The Corner
David Simon and Ed Burns
Canongate Books
£12.99
5/5
"The Corner stands as an unblinking portrayal of how people organise themselves when cast adrift from the conventions of society."
- What we have here is one of the most thorough, disturbing and eye-opening pieces of journalism in modern times.
If you're one of the many who thinks David Simon and Ed Burns shifted the TV paradigm when they created The Wire, then it is here where they first put their shoulders to the heft.
The Corner is a harrowing and uplifting true tale of a year in the life of a shifting and shiftless bunch of dealers and addicts for whom the centre of the universe is an undistinguished block where West Fayette meets Monroe in Baltimore.
The open-air drugs market feeds a helter-skelter self-contained, self-regulating habitat that has its victims and victors, its spirited and its lost.
What the authors have achieved is staggering. By observing the characters that populate the corner, by authenticating and illuminating their dreams and demons, they have created a work that is Dickensian in its breadth and warmth and social impact.
The Corner stands as an unblinking portrayal of how people organise themselves when cast adrift from the conventions of society.
Bristling with humanity - and inhumanity - and packed with the sort of detail that would busy a thousand sociologists, criminologists and anthropologists for a lifetime, this re-issued 1997 work gives the reader an insight into a brutal, feudal society that is not only far beyond the experience of many, but far beyond the imagination of most.
If you're looking for a prelude to, and companion for, The Wire, these are the comprehensive crib notes. But, at over 600 dense pages with scarcely a word wasted, it stands as a towering achievement on its own, a testament to the authors' enduring patience, integrity and commitment.
That Simon and Burns decided to focus on a single map-point and give it three-dimensions was a moment of inspiration. That they unearthed from this bloody pinprick some eternal truths that will have a resonance across the globe is an act of genius.
First published at wharf.co.uk on April 21, 2009
