The Corner - Hardcover

Simon, David; Burns, Edward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0767900308 ISBN 13: 9780767900300

Publisher: Broadway, 1997

Synopsis

West Baltimore, Fayette and Monroe: the corner. On this forgotten intersection, the American dream has crumbled to a nightmare. Here, the full price of the drug culture is being paid--yet, surprisingly, it can also be a place of hope, caring, and love.

This extraordinary book tells the searing true story of one year in the life of an inner-city neighborhood.

Written by David Simon, the award-winning author of Homicide, and Edward Burns, a former police detective, it follows a handful of people who must struggle mightily just to survive--let alone escape--the drug market that fuels their world. At the center of the narrative is fifteen-year-old DeAndre McCullough. DeAndre's parents, Gary and Fran, were once poised, against all odds, to pull themselves up and out of West Baltimore. But when they themselves stumble and then succumb to the corner's temptations, DeAndre's future hangs in the balance. Smart and streetwise, he is both drawn to and wary of the drug trade that flourishes beyond his rowhouse steps. Can he rise above his parents' addiction, or will he, too, become a casualty of the corner?

In telling the story of DeAndre and his broken family, Simon and Burns open up the complex world of the corner and its unforgettable characters. It's a place of predators and their prey, of slingers and touts, of stickup boys and shooting gallery nurses, of ambivalent police, helpless users, and innocent bystanders. But it is also, incredibly, a place of fragile hope. Fat Curt, an aging drug tout, remembers the corner as a kinder place, and tries to protect his customers from weak or dangerous product. R.C., a troubled teenager, finds refuge from his chaotic life within the basketball court's magic boundaries. Ella, a longtime resident, runs the recreation center for the corner's children, shielding them as best she can from what lies outside the playground's chain-link fence. Amid so much desperation, decency still flickers, poignantly, across the corner's blasted landscape.

More vividly than any recent book, The Corner captures an America of which many of us are only dimly aware. Through the prism of just one desolate crossroads, Simon and Burns offer chilling assessments of why law enforcement policies, moral crusades, and the welfare system have done so little for our inner cities. Deeply moving and unflinchingly real, The Corner will forever alter our view of the so-called war on drugs, even as it compels us to look deep into the hearts and minds of all those who live in America's abandoned places.

About this title

Review:

This startling look at desperate, drug-addled inner-city lives ranks as one of the grittiest--and best--examinations of underclass America available. Like Alex Kotlowitz's There Are No Children Here and Leon Dash's Rosa Lee, The Corner shines light on a horrific subculture of addiction, crime, dependency, and violence. Authors David Simon (who wrote Homicide, the book that inspired the TV series of the same name) and Edward Burns (a former cop) are muckraking reporters who operate in the finest tradition of American journalism. They spent an entire year on the corner of Fayette and Monroe in West Baltimore, getting to know its open-air drug market and its people. Although the authors present strong evidence that the so-called war on drugs cannot be won, The Corner has no political agenda. It is simply a powerful testament to the bleak situation confronting many urban neighborhoods. At once deeply unsettling and extremely rewarding, this humane book deserves a wide audience.

From the Publisher:

Praise for The Corner:

"The Corner is an intimate, intense dispatch from the broken heart of urban America. It is impossible to read these pages and not feel stunned at the high price, in human potential, in thwarted aspirations, that simple survival on the streets of West Baltimore demands of its citizens. An important document, as devastating as it is lucid."
--Richard Price, author of Clockers

"The Corner is a remarkable book--very tough, very demanding, very rewarding. Some of it is brutal and all of it is heartbreaking. As a reporter, I can only stand back and admire David Simon and Edward Burns for an amazing piece of reportage. To be there for an entire year, to make sense of random events and a list of characters long enough to make Charles Dickens envious, and to write coherently--it's a breathtaking achievement. And they manage to make West Baltimore as much a character as any of the flesh-and-blood people in the book."
--Glenn Frankel, author of Beyond the Promised Land

"If you want to understand street-corner life in the inner city, you should read The Corner, an amazingly intimate, detailed work of reporting that makes human and vivid a world that outsiders ordinarily are forced to learn about through statistics, sound bites, and stereotypes."
--Nicholas Lemann, author of The Promised Land

About this edition

• Publisher: Broadway
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0767900308
• ISBN 13: 9780767900300
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 560