Sol Yurick, author of The Warriors, RIP

Sol Yurick, author of The Warriors (1965), has died. The novel -- which in 1979 led to the classic cult film of the same name -- was inspired by Yurick's experiences working in the New York City Department of Welfare.

“Some of the children of these families were what was then called juvenile delinquents,” Mr. Yurick wrote in an introduction to an edition of “The Warriors” published in 2003. “Many of them belonged to fighting gangs. Some of these gangs numbered in the hundreds; they were veritable armies. This social phenomenon was viewed, on the one hand, as the invasion of the barbarians, only this time they came from the inside rather than from the outside.”

"Sol Yurick, Author of ‘The Warriors,’ Dies at 87" (NYT, thanks Gil Kaufman!)

• [David Gill]

  Guess he can’t “come out and PLAAAAAAAAAY”

• [reverendjeffy]

  I was going to say, “This must be God’s way of saying, ‘Sol, come out and PLAAAAAAYYYYY!’” Alas, you beat me to a similar joke.

• [PhosPhorious]

  In before “Come out and. . .”

  Never mind,

• [Timothy Krause]

  Alas, poor Yurick!

• [lou novak]

  I’m gonna have to go back and read Richard A, one of my favorites.

• [euansmith]

  “Can you dig it? Can you dig it? CAN YOU DIG IIIIIIIT!!!”

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-OYKd8SVrI

• [Halloween_Jack]

  People should be aware that the book is very, very different from the movie, even accounting for Adaptation Decay; the Dominators (the actual name of the gang in the book) are much more brutal, and probably much more like the real-life gangs of NYC in the mid-sixties, when it was written.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Warriors_(novel)

  • [UncaScrooge]

    Book: Nearly ambient description of a time and place and the people who live there.

    Movie: Homoerotic Camp.

    • [ocker3]

       What do you mean, there’s a woman in it!?!

• [Antonio Carrasco]

  Wasn’t Michael Bay planning to remake/ruin The Warriors? What ever happened with that project?