Sol Yurick (1925–2013)

The Warriors movie is loosely based on this book. For those who watched the movie, there are several notable differences:

"The Warriors" are the Dominators
Cyrus is Ismael Rivera
The Dominators do not kill Ismael Rivera
Loyalty to the gang/family and colors are more played out
Gang rape is present in the book
The Dominators are kids in their teens
The Dominators are a Hispanic/African American gang.
Other gangs don't dress in the outrageous theme costumes.
The characters are not as likable

What is the same:
The journey home through enemy territory
Trouble with the police

It's a good read and for those who enjoyed the movie the differences in the book, there are enough differences so the reader will not anticipate the storyline.






… (lisätietoja)

NYC will be having a meeting of warring gangs but things don't go as well as planned. This is the basis for one of my favorite movies, only because the film takes itself so seriously while being hilarious. Though I'm not sure they were going for that. The movie is probably 95% different from the book which I can appreciate. I like that they are two separate beasts. But also, why even name the movie after the book if there is not much similar between the two? It seems the movie might have just taken those wacky gangs from the book, or maybe just their clothes (one of the gangs in the book wears ice cream shorts? ) I love the idea of the Others enjoying their day on the Coney Island boardwalk while the Warriors are in a veritable battle zone. Such a memorable image there alone and an interesting way of seeing how gangs might think differently than the Others. Which is an interesting perspective of gang life in general. I also love that the gangs start to wonder why they aren't working together right before everything hits the fan. The book is much more brutal than the movie. The movie wanted to make the main characters, the warriors, much more sympathetic than Yurick cared to write them. Yurick's gang is Lord of the Flies in NYC while the film's gangs could be Disney's interpretation. The book itself switches perspectives occasionally, while mostly staying with Hinton. I feel like there is a ton here in this short book. It's a bit tough for me to unpack. Quite the number of odd scenarios, reminding me a bit of 'Oreo' by Fran Ross. Some of it is a bit Kafkaesque. (Is my life in itself Kafkaesque if every book I read seems inspired by Kafka? It's uncanny.) I do like my edition with Yurick explaining the writing process and discussing actually walking down subway train tunnels to see how long the Warriors journey might take. I can appreciate both the book and the film for different reasons.… (lisätietoja)

This American 60's novel uses the case of a mass killer, disaffected and angry with "the system" after losing his young son to an undiagnosed condition, to expose the corruption of the judiciary and body politic while also attempting an (inconclusive) analysis of whether a sane person can commit a capital crime. The plot is devoid of suspense, but at least tries to make progress before dissolving into incoherency with a hundred pages left. The book is pervasively misogynistic, with every female character serving a sexual purpose, without exception in a degrading way and often without any point in terms of the story. And while I'm the last person to demand characters I "like" or can "empathise with", the unrelenting obnoxiousness of all the characters in Fertig gets tiresome very quickly (n.b. the main character actually isn't the titular killer, but the revolting lawyer who takes up his case). The prose is self-conscious, the narrative style changing willfully from chapter to chapter, which comes across as pretentious rather than virtuosic. If this is a novel of ideas, they are few and bad; if a crime novel, then the novel is the crime - a capital one.… (lisätietoja)