A review by srash
The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood by Edward Burns, David Simon
5.0
This is an excellent but heartbreaking book. Sort of like the emotional equivalent of being punched in the face over and over again.
Simon's book Homicide follows Baltimore murder police for a year, whereas this book follows the life and times of the residents of one of West Baltimore's worst drug corners for a year.
The book's main focus is the McCullough family. Gary used to own his own business and read voraciously about philosophy and investing, but his addiction has left him relying on stealing scrap metal. Still, there remains a gentleness and philosophical side to him that makes him spectacularly ill-suited to the street. His former wife Fran is far more street-savvy and made of sterner stuff and has a much more long-standing addiction to drugs. Their teenaged son DeAndre is bright and at times significantly more mature than either parent but already succumbing to the lures of easy money dealing drugs on the corner.
Beyond the McCullough family, the book also profiles the efforts of Ella, a rec center director, to keep as many of the local kids off the corner through her afternoon sessions. It's a losing battle but one she sincerely fights daily. There's also Fat Curt, Rita, and the other residents of Blue's local shooting gallery. Blue's a talented artist whom Ella continually invites to lead art programs, but he's lost in a drug haze, and his addict friends have completely stripped the home he inherited from his mother of anything of value. Curt and Rita are both so physically debilitated from their years of shooting up heroin that the local cops find them too repulsive to arrest.
At various points, all of them vow to quit and some even make significant progress on the road to recovery (something that is oddly cheered on even by the local dealers), but the conventional wisdom on the street that you have to leave West Baltimore to stay clean is proven true over and over again.
Simon's book Homicide follows Baltimore murder police for a year, whereas this book follows the life and times of the residents of one of West Baltimore's worst drug corners for a year.
The book's main focus is the McCullough family. Gary used to own his own business and read voraciously about philosophy and investing, but his addiction has left him relying on stealing scrap metal. Still, there remains a gentleness and philosophical side to him that makes him spectacularly ill-suited to the street. His former wife Fran is far more street-savvy and made of sterner stuff and has a much more long-standing addiction to drugs. Their teenaged son DeAndre is bright and at times significantly more mature than either parent but already succumbing to the lures of easy money dealing drugs on the corner.
Beyond the McCullough family, the book also profiles the efforts of Ella, a rec center director, to keep as many of the local kids off the corner through her afternoon sessions. It's a losing battle but one she sincerely fights daily. There's also Fat Curt, Rita, and the other residents of Blue's local shooting gallery. Blue's a talented artist whom Ella continually invites to lead art programs, but he's lost in a drug haze, and his addict friends have completely stripped the home he inherited from his mother of anything of value. Curt and Rita are both so physically debilitated from their years of shooting up heroin that the local cops find them too repulsive to arrest.
At various points, all of them vow to quit and some even make significant progress on the road to recovery (something that is oddly cheered on even by the local dealers), but the conventional wisdom on the street that you have to leave West Baltimore to stay clean is proven true over and over again.