The Corner

I simply must comment on The Corner, by David Simon and Edward Burns. It was a very powerful read.

The book, which was made into an HBO miniseries, chronicles a year in the lives of DeAndre McCullough (age 15/16), Fran Boyd (D's mother)and Gary McCullough (D's father).

That normal year of their lives would be the worst year in the lives of anyone I have ever known. And it was their normal. But what makes the book so great is the author's insistence that these people not be judged unfairly. First it is illustrated, and then said... powerfully said.



Simon and Burns also wrote Homicide: a Year on the Killing Streets. After spending a year with the Baltimore Homicide division in 1988, the authors decided to see how the other half lived for a year in 1993. For those doing the math, this would make DeAndre about the same age I was that year.

Any reader will be amazed at what humankind can tolerate and how even a nightmare life can seem so normal in the most destitute of neighborhoods. I was particularly taken with the way poverty can funnel so many toward a life as a dope fiend. As a person who has always taken the Nancy Reagan approach to drugs, even I was caught feeling like I would be right there shooting up if I were raised in the basement of a drug-shooting gallery like DeAndre was.

Gary McCullough's life became a series of "capers" designed to fund his daily fix. Fran, although she makes efforts to clean up later, also partakes of the neighborhood's economic driving force. Is it any shock, then, that DeAndre dabbles-in and then fully embraces drug slinging at an age when I was trading "Lakers vs. Celtics" games on Sega Genesis with Chris for a ride home? Well, yeah.

He also became a father that same year, drank alcohol regularly and smoked every drug you can imagine. Had I seen a joint at that age, I probably wouldn't have known what it was. His parents viewed that about the same way mine viewed the video games - with a resigned shrug.

The morality shift of a dope fiend was also interesting. Gary's best caper involves trading in old cars for scrap metal, which quickly devolves from buying old broken down cars from friends into taking parked cars. When he sees that his partner with the tow truck continued the caper without him, thus keeping all future "earnings," Gary actually said, "There isn't any morality to people."

But, even though the author shows the many faults of the family and their many shortcomings, their story is one that will earn your compassion. And, if that weren't clear enough, the author makes that point unmistakable.

The following is an edited version of a two-page summary that left me numb.

"In the end, we'll blame them. We always do.

"And why the hell not? They've ignored our warnings and sanctions, they've taken our check-day bribe and done precious little with it, they've turned our city streets into drug bazaars. Why shouldn't they take the blame?

"If it was us, if it was our lonesome ass shuffling past the corner of Monroe and Fayette every day, we'd get out, wouldn't we? We'd endure. Succeed. Thrive. No matter what, no matter how, we'd find the fucking exit.

"If it was our fathers firing dope and our mothers smoking coke, we'd pull ourselves past it.... we'd shuffle up the stairs past nodding fiends and sullen dealers, shut the bedroom door, turn off the television, and do our homework. ... We'd lie about our age to cut taters and spill grease and sling fries at the sub shop for five-and-change-an-hour, walking every day past the corner where fiends are making our daily wage in ten minutes.

"... And, when all the other children are out in the street, learning the corner world, priming themselves for the only life they've ever known, we'd be holed up in some shithole of a rowhouse with our textbooks and yellow highlighter, cramming for finals.

"That's the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments....

"It's a reckoning of another kind, perhaps, and one that becomes a possibility only through the arrogance and certainty that so easily accompanies a well-planned and well-tended life....

"... We would rise above the corner. And when we tell ourselves such things, we unthinkly assume that we would be consigned to places like Fayette Street fully equipped, with all the graces and disciplines, talents and training that we now possess. Our parents would still be our parents... We would escape to live the life we were supposed to live, the life we are living now."

If you are looking for a book that will move your core, read this one.