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Clockers taught Price stark lessons about the polarity between white middle- class cops -- who "are more of a daily presence than the mailman" in the projects -- and black inner-city residents. He saw all the hostility between the two groups reflected in a single unconscious glance that a tired and sweaty cop, who had just come from a drug raid, gave a pregnant black woman. "The cop looks at her, notes her pregnancy and just makes a twist with his mouth like, 'Oh, great, here comes another one.' " The woman caught the glance and "looked like someone had just punched her in the stomach. I knew exactly what was going through her head: 'Here you're arresting my kid before he's born.' "
Yet the cop was unaware of what had happened. If asked, Price says, the officer would say, " 'What did I do? What are these people complaining about? I just closed this goddam crack house in the projects.' You have that missing of understanding all the time, and I saw it over and over again."
Price also learned the difference between the lost boys who dealt drugs and their peers who took honest jobs. "The kid at McDonald's has got somebody waiting at home for him. If he goes out and sells dope, they're either going to break his head, or he's going to break somebody's heart." He can also see past fast food to the Army or college or a better job. But the dealer "probably has no one at home who gives a damn about him, probably thinks of time as being minute to minute," and senses that once he starts flipping burgers, "that's as good as it's ever going to get for him."
The harsh world of Clockers marks Price's first new novel in nearly 10 years. He felt dried up after The Breaks and began writing screenplays for Hollywood, which had already filmed The Wanderers and Bloodbrothers as adapted by others. "I just said, 'I can't think of anything. Give me an idea, and I'll write it for you.' It was like going from being a clothes designer to a tailor."
But Hollywood had its drawbacks. "Screenwriting's not an art; it's a craft. You learn how to service stars and actors and studios. It's the craft of pandering. And no matter what you write, it always gets changed around to look like everything else that everybody else has ever seen." At times Price let his anger and frustration show. "I don't suffer fools gladly," he says. "When I feel that I know what I'm doing, I don't feel like being subjected to a lot of panicky pandering to make the maximum number of people happy. It's upsetting."
While Price wrestled with such misgivings, the idea for Clockers turned him back into a novelist. "I finally found something that after eight years I didn't want to compromise." Like Rocco Klein, who rediscovered himself by delving into the mystery at the heart of Clockers, Price reclaimed his calling by writing the book. "I wanted to say, 'Look, this is happening in front of your nose, and you didn't see it. You pass these people every day, and you don't know anything about their lives.' " Price took the trouble to find out and returned from his voyage of discovery with an overpowering portrait of a grim and neglected world.