless. This alienation from his conscience will tear him apart slowly until there's nothing worth living for. It's scary how relevant this story is, as much as Salinger's. The book is very agile, dark and really funny specially if you have that kind of sense of humor, but it will floor you if you been through this at some point in your life.
Two years of howling loneliness, a hunger that wouldn't let me sleep, wouldn't let me relax. For two goddamn years almost every night I would go to bars, to diners, looking for ladies. That's not true. I would just go through the motions mainly so at some point I could go home satisfied that I had at least tried.
Two years of howling loneliness, a hunger that wouldn't let me sleep, wouldn't let me relax. For two goddamn years almost every night I would go to bars, to diners, looking for ladies. That's not true. I would just go through the motions mainly so at some point I could go home satisfied that I had at least tried.
June 27, 2008
brilliant depiction of male sexuality
January 16, 2016
I was bored.
Clearly the author can write but I hated the subject matter, especially when they were bar hopping the gay scene.
Clearly the author can write but I hated the subject matter, especially when they were bar hopping the gay scene.
December 11, 2018
While I'm not normally a huge fan of character-driven narrative (to the point where it's almost a character study), Price has just the right amount of action mixed in to really put this book in the top tier. Raw, powerful, and relentless, we get to delve pretty deep into the psyche of 'everyman' Kenny Becker.
I won't cover the Cliff's Notes/play-by-play, as plenty of other reviews have that, but I will say that this novel, in terms of capturing fully-developed characters and a pretty banal antihero, is far more rewarding and memorable for me than Roth's 'Everyman.' Anachronistically, the book's style feels like a mix between the stream-of-consciousness of 'On The Road' and Bateman's manic style in 'American Psycho,' though here that side of Kenny's personality is not as manifest.
There were a couple points in the book where things got a bit iffy in terms of the reliability of the narrator. At one point,in pages 119-122, in what I think was an editing mistake, Kenny sleeps until '5:23,' then spends over an hour and a half on the phone trying to get through to his mother, but he makes it back home from the supermarket before 6 pm. I didn't think the narrator was unreliable, and that seemed to be the only time he wasn't obviously exaggerating the time (as he does later in the book), so it stuck out for me. Otherwise it was all smooth sailing.
A surprisingly good and vivid read.
I won't cover the Cliff's Notes/play-by-play, as plenty of other reviews have that, but I will say that this novel, in terms of capturing fully-developed characters and a pretty banal antihero, is far more rewarding and memorable for me than Roth's 'Everyman.' Anachronistically, the book's style feels like a mix between the stream-of-consciousness of 'On The Road' and Bateman's manic style in 'American Psycho,' though here that side of Kenny's personality is not as manifest.
There were a couple points in the book where things got a bit iffy in terms of the reliability of the narrator. At one point,in pages 119-122, in what I think was an editing mistake, Kenny sleeps until '5:23,' then spends over an hour and a half on the phone trying to get through to his mother, but he makes it back home from the supermarket before 6 pm. I didn't think the narrator was unreliable, and that seemed to be the only time he wasn't obviously exaggerating the time (as he does later in the book), so it stuck out for me. Otherwise it was all smooth sailing.
A surprisingly good and vivid read.
June 18, 2017
I read this book in 1979, and I must say, I really enjoyed this book! I know it is not well known, but I really liked it at the time. Pretty good and gritty example of what life for single men really is like. It's not the Playboy paradise that most think it is, and it's not monk-hood either. Sex is feast or famine. There are long periods with little or no sex, and then there are periods when it never seems to end. And if you want to stay single, you must forever be dodging the nonstop attempts of women to get you to move in with them or to marry them. Staying single is the art of defiance for a quality single man. He's been turning down marriage most of his life.
This is how the "playboys" live. Many single men don't even have it that good.
Not to mention the specter of homosexuality. Yes even straight men have to deal with this because when you are in a circle of single straight men, you will start seeing some homosexuality. The homosexuality is strictly due to the lack of women. If men are not provided with women on a fairly continuous basis, they will start having sex with other men even if they are completely straight.
This is how the "playboys" live. Many single men don't even have it that good.
Not to mention the specter of homosexuality. Yes even straight men have to deal with this because when you are in a circle of single straight men, you will start seeing some homosexuality. The homosexuality is strictly due to the lack of women. If men are not provided with women on a fairly continuous basis, they will start having sex with other men even if they are completely straight.
March 20, 2023
I think the novel's title is meant to be ironic, since Kenny isn't much of a ladies' man, just a deeply insecure, emotional, complicated guy who is unsure of who he is and what he wants from relationships, friends, and life. The characters are engaging and the prose is breathless and compelling. The author captures the feeling of being 30 years old and still being adrift and unmoored at an age when--back in 1978 anyway-- people were expected to have firmly settled into their niche.
Frustrating at times, but a great read. Recommended.
Frustrating at times, but a great read. Recommended.
October 31, 2017
Story is interesting enough to keep you involved until the end. Very chaotic narrative and it doesn't feel like its by design. The most interesting character interactions don't come until the very end and when it feels like its building to something compelling and interesting, it comes to a sudden end.
Has enough humor and interesting insight on struggling to strive along in life to make it worth a read.
Has enough humor and interesting insight on struggling to strive along in life to make it worth a read.
July 2, 2023
I almost threw in the towel on this book two or three times, but I'm a bit of a completist when it comes to certain authors, so I plugged along.
I believe this book may be out-of-print now. If so, it's easy to see why. It's just not a good book. It tells the story of a week in the life of a self-obsessed, over-sexed jerk. The ending is a bit of an ironic take on the book title.
Richard Price went on to write many fine novels, teleplays, and screenplays, but this one is a dud.
I believe this book may be out-of-print now. If so, it's easy to see why. It's just not a good book. It tells the story of a week in the life of a self-obsessed, over-sexed jerk. The ending is a bit of an ironic take on the book title.
Richard Price went on to write many fine novels, teleplays, and screenplays, but this one is a dud.
April 27, 2020
Something is broken in Kenny Becker’s life, but he doesn’t know what it is or how to fix it. At thirty, he’s stuck in a dead-end job, and he has mixed feelings about his relationship with La Donna. Maybe he loves her. Maybe he enjoys having a woman around for sexual reasons. He wonders what happened to the promises of his youth when he dreamed of finishing college and becoming a teacher. He loves to read. Or he used to love to read, but he no longer spends much time reading. Now, he prefers to do sit-ups to keep his belly tight for the admiration of both the males and females he knows. Maybe he once had a sound mind, but the hedonist, drug-fueled disco cultures of the 1970s has convinced him that a sound body is a far more important pursuit. He’s not a great guy—racist, misogynistic, self-sabotaging—but no one would call him evil incarnate.
For my complete review, please visit: http://keithallenbroyles.com/ladies-m...
For my complete review, please visit: http://keithallenbroyles.com/ladies-m...
October 23, 2021
The more I think about it, the less I think of this book. Yes, the writing was good, but at the end of it, it left me nothing. I didn't much like the main character or his buddies or what they did and the women weren't very well drawn. So what was the point? Richard Price has written some of my favorite books, but this is a miss. Basically, it left me feeling like I needed a shower.
September 10, 2020
A more subtle American Psycho.
Richard Price writes thoughts as well as anyone today, like in Clockers he again steps inside a different life from a different time and let’s us live it with him and Kenny.
It’s my least favorite of his books but still much better than most.
Richard Price writes thoughts as well as anyone today, like in Clockers he again steps inside a different life from a different time and let’s us live it with him and Kenny.
It’s my least favorite of his books but still much better than most.
March 5, 2021
There was a time when I would have said Richard Price has never written a bad book. And I thought I'd read them all.
Then I discovered this. God, it's awful. Skip this one. I can recommend all of his others, but not this one.
Then I discovered this. God, it's awful. Skip this one. I can recommend all of his others, but not this one.
June 23, 2023
A little different from his other books but it has some of the funniest parts in the first half of any Price book with maybe with the exception of "Samaritan." Like Samaritan it kind of putters to a stop in the last 10-20 pages.
August 28, 2018
Sort of The Deuce meets On The Road (no actual road trip takes place though). It was interesting to read as a time capsule but I definitely prefer Price’s later, better-written novels.
May 23, 2019
Nicely conceived and written, but definitely a minor work - feels like a novel actually written in, not just set in the 60s.
November 26, 2019
Utterly boring! Stay away!
December 21, 2019
I think there's a good novel in here, but there is something very 1978 about the main character's focus on sex.
November 12, 2020
A really engaging study of a man on the brink in his job, love life and friendships.
November 16, 2017
I was really taken with this tough-minded, confident character study of 30 year-old Kenny Becker, a door-to-door salesman (yep, they still existed in the not-too-distant past), slowly unraveling after getting dumped by his girlfriend in late-70's New York City. Everything about Kenny, his girlfriend La Donna, and his circle of co-workers and acquaintances felt grittily authentic, with terrific dialogue. Ladies' Man is a sometimes sexy, often disturbing, always riveting portrait of modern day masculinity, with all its attendant pitfalls of confusion, rage, horniness and ineffable longing. I'm eagerly looking forward to reading more of Richard Price's work & already have Lush Life and Freedomland on the way. 4 ½ to 5 stars.
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