Ray himself is far from stupid, and he knows that his motives are mixed. He tells Nerese about blowing a big TV deal and taking it out on his daughter Ruby at the mall:

"We get in the mall and I say, 'Ruby, the hell with it. Let's just buy shit. Whatever you want, who cares...' She says, 'That's OK, I'll just look.' I'm like, 'Ruby, c'mon, I just swung a big deal [he's lying and she knows it], a dollar's like a penny today.' And I sort of bully her into buying some studs for her ears, can't get her to buy clothes, can't get her to buy any skin stuff, she grudgingly lets me buy her some teen magazine and it got really tense, the both of us like in this battle in the mall. And at one point she stops at a kiosk where they're selling belly-button rings, and she got hers pierced a few weeks before and I see her eyeing this one ring, sort of a curved silver rod with dice at either end and, I'm instantly breathing down her neck, 'You want that? You want that?' Which of course makes her want to run away. She says, 'Just looking,' and wanders off. I'm so panic-stricken, the minute her back is turned, I buy it plus two others, then I sort of mosey up behind her, say, 'Miss, did you drop these?' and show her the three belly-button rings in my hand and she, goes, berserk. She starts sobbing and screaming at me, 'Stop buying me stuff! Stop buying me stuff! Please! Daddy! Please! I don't want anything!'"

Ayn Rand covered thoroughly the horror of altruism for the giver. Price deals with its horror for the recipient, for whom it's like an oversolicitous host raised, in this case, several orders of magnitude. While Clockers is painted on a larger canvas, it lacks this sort of penetrating psychological insight.

Which is the better book? Depends on your taste. But they're both awfully good, and in different ways, which gives me hope that Price may have yet to do his best work.