sounds like now

David Simon and Ed Burns are two angry men. Angry about how the “war on drugs”—a war they liken to Vietnam—is being waged, or rather, isn’t being waged. For Simon and Burns, the war on drugs is just one misguided attempt to reassure the American public that the government is doing something to remedy the problems caused by drug dealing and drug dependency. Police jumpouts aimed at jacking up a few street-level dealers or touts on a possession charge. A police department that works to make good stats, not to make people’s lives better. Rhapsodizing over how a big drug seizure is concrete evidence that we’re winning the war. But what about the suppliers who’ll just keep on with the business at hand? Street dealers—the soldiers—are a dime a dozen, pawns in the game. The dope fiend will cop because he has to—he’s not making a distinction between who’s selling the shit other than who’s got the best package. So despite the show the government puts on every now and then, no progress is being made and nobody, no matter what their political flavor, is offering any viable alternatives that might actually make a difference. That’s pretty much the premise of The Corner, as bleak and despairing and pessimistic as it sounds.

The book (a work of complete non-fiction) chronicles one year (1993) in the lives of several people living on and around Fayette Street in west Baltimore, which at the time was boasting no fewer than 7 open-air drug markets within only a 3-block radius. At the book’s center is the heart-wrenching story of Gary McCullough, Francine Boyd, and DeAndre McCullough, a family torn apart by drug dependency and the temptations of the corner. Simon and Burns spent a year (and more than 4 years following up) on the streets of west Baltimore getting to know the real people and their real stories. The McCullough and Boyd families. The circle of hardcore users. The dealers. The woman, who in an effort to comes to grips with her 12-year-old daughter’s rape and murder, opened a rec center to give the children of the neighborhood an alternative to corner life. The Corner is an amazing work of ethnography that gives us a moving portrait of the lives of people who are trying to survive at ground zero in the war on drugs.

The maxim that “the book was better than the movie” holds true in this case. I actually saw the HBO miniseries prior to reading the book. And I was so affected by the miniseries that I thought the book would be somewhat of a bear to read, knowing what happens and all that. Not so. Fans of The Wire know that Simon (an ex-Sun reporter) and Burns (an ex-police) are extremely gifted writers. As you might expect, and what I suppose is blatantly obvious, is that the book gives a richer and more vivid picture of the lives of the people of W Fayette St. Another thing that contributes to the book’s success vis-à-vis the miniseries, is that the book recounts the events in chronological order, whereas the miniseries (6 parts in total) focuses on a different character (”Gary’s Blues,” “Fran’s Blues,” etc.) or group of people (”Corner Boy Blues,” “Dope Fiend Blues,” etc.) each episode, making the order of events a little hard to parse at times.

Through the prism of one west Baltimore community ravaged by the corner, Simon and Burns paint a dismal picture of the war on drugs not only in Baltimore, but across the nation. (The Corner takes place in Baltimore, but the story could be played out on a corner in any large city in the U.S.) So what’s their solution? They don’t give one.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 at 8:18 pm and is filed under Baltimore, Blog: Winter 06, Literature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.