Must read background to The Wire. ( )

I had to wait a few days after finishing this book to write anything about it, because it didn't seem like any part of my reaction really did it justice, or would be worthy enough to record without cheapening the book. It's unquestionably one of the most powerful books I've read in a long time, and knowing that it's nonfiction - that all these people really did exist and really did do the things it describes - makes me pause. Very few books make me think about my own relationship to the text to the extent that The Corner did. Maybe it's because it's about real life, that Baltimore and so many other inner cities are really suffering in this way in my own country right now that makes it hit so much harder than, say, the equivalent suffering in a Zola novel. While I think America is a great place to live and has towering advantages over many other countries in many things, I think its greatest failing, at heart, is a willingness to simply look the other way at real human suffering if caring about it would cost money.

The quote from Kafka that opens up the book, which also later made an appearance in season 5 of Simon's TV series The Wire - "You can hold back from the suffering of the world. You have free permission to do so, and it is in accordance with your nature. But perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could have avoided." - sums up what I want to say about my personal and our collective attitude towards the corner perfectly. I'm not exactly sure what drives David Simon to delve so deeply into the lives of these people and all the others he's featured on his shows or in his books; he'd probably say that, contra the Kafka quote, holding back is the one thing he can't do. He immersed himself in the lives of Ella, Fran, Gary, DeAndre, and the many other people with smaller roles for well over a year, connecting their joys and heartbreaks, their own pieces of the "suffering of the world", into an immensely affecting work for public consumption. If you've seen The Wire then all this will be very familiar, but it's worth looking at this material through a new medium, particularly because its diligent, searching explorations of the individual people's lives is much more focused on the ground-level day-to-day struggles to stay clean or get a new fix or get a job or keep a job than the panoramic sweep of the show. I'm not sure which of the main characters has the most painful story, but each was gripping.

Periodically Simon will interrupt the narrative to go into extended rants on how exactly we've gotten ourselves trapped in this endless drug war and cycle of poverty. This book was written in the early 90s before the decrease in crime rates, but his moving analyses of the vicious logic of drug use and drug crime remain perfectly relevant, especially in a city like Baltimore. The real question for me is: after reading an amazing work like this, what am I going to do about it? I can continue not being a heroin addict, but I don't know what I can do about the nightmare vortex portrayed here. The corner has an internal logic all its own, and I'm not sure that there's much I can do about it other than to support the end of this pointless Reaganeering that has hollowed out our cities and ruined millions of lives. Like Simon said through The Wire, you can't call it a war on drugs - wars end. The challenge that our society faces is how to admit defeat and begin the long, painful process of making sure that the kind of life pictured here becomes just fiction again. Any ideas? ( )

Liked the little bits on the history and progress of Baltimore's inner city. I wish it would have gotten more into the bureaucracy stifling the police force and local government. ( )

This is something I would put on a bucket list. It is that important. ( )

The Corner is very similar to Simon's other best selling book, Homicide: a Year on the Killing Streets. As a freelance writer he has been allowed access to the darkest and grittiest corners of West Baltimore. With Edward Burns as coauthor, Simon takes the reader on a cruel and complicated journey. Together they illustrate what junkies will and won't do to score the next hit or blast; what crimes or capers they will commit or won't...because even full blown addicts have their limits. West Baltimore is a shooting gallery where the drug war rearranges police priorities. It's a harsh reality. The operative word is "real" because even though the plot line reads like a movie and the people you meet could be actors, they are all real. As readers, you get to know people and care about them. Be forewarned. It's no fairy tale. It grips you as only a never ending nightmare could. ( )