The Corner
by David Simon
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Read in July, 2002
recommends it for:
Fans of "The Wire", people interested in an honest, unflinching portrait of the drug world
Books don't get much more powerful or moving than this.
The premise is simple--Baltimore Sun reporter Simon (who's lately been earning acclaim as the driving force behind HBO's "The Wire" which takes place in the same area)and Ed Burns spent a year living on or around one of the busiest drug markets in Baltimore and reports what he learned. In doing so, he tells the stories of the people who inhabit this world: street pushers, kids trying (although often not that hard) to stay stra...more
The premise is simple--Baltimore Sun reporter Simon (who's lately been earning acclaim as the driving force behind HBO's "The Wire" which takes place in the same area)and Ed Burns spent a year living on or around one of the busiest drug markets in Baltimore and reports what he learned. In doing so, he tells the stories of the people who inhabit this world: street pushers, kids trying (although often not that hard) to stay stra...more
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Read in September, 2008
recommended to Kristen by:
Cari
This is a nice long book that just gets better and better as you read it. It's divided into 4 seasons, starting with winter, and follows the lives of several people living and working on a prominent drug corner in Baltimore through the course of a year. It took me a season or two to get into the book, but by Summer I was wishing that the book would keep going for another few years so I could see what happened to each person.
I first picked up the book because, after having our street taped ...more
I first picked up the book because, after having our street taped ...more
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Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
Everyone
This is quite possibly one of the best books I've read! Ed Burns and David Simon undertake a journalistic approach to the traditionally anthropological method of ethnography- the descriptive documentation of a living culture. The result of over a year of living among and gaining the trust of individuals within the culture is an amazingly engrossing story of the year-in-the-life of the residents around an open-air drug market on Baltimore's west side.
Focusing on a core of approximately 10...more
Focusing on a core of approximately 10...more
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Read in May, 2008
AS much as I love The Wire, I can't recommend this book. It's truly awful. I don't know if I can completely blame Simon who is a brilliant man and one of the non-Murdoch journalists who should not be sent to dig oil wells on the North Slope or to colonize Venus. Maybe it's the presence of writing partner Ed Burns. Or maybe it's just I can't work up a head of sympathy for the smack and crack fiends whose incredibly unpleasant lives this tome depicts in such detail.
Mind numbing detail that i...more
Mind numbing detail that i...more
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Read in April, 2008
This book was great, staggeringly and depressingly truthful, but nonetheless, a captivating and intense story that left my eyes opened to a world I'll most likely never encounter. It was an account of the events taken place 1993 in a welfare- and illegal drug-reliant community consistent of only a few blocks in Baltimore, MD. Writers Ed Burns and David Simon wrote this book as a piece of journalism, in which they met, observed, and conversed with the Fayette Street neighborhood's main players fo...more
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Read in May, 2008
I was supposed to be in bed an hour ago and am instead still spinning from finishing this amazing work of non-fiction. David Simon and Edward Burns managed to drag me fully into an unrelenting and unfortunately all to real world of the inner city drug trade. While the peak of the drug trade was in the early 90s, when they wrote this book, there is no question that they provides insight into the incredibly hard lives that many Americans are leading. The people they describe are victims of thei...more
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Read in April, 2008
Don't follow this link if you plan to read the book & haven't, but I was pleasantly surprised after I searched for one of the characters online this morning...
A bizarre redemption tale.
The Corner is written in documentary form, with apparently 75-80% of the content being observed events in the lives of these West Baltimore residents. The focus of the books is more on the drug users than ...more
A bizarre redemption tale.
The Corner is written in documentary form, with apparently 75-80% of the content being observed events in the lives of these West Baltimore residents. The focus of the books is more on the drug users than ...more
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Read in March, 2008
At first, I really didn't like this book. The use of slang made the first few chapters difficult to understand. (The slang terms were finally defined a few chapters in.) The point of view of the book - a kind of omniscient observer - made it difficult for me to believe that the book was really nonfiction journalism. The preachy passages inserted throughout the book were annoying. The middle lagged. The authors were content to condemn everyone else's attempts at changing the corner without ...more
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Read in March, 2008
I initially read this book in '01 for a class in grad school. I decided to reread it after recently developing an obsession with the HBO series "The Wire" which was written by the same authors. The book is a journalistic exploration of the lives of people whose lives center around "the corner", part of Baltimore's open-air drug market. The book follows a number of people, from long-time addicts, to the director of the local rec center, to DeAndre McCullough, a 15-year old ...more
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Read in November, 2001
One of the things I appreciate about David Simon's writing is there is no constant pounding of " they're all just victims of the system." As a former reporter for "The Baltimore Sun", he's take sa journalist's factual accounts and infuses them withjust enough soul to make you care about, but not groan over, the people in his books. He's not afraid to point out personal and societal failings, which many non-fiction social commentary authors don't effectively do. I read a LOT ...more
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After finishing the last season of The Wire, I ran out and picked this up in a fever of withdrawal. From what I can tell, this, along with Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, provided much of the inspiration for the HBO series (e.g., Gary McCullough is the man upon whom Bubbles is based).
I can't read it exclusively. It's exhausting in its bleakness. If nothing else, it's worth checking out Chapter 2, Simon and Burns' indictment of the drug war.
It's well written and im...more
I can't read it exclusively. It's exhausting in its bleakness. If nothing else, it's worth checking out Chapter 2, Simon and Burns' indictment of the drug war.
It's well written and im...more
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Read in January, 2007
A non-fiction book by the creators of "The Wire". I must say that it is a MUST-HAVE for any true fan of one of television's greatest shows. Ed Burns and David Simon shared the lives (as unintrusively as possible) with a whole cast of residents of one of Baltimore's worst neighborhoods. Their triumphs and tragedies were recorded unerringly and without gothic drama. It is what it is. And be prepared for a healthy dose on what makes a "ghetto" a "ghetto." Cause it isn'...more
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Read in May, 2008
If you liked "The Myth of the Welfare Queen" and you like "Homicide," you will like this, as it splits the difference. Simon and Burns alternate between following the thoughts and steps of Fayette Street's residents and summing up each of the overlapping and intractable social failures of America's inner cities in quick, hard sections. They make an extremely cogent case for why these failures have happened and what repeated mistakes allow them to continue and worsen, but wh...more
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Set in the open air drug markets of Baltimore, tis book will command every bit of your attention if you read it. It makes you wonder if this stuff really happens in america: open air drug markets, 400+ murders a year, crack dens, 12-14 year old boys and girls with absolutely no chance of ever escaping their environment. It is written by the guy who used to write the HBO show 'The Wire'...another fine depiction of Baltimore. I grew up like 30 miles from this war zone but in a totally different wo...more
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Read in May, 2007
recommends it for:
anyone who likes The Wire
A year in the life of a Baltimore drug corner. Journalism, not fiction. A worthy read, fairly enjoyable, although I really had to *make* myself read it. I wish the Author's Note had been at the start of the book, rather than the end. It gave me a better sense of where the authors were in the book. I didn't realise while I was reading it just how far the writers had gone to ensure that it was as true as it could be, and that events weren't swayed by their opinions/estimations of what was happenin...more
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Read in March, 2008
David Simon, creator of the TV shows Homicide and The Wire, wrote this very solid piece of journalism a number of years ago describing life as viewed from a West Baltimore corner. He follows a number of characters - aging touts and young drug dealers - in an effort to communicate to the reader the truly horrific depths of our country's problems with inner-city decay and the drug trade. I enjoyed this book and learned a lot, though I will say that the writing is a bit punchy, in the manner of new...more
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Read in June, 2007
this was a much tougher read than homicide, but so worth it. i don't recommend it as a desk read, as there were parts that were so emotional you kind of just want to be alone to think about it.
i find it hard to believe that i was the same age in the same year this was researched as some of the kids mentioned. i thought back to my own home life at the time and was grateful that even though shit was going down for me at the time, at least it wasn't like west baltimore.
i highly, highly re...more
i find it hard to believe that i was the same age in the same year this was researched as some of the kids mentioned. i thought back to my own home life at the time and was grateful that even though shit was going down for me at the time, at least it wasn't like west baltimore.
i highly, highly re...more
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Read in June, 2008
I picked this book up because I am a big fan of The Wire. I thought it is was a good book, but much more unrelentingly depressing than the HBO series. There was a little bit of humor in The Wire to keep you from feeling totally hopeless, but I found this book to have little upbeat about it. The culture of the corner is so ingrained in poor neighborhoods, that I didn't see much hope for ending the cycle of poverty and drug use in inner city neighborhoods. It did a good job of describing life in a...more
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This book offers an inside view into the lives of people living "on the corner", or in the ghetto, of Baltimore. The authors actually spent 3 years researching this neighborhood and the people in it. I was impressed by the honesty and true depiction of what life must be like for some people. Every few chapters or so there is a chapter on related topics such as well fare, teenage pregnancy, drug addiction, etc. I found it to be very educational and often eye-opening.
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Read in July, 2004
I read this book when I decided to move to Baltimore. It preceded the HBO miniseries, which preceded The Wire (WHICH IS A MUST SEE SHOW). This book really explains why inner city kids have a struggle that comfortable, stable folks can't easily understand. After I read this I decided that I would still be mad if my car was stolen while living in Baltimore (it never was...) but that at least I would UNDERSTAND WHY it was stolen in a way I could not have before.
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