The corner
The notorious corner of West Fayette and Monroe Streets in Baltimore is a 24-hour open-air drug market that provides the economic fuel for a dying neighbourhood. Through the eyes of one broken family – two drug-addicted adults and their smart, vulnerable 15-year-old son, DeAndre McCollough – Simon and Burns examine the sinister realities of inner cities across the USA and unflinchingly assess why law enforcement policies, moral crusades and the welfare system have accomplished so little.
Stats for nerds
10recommend
14mentions
11people
2008–2024years
93% recommend7% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- For nonfiction I think about Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood by David Simon (and Ed Burns for The Corner) a lot. They are very funny and very sad and really changed how I see the world. So I cheated, two books.
- Individual moral action, fine, maybe.
But the show was definitely not in any way about the reality of the drug trade because it didn't depict the reality of the drug trade, especially the drug trade in Baltimore (if anything, it has vague similarities to the 80s-early 90s drug trade in Chicago.) Yes, I know he worked at the Baltimore Sun. The Corner was exactly authentic Baltimore. Even Simon would tell you that The Wire isn't.
The drug trade was a setting for making statements and playing out thought experiments about morality, power, and institutions (which you've pointed out from your perspective.) But if you see it as an accurate reflection of the drug trade anywhere, you're being deceived by fantasy fiction.
- If you've enjoyed The Wire, do read David Simon's books, it's outstanding work:
- Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets
- The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood
- David Simon's books "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets" and "The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood" (co-written with former homicide detective Ed Burns) are the kind of stories that change your thinking forever.
- Baltimore has very serious and endemic issues with crime, drugs, poverty and government -- all of which combine to result in an extremely high murder rate. The numbers have improved since the historic peak in 1993 (353 murders), and Baltimore is no longer the #1 city in murders per capita in the US, but it's still not good.
If you're interested, there are several excellent explorations of the particulars of Baltimore's problems (which are present, usually to a lesser extent, in many other cities) from David Simon:
- Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (book) - Homicide: Life on the Streets (TV series) - The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (book) - The Corner (TV miniseries) - The Wire (TV series) - I think the academics are well aware of that - but the alternative is to never study groups in this way.
Also consider that such people are typically integrated with the community they are studying for months, even close to a year. We are certainly different when observed, but we also get used to a new presence, eventually consider them "one of us", and will resume (mostly) normal behavior.
They're not technically academic works, but I consider David Simon's books "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets" and "The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood" (co-written with Edward Burns) to be in the category of such studies. The first book was the inspiration of the television series of the same name, and both were inspiration for The Wire.
"The Corner", by the way, is one of the most emotionally devastating books I've read, and I tend to pick very unhappy topics.
