Finally writing up The Corner by David Simon and Ed Burns

The Corner is written by the co-creators of HBO's awesome show, The Wire and NBC's (I think) Homicide: Life on the Streets. Burns was a homicide cop in Baltimore and Simon was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. In The Corner, they spend a year examining life in one of Baltimore's run-down, drugged-up inner city neighborhoods, focusing on one corner.

Oddly, street gangs didn't have much control over individual territories in Baltimore in the early and mid-nineties. I'm certain they did on the larger distribution end, but there was a lot of freelancing going on by different crews. The drugs sold were hardcore: heroin and crack.

Simon and Burns largely follow one broken family made up of Fran Boyd, Gary McCullough, and DeAndre McCullogh. DeAndre might be considered the main figure in the book, since he clearly shows how an adolescence in the ghetto turns a smart young man into just another dealer using his own supply.

But more than that, the authors show the full constellation of people in the inner-city neighborhood. From the hard-working "civilians" who haven't fled yet, to the dealers, to the cops, to the touts, to the shooting gallery "doctors," to the shooting gallery owners, to the stick-up boys who prey on the unwary dealer, and most importantly, to the addicts themselves. The reader becomes truly immersed in this microculture. And it's not a pretty place to be.

Simon and Burns show the desperate measures these people go to just to get their next fix. Further, they include sub-chapters where they examine the social failures that led to the creation of the drug culture and dependency culture in the inner-cities. Their take on welfare as a "bribe" to keep the poor from rising up is very insightful.

The Corner is one of the best non-fiction books I've read in a long time. It's disturbing to middle-class sensibilities, but it's a story that we've ignored for far too long. While I don't agree with some of their conclusions, Simon and Burns make the reader face some realities that we often feel safer ignoring. An excellent book excellently written.