April 9, 2009

Is The Wire the Great American Novel?

Posted in America, Books, Drugs, Media, Politics, Society, The Wire at 9:34 pm by Paul Sagar

David Simon, creator of HBO’s sublime “The Wire”, describes the show as many things: a 66 hour film, a Greek tragedy for the modern American City State, a book written in the medium of television (or words to that effect).

All three are plausible, and in many ways all accurate descriptions. Commentators have heaped praise upon The Wire.

By the end of the 5th and final series, one certainly feels like one has reached the end of an epic film. As though each episode was a scene which, taken together, yield a coherent and unified whole.

David Simon’s description of institutions as the modern Hellenic gods is also extremely plausible and intellectually credible. Rather than having anthropomorphic gods sat on Mount Olympus hurling thunderbolts at mortals, the modern gods are institutions: the police force, the city bureaucracy, the education system, the drug trade, the union, the newspaper. And like the Greek gods, these institutions are not simple puppeteers: for though they effect each life they touch, there is an indeterminacy in how  these effects will be realised – although the end result is, more often than not, tragedy.

Yet it is the last comparison that I find most interesting: that of The Wire as book written in the medium of television. Because if The Wire is a book, then it may well be the Great American Novel.

They say the Great American Novel will never be written. For my money, some authors have come close. Philip Roth’s American Pastoral is practically unrivalled in both its depth of character, its socio-cultural analysis of a decaying society, and the melancholy of a lost and half-forgotten dream. But the anger, and the quiet resignation which is somehow simultaneous, bring it just short.

F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsbyis a fearless dissection of the American Dream turned putrid – but it stands now as a judgement of an era (arguably one that returned again only recently), not the definitive gift to American art.

Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath again comes close, weaving the pioneer spirit into a world in which capitalism has left that spirit behind, producing disaster and betrayal yet within which there nonetheless shines the beacon of human goodness. But, like Gatsby, it speaks most profoundly of a people in an era, not simply of a people.

Others might point to Updike, Faulkner or Hemmingway. But again, whilst they may come close, the mark never quite seems to be met.

Yet if The Wire is a book written in television, does it perhaps constitute the Great American Novel? Although The Wire at first seems vulnerable to the critique of being about a specific era, this may not be so. Firstly, although the setting of the Wire is modern Baltimore, it could have been set in virtually any American city of the past 30 years – and if Simon’s bleak analysis is correct, of the next 30 too.

Of course, this alone merely implies that The Wire’s sweep is of a prolonged era. What adds to the argument that it is not critically constrained by the period in which it is set is the simultaneous sweep of subject matters it handles. Crime, drugs, corruption, politics, policing, working class decline, racial segregation, education, the possibility of reform within established systems - all are handled intelligently, subtly, with depth and with realism. But The Wire does not operate only at the “macro” level, the level of socio-political determinants. It focuses, simultaneously, on the level of individuals. Thus sexuality, relationship, loyalty, duty, integrity, honesty and commitment (to one’s self, to one’s institution especially) are handled deftly, honestly and with care.

The result is a portrayal of humanity at two levels. To draw an analogy which Simon will doubtless endorse, we could say, taking our cue from Plato, that The Wire operates at the levels of both City and Soul. On the one hand, we are shown what humans do – and what happens to humans – when politics, police, journalists, bureaucracy, organised labour and all other components of a modern society collide. That is the City. On the other hand, we are shown what human beings as individuals are: how they live, love, work, play, fight and kill. This is the Soul.

And as Plato would doubtless have approved, the message of The Wire is that one cannot understand the City without understanding the Soul, nor the Soul without the City.

I believe The Wire will be watched in hundreds of years’ time. But it will not simply be a historical source informing future generations of how we lived. It will be a work of art, showing them how they live too. Just like Shakespeare and Sophocles are for us today.

We live in privileged times to witness the creation of such a thing, and for the above reasons, I believe that The Wire is the Great American Novel.

Permalink