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A fundamental of honest narrative is, of course, a certain dishonesty. Everyone has to be somewhere. Meaning that there are required choices to be made by a storyteller as to the version of events, to the stance and tone of the piece and, ultimately, to the point of view of the story. Failure to do so results in at best a vague muddle of a tale and, at worst, the sort of nodding analytical tone that passes for objectivity in modern journalism.

Two years before beginning work on The Corner: A Year In The Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, I had completed and published Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, a tome that gave full-throated voice to the viewpoint of American urban policing. Indeed, at points even the omniscient narrator adopted the communal voice of the homicide unit in Baltimore.

That was a choice, and a calculated one. It was based on the presumption that the story would be better served – and somehow more honest – if the author admitted from the start that his readers were less interested in how David Simon might see the world and would rather see it through the eyes of a Harry Edgerton, a Donald Worden or a Tom Pellegrini – the men living the event.

There was no equivocation to this, no intended or resulting deceit. Life in the Baltimore Police Department’s homicide unit would be delivered warts and all; moments of cynicism, racism, sexism and the darkest sort of humour would be captured and included in the narrative. But, too, these moments would be viewed from within the interior construct of a homicide detective’s life. Context itself would belong to the communal voice of the police.

Readers got it. A few journalists, tellingly, did not, with a handful notably going forth to argue that, as a reporter, I had been co-opted and charmed by my subjects, that I had, in the parlance of ethnography, anthropology and immersion journalism, ‘gone native’.

I had enjoyed my year with the detectives immensely. And there were some fellows in the homicide unit who to this day remain among my closest friends. But throughout the process of reporting and writing that first narrative, I remained entirely aware that the same story of assembly-line violence in Baltimore could have been told – differently, yet no less dramatically – from the points of view of the victims and their families, from the defendants and their attorneys, from prosecutors or judges or correctional authorities.

By capturing a narrative of death investigators – and, by extension, of the police deterrent as a whole – I had made a choice that necessitated the exclusion of other versions of that narrative. And when it came time to consider a second book, this very exclusion had to be acknowledged. I had, in Homicide, portrayed those policed in Baltimore as they are truly seen by those working murders. I had done so accurately and, while stereotype and overstatement is a fundamental of any interior point of view, there was considerable truth in what a detective sees and believes.

But there is truth as well in what he can’t see, or perhaps won’t see. And there are narratives that can’t be acquired from the distance that comes with a badge and gun. And, having let the detectives have their say in Homicide, it seemed to me only fair to offer the same opportunity to their opposite numbers on the city drug corners.

I had known Ed Burns since 1985 as one of the best investigators in the Baltimore department’s criminal investigations division, and I knew as well that he was retiring just as I was preparing a leave of absence from the Baltimore Sun to pursue this project. But, more than a brilliant investigator, I knew Ed to possess one of the most discerning and quickest minds in the police department. 

Having fought the drug war at the highest levels, he nonetheless had refused to embrace any collective contempt for the huddled masses, or any enveloping cynicism about the humanity of those he had so effectively policed. He, too, was eager to experience a viewpoint other than his own.

We picked a strip of drug corners along West Fayette Street at random, knowing no one there and few of the officers policing the sector. We went there nearly every day for all of 1993 and continued to follow our main characters until The Corner was published four years later.

We wrote at points from the communal voice of the drug trade. Strangely, no one accused us of going native, of being charmed by the slingers, touts and addicts, of being dope-fiend wannabes. In this second instance, it was understood that we had, for narrative purposes, chosen a particular point of view and honoured that perspective.

Again, everyone has to be somewhere. And while it is hard to say that I enjoyed my time on Fayette Street (the heartbreak needs to be acknowledged here), it is true that I value that year as much or more than the previous sojourn in the homicide unit. It balanced my understanding of the drug war and made me think in holistic terms about the nature of poverty, race and addiction.

Ultimately, it was, if not a penance for the point of view of my first book, at least a proper counterweight. Acquired separately, both Homicide and The Corner offer specific truths and specific omissions; they make their points easily and in something of an intellectual vacuum. Considered together, they are a fair account of life on the American street at the millennium and, ultimately, the basis for much of what came afterin the form of HBO’s The Wire.

Further reading...

The Corner
by David Simon and Ed Burns
Canongate
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