THINGS THAT GO NOWHERE: SCALE, CITY AND THE LIST IN RICHARD PRICE’S LUSH LIFE
THINGS THAT GO NOWHERE: SCALE, CITY AND THE LIST IN RICHARD PRICE’S LUSH LIFE

Summary/Abstract: Richard Price’s 2008 crime novel Lush Life develops a narrative strategy for mediating between large-scale problems and local narratives. Police officers and suspects must come to terms with both New York City’s huge scale and the opacity of the suspects’ faulty narratives in order to solve a murder. Referencing Jean-François Lyotard, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, and The Invisible Committee, among others, the author develops the narrative strategy of a list (a collection of items devoid of syntactic connections) as a mediating agent. Price uses the list to penetrate the large scale of the city and the lies told by suspects. In Lush Life the list traces connections between the individual and supra‑individual, suggesting a way to effect change on a large scale in the age of globalization.

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