Homicide: Life on the Street was my favorite TV show for a long time, and I watched most of it with my father, before he took Simon's fat volume, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, out of the library. The contents of that book are spread out over most of the first four seasons of the show, albeit in a somewhat scrambled fashion, and many of the jokes, habits, and quirks of the homicide detectives have found their way into The Wire.
After Homicide, I was hungry for more of Simon's writing, and I found The Corner, which focuses on a family struggling to survive in the heart of West Baltimore. Simon and Burns' reporting vividly paints the neighborhood and its cast of characters, and does not shy from hard questions (and conclusions) about the war on drugs. Crucially, it doesn't ignore the humor and sweetness that the characters find in their lives, and celebrates those who do find a way out.
Especially in light of Simon's recent success in television, the true accounts on which he has based many of his stories are fascinating.
Has anyone else here read these two? Any of you got anything bad to say? It has been a while since I read the pair, but with all of the recent interest in the Wire, I was sort of surprised when I couldn't find a thread here about Simon's writing. |
