OS Book Club Pt II

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Its Hermione, let her do what she wants.

Finally you come upon something reasonable to say.


Anyway. Back among the living once again!

Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas by Maya Angelou

This one took me awhile to read for various reasons most of which had really nothing to do with the quality of Maya's third entry into her autobiographical memoir series. One of my goals for this year was to learn and study music theory along with playing the guitar more regularly. Adulting seems to be more about balancing things than anything else. Considering the title of the book and most of the events revovle around her singing and dancing in an all black San Francisco stage production it's a cool connection. Combined with the fact that Maya displays some of her most musical and rhythmic literary prowess here it's been somewhat dizzying to see how powerful song and dance can be and how it affects others.

Being the third book in her six (or technically 7 - the 7th book is a focused look into the relationship between herself and her mother and not just about a certain period of her life) book series this felt like the close of an arc. In this Maya gains her world famous name (Marguerite Angelos was her married name) and at the close of the book she has pencil and paper in hand as she begins writing. In essence this feels like the final act of an origin story. In between she manages to get married (and divorced), work at a record shop owned by a white woman, gain notoriety as a costumed singer and dancer in San Francisco, and join the touring company of Porgy & Bess to tour Europe.

While Maya doesn't explicitly touch on identity (and all those tangents) she does explore the area with each stop of the company's tour. Retelling how the villagers in the various towns reacted to seeing her and the rest of the cast. In several cases whole villages had never seen a Black person before. Coincidentally, this made me refer back to James Baldwin and his essays I have read recently. He shared similar experiences as he himself ventured Europe around the same time frame. While Maya doesn't dive deeply into philosophical identity the way Baldwin does she manages to explore that isolation and simultaneous global community with her language.

The biggest difference between this and the previous two memoirs is that this book features a period of Maya's life where she is legitimately happy, healthy, and headstrong. Even the divorce feels positive and healthy and is really only covered for a couple chapters at most. Maya isn't the type to dilly-dally or beat around the bush. She accepts everything at face value no matter how trivial or embarrassing. This is a woman who, after all, started up her own prostitution house previously in the second book. Despite that she continues to display some naivety, but it is clearly something she is growing out of.

As an adult this is something that is fascinating to read. Sometimes I think we all feel isolated with our lack of confidence, anxiety, and depression. It's comforting to read that people from all walks of life go through similar experiences. Maya is a legend and her strides were the paces of giants by the time she died, but she literally started from a dirt floor shack. Throughout her life she exhibits the same anxiety, self-doubt and self-loathing, and depression all of us everyday people experience.

While these are definitely feelings Maya held throughout the events of the book much of them are pushed to the back and expressed more subtlety compared to the other two books. Maya is, after all, having the time of her life and it is a real pleasure to read such an experience. It's hard for me to knock her for this period of her life, but I have to admit I didn't find it nearly as fascinating. Happiness is abundant and there's not much there to threaten it apart from feelings and emotions building up within her. By the end she is full-blown depressed (she goes as far as to see a psychiatrist), but this depression is only acknowledged for a couple pages. Like I said earlier - Maya doesn't dilly dally.

Spoiler

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the spaces between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

We cackled like two old crones, remembering a secret past. The laughter was sour and not really directed at white women. It was a traditional ruse that was used to shield the Black vulnerability; we laughed to keep from crying.

Anger and guilt decided before my birth that Black was Black and White was White and although the two might share sex, they must never exchange love. But the true nature of the human heart is as whimsical as spring weather. All signals may aim toward a fall of rain when suddenly the skies will clear.

Death to the young is more than that undiscovered country; despite its inevitability, it is a place having reality only in song or in other people's grief.

They were laughing at me and I was expected to join them. Only the secure can bear the weight of a joke and only the very secure can share in the laughter.

"What's wrong with calypso?" I had so strongly pulled anger to me as a defense that I could not shoo it away merely because it was no longer need.

Oh, the holiness of always being the injured party. The historically oppressed can find not only sanctity but safety in the state of victimization. When access to a better life has been denied often enough, and successfully enough, one can use the rejection as an excuse to cease all efforts. After all, one reckons, "they" don't want me, "they" accept their own mediocrity and refuse my best, "they" don't deserve me. And, finally, I am better, kinder, true than "they," even if I behave badly and act shamefully. And if I do nothing, I have every right to my idleness, for, after all, haven't I tried?

They're all white, but they're nice. Sort of like foreigners.

We were applauding ourselves for our good taste to be alive and in the right place at the right time.

Preparation is rarely easy and never beautiful.

Jealousy is conceived only in insecurity and must be nourished in fear.

Avarice cripples virtue and lies in ambush for honesty.

I had Malcolm X's autobiography on deck, but I put in a switch hitter because I needed to pivot from the autobiographical to something different. So far I'm only about 30 pages into Marlon James' Black Leopard, Red Wolf, but it is pretty great thus far. The writing style will take a couple pages to get into since it starts off somewhat jumpy, but it makes for a compelling and arresting narration style.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I had an idea of the order I wanted to get stuff done in but it's more or less out of the window. I need to regroup, for now I will probably finish the book American Spy and The Wire this weekend, and start All the Pieces Matter on Monday or so, then a book on the Yankees comes out on Tuesday so I'll be on that.

The real reason I'm saying anything now instead of waiting until my Toni Morrison write up is because you said you're putting in a switch hitter when it should've been a pinch hitter, though the pinch hitter could be a switch hitter. 6 days until Opening Day, PRAISE BE.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Ha. Nice catch. I'm not sure what the equivalent of a switch hitter would be in the literary world. A book you can read backwards as well?

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Historical fiction.

[JayCutlersCig]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

My professor gave me All the President's Men--I'm in school for journalism and Woodward and Bernstein are some of my heroes. But the book sucked. It was interesting, but it was dry and an absolute slog to get through. I made it to the Deep Throat part before I put it down and put the movie on.

I was reading Soldier's Pay by William Faulkner but it grew tiresome after a while. Same with Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

I might try venturing into Southern literature again (Truman Capote, Harper Lee, etc.)

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Micheal B. Jordan apparently purchased the rights to produce a film adaptation in February of Black Leopard, Red Wolf.

I'm loving it so far.

[Cod]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I was reading Soldier's Pay by William Faulkner but it grew tiresome after a while. Same with Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

I thought Heart of Darkness was fantastic. I found it very thought provoking and a perspective much difference from other stories.

[JayCutlersCig]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I thought Heart of Darkness was fantastic. I found it very thought provoking and a perspective much difference from other stories.

When Konrad described the sun/water in the first chapter for five pages, I set it down. As a writer myself, I can appreciate detail, but I feel like both he and Stephen King put in way too much detail. King could spend twenty pages on the process of paint drying.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Honestly, the only book where I felt overwhelmed by detail was American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.

I loved Heart of Darkness the first I read it. Heck, Apocalypse Now is even one of my favorite films.

[Cod]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

When Konrad described the sun/water in the first chapter for five pages, I set it down. As a writer myself, I can appreciate detail, but I feel like both he and Stephen King put in way too much detail. King could spend twenty pages on the process of paint drying.

You can skip the details and play Spec Ops: The Line. It is based on Conrad's book.

[underdog13]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I just finished Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. Pretty good.

I have to read Candide by Voltaire for class but after that might pickup a Vonnegut book.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

Tracker is a nameless mercenary who is known throughout the tribal kingdoms for his nose. Many also know him for his mouth. For his mouth is quick to shoot off at the expense of others as well as his own. As our narrator, Tracker takes us on several journeys that revolve around his search for a missing boy. Along the way Tracker encounters many monsters, some of which are men and others are literal monsters, witches, royalties, shapeshifters, and a harsh land that is even more unforgiving than the inhabitants.

Featuring graphic violence and sexual content this is a fantasy epic that spins tropes around and re-imagines familiar stereotypes in African myths and lore. Many have made note of the violence and sexual nature of the book. James is unforgiving. Rape, killing, torture and everything in between is here. He does not shy away from these as each is met full on with no skirting or beating through the bush. They simply are things that happen like anything else. These events aren't glorified. James does not linger on them, but they are still brutal and shapes the world around Tracker even more.

If you are squeamish in any capacity this book is not for you. If you're uncomfortable reading about rape (gang and bestiality included), violence against (and committed by) children, torture, and descriptive violence then you will not enjoy this book. Of course the book is not all raping, killing, and gay sex. Without these events and encounters the highs of the book and the show of humanity throughout would not be nearly as significant or impactful. The book is beautiful in it's capacity to mirror humankind with no disguise.

Along with Tracker is a mish-mash of mercenaries and unlikely allies. Each character bringing a unique perspective to the story with their own motivations, beliefs, and moral compasses. Throughout the book the theme of perspective is obvious. Monsters aren't monsters to some, but mothers. A Queen to one is a traitor to another. These small intricacies really brings the book to life. The narrative is fairly linear, but the complexity of the world is palpable on every page. Each character has their own reasoning and emotions and these things pull them all together on a thread. As a reader it is easy to get caught up in the continual push and pull of characters. Is a monster showing remorse a rehearsed ploy or an authentic showing of emotion? Throughout Tracker tries to be the black and white, whittling even the most complex story down to a single line, but in doing so misses the intricacy of perspective. Perhaps the monster is really remorseful, but to the Tracker emotions don't change behavior and the monster is still very much a monster.

From the onset I loved this book. The style of language James uses throughout is beautifully written and subtly complex. James weaves a baroque style into every page and it is completely mesmerizing. At times it can feel fragmented, broken, or even confusing. I personally restarted after about fifty pages and had settled into the diction of book. I found myself making notation after notation for a line, phrase, or entire passage. Each passage, sentence, and word acts as a foundation for this magical and deadly world our narrator exists in. James develops a fantastic cast of characters, builds a world that is as deadly as it is beautiful, and relates all this through a narrator that is not without flaws. A narrator that presumably may not even be fully truthful.

This is without a doubt one of my favorite fantasy books and I highly anticipate the sequels. Of recent memory it is one of the most uniquely written and rewarding reads. A book I would highly recommend to all, but with caution. While I absolutely loved this book I also recognize it is not for everyone. Some will be turned off from the writing style. Others will be confused the whole read. Others may faint at a devastating gang rape scene. Black Leopard, Red Wolf is the book I wanted Children of Blood and Bone to be. An African fantasy that is unforgiving in it's description of humanity's baseness and glory. A beautifully rendered tale with complex characters and an intricate, complex world. A book that begs to be reread halfway through not only to pick up missed details from the richness of lore, characters, and the world itself, but also because the writing itself makes this an absolute joy to read.

Spoiler

Not everything the eye sees should be spoken by the mouth.

Fury is a cloud that leaves my mind empty and my heart black.

Blood still behaves like blood even if separated by the sand.

Family was not always family in the bush, and friend was not always friend. Even wife was not always wife.

"**** the gods, for now I feel like I can skip on air," I said out loud. Blood was boundary, family a rope. I was free, I told myself. And would tell myself all night and all day for three days.

A dead thing never lies, cheats, or betrays, and what was a family but a place where all three bloom like moss.

Like, I like. Dislike, I love. Disgust, I can feel. Loathing, I can grab in the palm of my hand and squeeze. And hatred, I can live in hatred for days. But the smug smile of indifference on someone's face makes me want to hack it off.

Nobody ever gets betrayed by their enemy.

No woman is raised for a man to use.

A girl is a hunted animal.

All you ever did was watch woman suffer and blame her for it.

A man will suffer misery to get to the bottom of truth, but he will note suffer boredom.

Men with one sad god. You act like old women who forget they they were young women. Your one god, who thinks pleasure is a lesser thing.

When kings fall they fall on top of us.

You sound like fathers where I am from who blame the daughter for rape, saying, Had you not legs to run away? Had you not lips to scream? You think as they do that suffering from cruelty or escaping it is a matter of choice or means, when it is a matter of power.

"Where is the woman that you have hurt and abandoned?
She hurt herself.
Then she must be a woman of more power and means than me. Every scar
I have, it is somebody else who put it there."

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

A YA book was never going to be that, which is why I feel the way I do about them.

Sounds like what I was hoping it would be, my only worry is I don't know the series release schedule. If it was known to be every year like CoBaB, I'd be fine. I don't want to get into a Kingkiller Chronicle. I think it'll be my next read if nothing jumps out to me. I'll probably finish All the Pieces Matter tomorrow.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

From what I've been able to find over the past couple of days there will be two year interval between each and he claims he is good at meeting deadlines.

With CoB&B I guess I expected more lore and mythology than what was given to us. Black Leopard, Red Wolf almost acts as a primer in comparison. So many details and characters.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison

Spoiler

A lot of older rappers, Rakim is the one I associate it with most, are referred to as your favorite rapper's favorite rapper and that is pretty much how I feel about Toni Morrison: she is your favorite writer's favorite writer, so good that even the people who do what she does must be in awe. I imagine this is how people back in the olden times felt reading Shakespeare. Her writing just makes you appreciate the language.

As far as content, the time period of the essays has a pretty wide span, like this entire collection is the sum total of all of her thoughts as a writer and American. There’s some literary analysis of her own books, her eulogy of James Baldwin is in and incredible, and some essays that I’d read already from Playing in the Dark are reprinted, which is why I ended up giving it 4 instead of 5 stars. Not just that I’d read them, but it seemed like at points some of the essays were repeating themselves in ways that seemed unnecessary. Still, I love her analysis of the creation of the American identity as followed through the literature and rhetoric of the time. I just think the idea is powerful, life imitating art and all, really gives that phrase new meaning. I ended up using that idea in a paper I had to write that I ended up wrapping around The Wire about American problems in the late 20th century. Between her, Ellison, and Baldwin, 3 out of 4 heads on my literary Rushmore are cemented.

Spoiler

“No more apologies for a bleeding heart when the opposite is no heart at all. Danger of losing our humanity must be met with more humanity.”

“Homelessness and crime have been recharacterized and redeployed so that “public space” is increasingly seen as a protected preserve open only to the law-abiding and the employed, or rather to those who appear to be. Homelessness has been recharacterized as streetlessness. Not the poor deprived of homes, but the homed being deprived of their streets. And crime is construed as principally black. Neither one of these constructions is new. But as each affects public space, each affects public discourse.”

“Kings are not the slaves of history. History is the slave of kings.”

“The news promises to inform us. Yet “the promiscuity of the nightly news—the jostling together of tornadoes in Pennsylvania, gunmen in Bosnia, striking teachers in Manchester…infant heart surgery in California—is dictated by the time constraints of the medium.” But the jumble of events is presented to the viewer as if it were a representation of the promiscuity of the external world, which we find, as a result, incoherent.”

“How dare you talk to us of duty when we stand waist deep in the toxin of your past?”

“TIME, IT SEEMS, has no future. That is, time no longer seems to be an endless stream through which the human species moves with confidence in its own increasing consequence and value. It certainly seems not to have a future that equals the length or breadth or sweep or even the fascination of its past. Apparently, infinity is now, the domain of the past.”

“We move from data to information to knowledge to wisdom. And separating one from the other, being able to distinguish among and between them, that is, knowing the limitations and the danger of exercising one without the others, while respecting each category of intelligence, is generally what serious education is about. And if we agree that purposeful progression exists, then you will see at once how dispiriting this project of drawing or building or constructing fiction out of history can be, or that it’s easy, and it’s seductive, to assume that data is really knowledge. Or that information is, indeed, wisdom. Or that knowledge can exist without data. And how easy, and how effortlessly, one can parade and disguise itself as another. And how quickly we can forget that wisdom without knowledge, wisdom without any data, is just a hunch.”

American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson

Spoiler

This one was interesting. Marie Mitchell, black woman working to be an intelligence agent to follow in the footsteps of her sister who died, is tasked with going to Burkina Faso to spy on Thomas Sankara, a Communist revolutionary leader of the time. Along the way there are some shenanigans with her handlers at the FBI, some of which are due to her being a woman and some are just due to her being left out in the cold as to the true intent of the mission. There are some interesting narrative twists and turns but it just ends at a terrible time. I don’t know if there are going to be follow-up books or not, but it makes a big difference. This story continued in further books could be really interesting; if this is a standalone, its worth a lot less. I like spy **** but the story feels unresolved if this is really the end. I did like the writing though, so if there is a sequel or the author moves on to something else that I can see has more of a conclusion, I'd be into it.

That said it did send me down the rabbit hole of learning about Thomas Sankara and the African revolutions of the time. I’m sure there’s a book somewhere that will give me more information there, I still haven’t gone down the Marx/communism rabbit hole, I feel like I might never get out.

Spoiler

“To be a New Yorker was to be assaulted from every possible angle by political double-dealing and corporate deception. It was quite literally built into the architecture of the place. In general, New Yorkers weren’t afraid of outsiders—KGB agents—moving into town and betraying the public trust. Not when we had such a rich history of insiders doing it.”

“I understand that black Americans also want their freedom. But don’t confuse real freedom with the freedom of the few to exploit the rest.”

“You don’t owe them anything. You give them what you want to give them. But it’s easier if they think you’re one of them. It’s easier to work from the inside. That’s what I try to do. I’ve been a spy in this country for as long as I can remember.”

“It has never earned me anything to share my darker self with other people. The only anger I ever expose to the world is through implication, by suggesting that I’m on the brink of no longer being able to contain my fury. That is what a woman’s strength looks like when it’s palatable: like she is containing herself.”

Inside the Empire: The True Power Behind the New York Yankees by Bob Klapisch and Paul Solotaroff

Spoiler

“Sports have always been a proxy for something else, but these days baseball feels like a fight between its past and present.”

Want to start this off with an “RIP to the Boss” and a “**** the Red Sox”, and now all things are as they should be.

My thoughts on this book are hard to separate from my thoughts on the team and the sport in general at this point. There was an interview done with Michael Kay before the book came out that gave out a lot of what would have been new information like Dolan wanting to buy the team. George wanting to move out of the Bronx is a tale as old as time, I guess it might have been new information that Randy Levine, who I strongly dislike, is the one who stopped it from happening. The book focuses mostly on the business of the team, mainly following how Cashman went about revamping the scouting department and analytics department and how Hal used his business background to maximize earnings. The extent to which the Yankees go to look out for their minor leaguers was heartening; they definitely don’t skimp on development.

The thing that it made me realize is how much I love the Boss and that George Steinbrenner will forever be my favorite owner of all time. He was a fan. I just don’t get the vibe Hal cares about the Yankees winning, and I don’t know what to do with it. I get the vibe the improvement he wants to make with the Yankees are the same ones he would make if he worked at Coca-Cola, maybe that’s a good thing, I don’t know. Watching the Yankees just doesn’t feel the same. I got to the point where they start talking about Dolan wanting to buy the team, and I was thinking “would that have been so bad?” George would’ve been in charge of the Yankees, Rangers, and Knicks, and Dolan would’ve been the bank. Dolan is an idiot, but he has never had a problem writing a check. It’s not that these guys are cheap, they obviously are willing to spend large amounts of money. I just feel like there’s too many factors before “is this going to help the team win”. The book is also strangely written, feels very much like a sportswriter trying to stretch something to 300 pages. There is the undercurrent of them following the season that just happened which is pointless because anyone reading the book was going to follow the Yankees last year and there’s nothing groundbreaking on that front.

Spoiler

“One example among many: the Yankees hired a corps of high school instructors to teach language and life skills to recruits. From the bottom of their development system—the baseball academies in Latin America—to the Instructional and lower-tier minor league clubs, the Yankees invested heavily in cognitive and social development to boost their signees’ chances to advance.”

“Hal knows the business, but it’s Hank who knows baseball,” says a staffer of the brother who stepped back in 2009 to look after the family’s stables in Ocala. “He always kept a hand in after George died. Hal does nothing without going to him first.”

“I used to tease Cash about it—that he secretly wanted to run the Yankees the way we run the A’s,” says Beane. “Deep down, he hated George’s business model. He knew there was no way to outspend teams forever and just wanted to be efficient.”

“Yes, the Invisible Owner—Hal Steinbrenner—visited the complex often to “watch games, ask about prospects, and about anything else we might need,” said Schmitt. Hal had bought hotels for two of the Low-A teams to live in during the season; paid for suites in the hotels he didn’t own so kids could cook meals, not eat fast food; hired nutritionists to personalize each player’s intake; and put out spa-style spreads three times a day.”

“It begins where you least expect it to: with viewings of the old sitcom Friends. Watching on a projection screen at the front of the room, a dozen or so men with a fledgling grasp of English try to find the levity in six neurotic New Yorkers seeking romance without commitments (or STDs). Though it surely wasn’t intended to, the series could have been scripted for the purpose of teaching young players civics. The actors talk slowly, enunciate clearly, and speak the sort of flat-earth English you’re never going to hear in the Bronx. For the players’ benefit, the show is subtitled—in English. That way, they learn to read what they’re hearing, and to think in cadenced phrases. Most importantly, the show transmits the values these new-age Yanks espouse: friendship, teamwork, and living in peace with buddies who badly out-earn you.”

“The Tampa life skills classes are repeated at every level of the minors, prepping players for baseball and beyond. And for all the kids who don’t make the bigs, the Yankees have a bonus clause: they offer a college scholarship to every prospect who washes out of their system. No matter where they’re from or where they pursue a future, the Yankees will pick up the tab for their college degree.”

“The best detail—by far—in that document is what George actually put down for his stake. It wasn’t a million dollars, or even the $800,000 that’s been widely bandied about. No, the check he wrote was for $80,000. That was somehow enough to buy Steinbrenner 10 percent of the team and to make him its general managing partner.)”

“Early on in Cashman’s tenure, the Yankees fielded teams that were good enough to win rings but didn’t. Those groups that fell short from ’01 to ’07 might serve as an object lesson. You can put together a roster that has everything—except the extra gear today’s Red Sox have. Cashman has built a club that will win a boatload of games over the course of the next ten years. It’s young and it’s vibrant and has talent to burn—and that’s precisely what will happen if things don’t change. It takes courage to course-correct when you’re damn good already and making money hand over fist. It takes even more nerve to admit to yourself that your archrival does it better.”

All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire by Jonathan Abrams

Spoiler

Another RIP, this time to Grantland, never forget.

It’s an oral history of the making of the show. I feel like I saw a number of people upset because they misunderstood the purpose, it’s not an episode-by-episode deep dive which I was happy about because that’s not what I was looking for. It’s pretty much a perfect companion to having just completed the show. Reading it even after not having seen the show for a while would be rewarding, but I think the freshness of everything adds to it. They walk you through the trials and tribulations faced by the cast and crew in putting the show together through the years, from near cancellations every other season to the importance of having a showrunner with a single vision. To me, it really solidified David Simon and Ed Burns as THE reasons the show worked how it did.
I knew that David Simon was an ideologue and felt strongly about the material on the show, but I think the book shows a part of the reason the show is good is because the entire cast and crew really believed in what they were doing. It’s mentioned time and time again how easily things could have fallen apart if an actor tried to hold up HBO for money or just wasn’t willing to wait for the renewal, but everyone really believed that what they were doing was more than TV. Ed Burns just sounds like the crotchetiest old man in the world and I love it, like the kinda guy you walk up to and tell a joke to break the ice and he just stares at you blankly. It’s just a must read for a fan of the show, the behind the scenes bits from the actors alone are worth it, and it’s a really engaging read. Gives a little breakdown of the climate going into each season and then just gets into stories, no wasted time. The one thing I would say, and this is not the author’s fault but whoever put it together, is there are long passages in italics that are supposed to separate the “narrative voice” of the oral history from the people telling the stories, and it just looks kinda ugly on Kindle at times, you end up with like 3 pages of italicized wording for nothing. Just some great stories of the actors interacting with the city, and how much it ended up meaning to some of them, becoming a second home. Love the show, love the book.

Spoiler

“ED BURNS (CO-CREATOR): I said I’d help him. I was teaching then, and I stayed teaching for the first year. I would just come in and work on the story with him. Then, I thought, You’ve been a cop and a teacher. I wrote The Corner and I got twelve dollars and ten cents in the bank. It’s about time to cash this in. So, I did.”

“CLARKE PETERS (DET. LESTER FREAMON): I’ve put it to my agent, “Don’t give me jobs where I’m getting killed off all the time. Please don’t.” It sends the wrong messages to people. There are actors who really like to and will die really good, give real good death scenes. Give the job to that cat. I want to live to play another day.”

“FREDRO STARR (MARQUIS “BIRD” HILTON): My ******, Hassan, J.D., and I went down to Baltimore, and I hadn’t seen them in a while. We all blazed in my room. The whole floor smelled like weed, and HBO told me to move hotels. I did, and they blazed up the room again. I think that’s why I got wrote off the show real quick.”

“STEVE SHILL (DIRECTOR): The biggest dilemma for me as a white British man trying to interact with Method Man—I was like, what do I call him? Do I call him Mr. Man? Method? Or Method Man? This is a guy who’s already a giant star. I’m like, “I’m going to show this guy the respect that he deserves, but as an Englishman I need to find the right way to meet him at the correct level.” But he didn’t need direction. The scenes that I did with him, the only thing you need to tell him is, “I think you come in here. You meet this guy here and you set your car on fire over there.” That’s all he needed to know. He did all the rest.”

“I wake up in the morning, get dressed, leave my work on the block to walk into a world about make-believe work on the block,” Pearson later wrote in her book, Grace After Midnight. “But because I ain’t that sure the make-believe work is real, I keep my real-life work. My shop stays open.”

“ED BURNS (CO-CREATOR): Gbenga turned down a role [to play Slim Charles] because he was taking a test. ****, man, we got to find something for this kid to do. That’s when we created Chris Partlow.”

“GEORGE PELECANOS (WRITER/PRODUCER): Season Two, the ratings went up. I’m going to say something that no one else will say, but because we had a white cast in that season, America was more ready for that. But then, Season Three, the ratings went down again.”

“DAVID SIMON (CREATOR): I remember going to Chris [Albrecht] and saying, “I want to split the shows, and one part of it bounces into The Wire. It alternates, and I’ll give you a city municipal show about politics.” It was just the most amazing thing. “So, I would have two shows nobody would be watching?” [Albrecht said.] I’m thinking of expanding the universe and they’re really going, How do we get out of this?”

“DAVID SIMON (CREATOR): There were moments where you would watch really strong performances by black actors and they would be utterly ignored. Khandi Alexander on The Corner. Do you know who won the Emmy for lead actress in a miniseries the year of The Corner? Halle Berry. Halle Berry played Dorothy Dandridge. Understand this. Beautiful Halle Berry played the beautiful Dorothy Dandridge and played it beautifully, but she was a beautiful actress playing a beautiful actress and was nominated and won the Emmy. Khandi Alexander, a beautiful actress, tore herself down to play a woman with a drug addiction, and it’s not even noticed. They won for makeup for making Halle Berry [into] Dorothy Dandridge. Nobody was nominated for taking Khandi Alexander and tearing her apart. What I am convinced of is if you show an exalted Hollywood view of anybody, black or white, it gets attention. It is regarded as exalted and it is regarded as artifices, and you are all a part of that. You have portrayed glamouring. You make a show about the inner city of Baltimore and anywhere else, and you put the camera on it, these mother****ers in Hollywood think you’re turning the camera on and it is just some weird documentary. It was like there was no sense that we were working to create, that that America that you left behind is deserving of as much attention and craft like that as the other America.”

“ED BURNS (CO-CREATOR): You can rescue a child, but you can’t rescue the children, and that’s the difference. Opportunity is a much better word than hope. If a child sees the opportunity and you can direct the child toward the opportunity, then the kid’s okay. Hope is like a dream. That’s what I used to say to my kids. “Don’t believe in hope. Believe in yourself. You got to put the energy in to get the energy out.” Hope is just like something that the fairy godmother’s going to come down and sprinkle on you. That’s not the way it is for these kids. You got to work for it, then it’ll come to you, because you open yourself up.”

”MICHAEL KOSTROFF (MAURICE “MAURY” LEVY): Artistically, there’s a hidden message, which is there’s such a wealth of hugely talented black actors that we’ve never heard of. One after another, after another, after another. To me, the message is: write the parts, because the talent is there. There are so many, and these guys blew my mind.”

Now I’m onto Black Leopard, Red Wolf and Camus. David Simon said we should read Camus, so that’s what I’m gonna do. Noticed there's a pretty decent number of sports books for me this year, Selig has an auto coming out, so does David Cone, Chris Herring has one about the 90's Knicks coming out but I dunno if it's out this year, I need that for sure. I was worried I'd run into problems reading books from this year but I don't think that'll be the case at all.