DRAMA CITY
By George Pelecanos
Little, Brown. 295 pp. $24.95
(Michael Lutzky--The Washington Post)
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"Drama City," the latest novel by George Pelecanos, centers on a search for redemption amid the savagery of inner-city drug wars. The protagonist, Lorenzo Brown, is an ex-con who, after eight years of incarceration for a drug conviction, seeks to reestablish himself as an upstanding citizen. He works as an animal control officer. His principal emotional support comes from his parole officer, Rachel Lopez, and a friend who is also an ex-con. Brown dreams of being part of the life of his young daughter, but her mother, now living with another man, allows him no access to her. He struggles daily against the pull of old habits in the neighborhood, where he continues to see his main buddy from his previous life. Yet with his work and clean record, his efforts at rehabilitation seem successful -- right up to the moment when several violent incidents pull him back into the fray. Brown risks all that he has gained since his parole to deal with the bloodthirsty drug enforcer responsible for the violence.
Pelecanos here tackles a subject that raises legitimate concerns throughout the United States. However, other writers -- and filmmakers, too -- have so thoroughly mined the inner-city drug trade that the possibility of producing new ore is unlikely. "Drama City" certainly fails to do so. The book casts a grim light on the inner city. Nearly every black character is ignorant, slovenly or an addict. There are only losers trying to cut their losses. This portrayal ignores the fact that in even the worst poverty-ridden, drug-darkened ghetto the majority of the population is not part of the drug trade. Most people in these neighborhoods are striving to raise their children and scratch out a living. Even though the playing field is uneven, there are success stories. Pelecanos draws his characters so broadly that he describes none of them adequately. This in turn creates doubt about whether he knows his subjects well enough to capture them. For example, he depicts a scene at a dog fight when one animal bites the eye out of another. A young gunman watching has an erotic reaction but Pelecanos gives the reader no explanation for this response. Instead he seems to want us to accept this simply because the character is black and is likely to find something sexual in brutality.
The broad-brush technique depends on stereotypes for viability, but stereotypes can no more depict a living, breathing human being with doubts and aspirations than can minstrel caricatures. Even more serious is that stereotypes are flat; they don't change and grow, which is a structural problem for an author. Stereotypical characters are predictable, have no interior life and are doomed to repeat their mistakes as they travel their circular track. For example, when Brown hears of the violence that sets the action in motion, he doesn't consider what he is risking by getting involved -- no thoughts of his daughter, or what he had hoped to carve out for himself. He simply reacts as if he had no alternative. His actions reveal that he has learned nothing from his experiences and, should another provocation arise, he will repeat his mistakes.
Pelecanos writes for the successful HBO series "The Wire." Stereotypes don't seem quite so noticeable and strident on television, perhaps because actors can bring depth and feeling to the roles, interpreting and translating two-dimensional creations with their talent, craft and individuality. However, a novelist has only the written word with which to create everything: tension, imagery and conflict. Stereotypes rob a book of its vitality and mystery and, more dangerously, they are divisive, misleading readers with faulty images of people and cultures beyond their ken. Pelecanos has written a book in which the characters are lost without translation.
