The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood

This was a tough read from the get go, if you come from the Wire to this you might be disappointed, I suggest to read homicide first and then read Then Corner, this book does not flinch in what ha-pens in a drug corner and for every page you read the weight of a system that has gone fubar starts to feel oppressing. Good book but not a light read.

I remembered when HBO premiered the mini-series. It was so sad to see what became of the people when it originally aired then. I became curious and learned the mini-series was based on the book about the people. I finished the book today and it is a good book. However, it was really tragic to learn the additional details that were in the book. For instance, DeAndre had moved from snorting heroin, to smoking crack by 1995, and to using IV drugs. I just recently read that DeAndre died in 2012 from a heroin overdose as well.

The copy of "The Corner" I ordered had been released from a library in Virginia because of, the red stamp in the front of the book read, "low demand." Therein lies a reflection of the tragedy at the heart of the book.David Simon and Edward Burns portray a year in the life of a drug-ravaged West Baltimore neighborhood -- "the corner" -- represented primarily by Fayette and Monroe streets, the site of one of numerous open-air drug markets in the area. But "the corner" is also an entity, in Simons' and Burns' telling, a being that draws residents to it, demands their money and daily commitment and ultimately consumes them in their daily quest for a "blast."A clutch of characters the two reporters followed live at the heart of this big, vital book. Fran Boyd and Gary McCullough, each addicts, are parents to DeAndre McCullough, a teenager slipping toward the corner. In the course of the year DeAndre fathers a child with 14-year-old Tyreeka Freamon, ultimately all but abandoning them. Various members of DeAndre's crew and "touts" for the dealers slide in and out of the narrative, many of them drifting toward death or prison.There is also a moving portrayal of Ella Thompson, a stubborn organizer of community resources who struggles mightily to wrest the underlying humanity she still sees in her neighborhood to the surface.Throughout the book the authors keep the reader teetering on a razor's edge of fear and very slim hope. The people who inhabit "The Corner" are damaged people. As a middle-class person I found myself disappointed and angry when DeAndre blows off a job for no good reason or Fran struggles bravely toward kicking her habit but falls back or the tout "Fat Curt," gravely ill, fails to adhere to the medical care he so desperately needs. And we wonder why Gary, one of many members of a solid, hardworking family and a man who had gained a large measure of success and security in his life slid into an abyss of addiction."The Corner" is not without a point of view on this subject. The book is an indictment of the futility of the war on drugs, the ineptitude of the public school system and the frankly uncaring attitude of governments at all level toward people they view as expendable in the grand scheme of American life.This book is painstakingly detailed, a masterpiece of sociological observation, but it is not a old, clinical report of a crumbling neighborhood. The authors look at what they see clearly and unflinchingly and allow the voices of their subjects to shine through. Those voices may make you uncomfortable, they may make you angry, they may make you nod in agreement, they may make you laugh. They are always real, and the authors' connection to them is obvious.I am afraid that books like the "Corner," which portray urban life in the early and mid-90s, will more than ever be consigned to dusty library corners or the shelves of private collections like my own. Listen to the rhetoric of the 2012 presidential race and it's clear how completely the descendants of the characters on "The Corner" have been marginalized. While we wring our hands about "the middle class," another class continues to struggle, as it has for years, outside our view.I was grateful for the small ray of hope that emerged at the end of "The Corner." Grateful because it had to fight its way through so many layers of the sadness that is at the heart of this unforgettable book.

This book follows the lives of a Baltimore neighborhood that is an open drug park. Over 4 years time, the writers basically lived among the pushers, fiends, and a few straight people, documenting their lives. This is the book that people need to read when they're thinking that we're winning the war on drugs. That rehab, mandatory drug sentencing, better policing, and more prisons are what will work to solve the drug problems. Keep thinking that.

I read this book after having read Simon's previous work, Homicide A Year on the Streets. Simon and Burns did a great job of portraying these people of the corner and making me care about them. I also have a better understanding of why it is so difficult to leave the life on the corner. The authors point out many problems with the various social programs which have failed to turn these lives around. What is depressing and disturbing to me is that there seem to be no good solutions to the problems of the corner. I don't have a clue, and that makes me sad for the great waste of human lives. I only gave 4 stars because the flow of the story was interrupted several times by a digression on the failures of the system and the war on drugs. I found myself skimming through to get back to the story. Maybe these should have presented as a last chapter in the book. This, though, is a minor quibble.

I first watched the miniseries for this book when it came on HBO. I watched the movie again when I was older. After watching the movie for a second time I wanted to know more about the characters. I decided to buy the book.I couldn't understand why DeAndre choose to use the same drug that destroyed his parents. The book shed light on his upbringing and the choices DeAndre made as a teenager.The Corner is well written. It shows the struggles that goes on in the inner city. After reading the book, I gain a new perspective on life.

A stunning work of journalism/storytelling. If you've watched The Wire, you'll be aware of David Simon's work. Together with Ed Burns he has created an absolute masterpiece in this book. The fact they managed to spend a year on the streets of Baltimore that feature in this story, ingratiating themselves in the neighbourhood as total outsiders, being accepted and respected enough by the real human beings that are the characters of this book is like nothing I've ever read or heard of before. Buy it. Read it. Love it. Then buy a copy of Homicide (also by Simon and Burns). Then buy the DVD of The Corner - a beautiful and faithful adaptation of this book.Once you've finished the book (and NOT before), do some research on Google on what became of the people featured in The Corner, particularly an article written by David Simon himself.BUY IT NOW.

I came to this having enjoyed The Wire and been enthralled by Homicide. Nothing really prepares you for The Corner though.This is a story about the people left behind by their nation. A year on the streets of one small inner city neighbourhood with dealers and users that run them and the few remaining families and drug-free friends that try to survive on them. Superficially, many of the characters will seem familiar. Anyone who's watched a few hours of American cop show dramas in the last decade will be familiar with the attitude of the pushers and dealers, the repulsiveness of the addicts with their needles scars and malnourished faces, the hatred of the (few) cops that dare disturb the open air drug markets and need dens. The Corner is an altogether less superficial examination though.A year with this underclass of America reveals more than you might want to know. The dealers on the streets aren't generated spontaneously, vials in pocket, ready to start slinging. They grew up on those same streets, learning the game by watching, waiting until it was obvious there was nothing more to be gained from school and no chance of earning enough cash legitimately to leave the neighborhood. Similarly, their customers, the fiends, did not arrive overnight on buses from some other, worse, area. They are the dealer's childhood friends, their cousins, even their parents. The drug trade is not some secret war being fought by our governments in foreign fields with evil faceless men. It is the only trade in growing parts of our cities. It is the only thing some of our children will even know, the only thing some of our parents want.The Corner doesn't make excuses for drug addiction, but it does point out the real lack of viable alternatives to the growing underclass in America, and the unavoidable failure of all the methods being employed in fighting it. Its not big on solutions - I guess the authors don't claim to be sociologists. But this book really should be read by anyone who can read to raise awareness if nothing else. It is heart-breaking, horrifying, and disturbing. There are few points of any encouragement, few examples of admirable qualities in any of the cast. But there are a few who make it out alive so there is some element of hope in the story.I cannot recommend this book highly enough - buy it now :)

Readers of `Homicide: a Year on the Killing Streets' by the same author will know roughly what to expect from this book. They will not be disappointed. It is a compelling portrait of the bleak, and often short, lives of the drug dealers and users who inhabit a small area of inner-city Baltimore, written after spending a year on the streets with them. It is not just a factual narrative, but also reports the feeling and thoughts of the dealers, users and their families from the detailed knowledge the authors have of them. It is impossible to know whether these interpolations are accurate, but they certainly seem authentic. The relentless downward drift of most of the individuals to a point of no return, despite repeated attempts by some of them to reform, is clinically chronicled. The depressing narrative of degradation, where daily existence revolves around getting the next fix and life is held cheaply, is only lightened by a few examples of remarkable individuals who maintain their hope against all the odds. A few even succeed in breaking out of the vicious cycle of drugs and at the close of the book are leading `normal' lives. The authors refrain from passing judgement on the characters, but do criticise the Baltimore authorities for lack of action. Is this justified, or would the characters have ended where they do anyway? Not living there, I cannot judge, but the fact that this appalling situation exists in what was once one of America's great cities is probably evidence enough of failure. This well-written book is a good and thought-provoking read, but not a pleasant one.

A magnificent book whose authors, somehow, are able periodically to step back from the individual stories from the street that populate and illuminate this wonderful account of street life in Baltimore to deliver a withering and forensic analysis of the follies of Government policies whose impact is perverse and productive of the very evil that they are designed to address. Masterly.

Oh good grief, is this ever a depressing book?As we all know, there's drug dealing on the streets of most major (and many minor) cities in America. This book watches what happens in one such "drug market" in the mid-1990s, and the impact living in that society has on the people living there.I found the book beyond depressing for a couple of reasons. Firstly, reading about seemingly nice people (and some iffier ones) being brought low by drugs isn't fun, I don't think, if you've got any ability to empathise with people. Secondly, I got depressed by (and angry at) the police. With the exception of a couple "beat cops," they didn't seem willing to do anything more than the most basic and rudimentary policing, and that's not what we pay our taxes for.The other thing that it brought home to me is what John Edwards (the former US Presidential candidate) called the "Two Americas." I work in America for a good chunk of each year, and I was surprised and disgusted by the America I read in this book. I mean, we all know that drug dealing occurs, but a 24/7 open air drug market on the streets of Baltimore? Disgusting.This is an interesting book. You'll get depressed by it, but it might open some people's eyes too.