Some changes in one's life are expected, even desired, such as the growth and physical changes of puberty. Some, such as the loss of idealism following 9/11, come as a response to being buffetted about by social forces beyond one's control.It is this kind of change that "The Corner" helped me respond to, and that's why it contributed so strongly to my political development.
Simon's work should be familiar to Kossacks with cable, as he is the guiding force behind HBO's "visual novel", The Wire and the celebration of New Orleans in Treme, and I had been a Homicide: Life on The Streets fan for many years when I picked up the big book.
No matter how compellingly written, it would seem that an account of the McCullough family of West Baltimore would seem to be an unlikely choice to motivate life change in a suburban white chick from Arizona and I'd love to say it was Simon's impassioned call for a policy style "paper bag" in the drug war that made the case(Although it did change me from a mild proponent of current drug policy to a staunch opponent.)
The sentence that made that case was penned by an anonymous Baltimorean, frustrated by the lack of support received in some social-service agency:
"All of y'all people that work in here can go fuck yourselves!" It's not poetic, but very few people who have ever faced a supercilious social worker with a clipboard would tell you they couldn't relate. In a strange way, that, more than the thousands of hours he's spent following cops, drug runners, and touts, helped convince this SSI recipient that this Simon is the real deal and created a fan for life.
The fact that Simon wrote about that establishes his credibility in my eyes because it showed me that he cared enough to capture the reality of receiving social-service benefits that was separate from some of the myths about lazy government employees and/or thieving recipients.Also, I like the dark humor and I really did come to love and care about the McCulloughs as we read about their year in the mid-nineties, even though they all have times when they do unsympathetic things because the drug-corner hustle becomes ingrained.
Somehow, at a time when I found out my own American Dream wasn't likely to come true, it helped to know that it wasn't my failure, but America's. And, yet, there are shoots of hope throughout this dark book.