7. The Wanderers, Richard Price

Macombs Road in 1960. Image from Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons

The opening scene of Richard Price’s first novel is a character’s careful parsing of warring gangs in the Bronx in 1962. Price has been called “the greatest writer of dialogue, living or dead, [America] has ever produced,” and this novel is a testament to that. You can hear Richie, Eugene, and Buddy arguing in the playgrounds at night, bargaining with one another as they make their way down the Dion sound-tracked streets, weighing their options and how and whether they’ll get the hell out.