Just finished reading ‘The Corner‘ by David Simon and Edward Burns. Can’t recommend it enough. The book is about people living in West Baltimore, caught up in the drug corners, either through addiction or dealing or by proximity to both.

It’s takes a long hard look at the so-called ‘Drug War’ in America and the effect it has really had.

David Simon was a Baltimore Sun crime reporter, he wrote a book called ‘Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets‘, for which he spent a year embedded with the police, and it was made into a tv series. He then went on to co-author ‘the Corner’ with Edward Burns, a teacher in Baltimore who had served 20 years in the police department.

David Simon met Edward Burns, in or around 1985, when he was looking for sources within the Baltimore Police department for an article on a drug trafficker called ‘Little’ Melvin Williams. Simon was obviously impressed by Burns, and when Burns left the police force, Simon says it just made sense to collaborate on ‘The Corner’. Simon convinced Burns to put off getting his teaching qualification for a year after he retired from the force, so that they could write ‘The Corner’ together.

The two went on to create ‘the wire‘ - which both myself and Bif are big fans of. In fact, I was given it for Christmas by a friend of mine who knows what a huge fan of ‘The Wire’ I am (thanks Eoin!!).

As an aside, ‘Little’ Melvin Williams did time, came out with religion and got a part in ‘The Wire’!

I launched into reading the book without even reading the cover, and I was about two thirds of the way through the book when I came to some photographs of the characters and realised, on inspecting the cover, that it’s a true story.

Simon and Burns actually spent that year on the corners in West Baltimore writing what actually happened to these people.

It reads so well, and contains such fascinating material that I had assumed it was fiction. The stories are also interweaved exceptionally well with social commentary that doesn’t interrupt the reading of the book the way you might expect.

The book gives an amazing insight into the lives of these people, and in the case of the drug addicts, allowing you to empathise with a way of life that we have become used to boiling down to a two dimensional caricature. The book also examines the politics which have failed these people, and calls for change.

If you have been watching the Wire at all, this is a great companion piece as it gives a more full understanding of the way of life in West Baltimore, and it’s also interesting to note some of the inspiration perhaps for characters or events in ‘The Wire’.

‘The Corner’ was made into a mini-series which I would like to see - if anyone knows where to get it, do let me know!