George Pelecanos

26/04/2010

The Wire's co-writer on American prejudice and the importance of fatherhood

By Helena Drakakis

When author George Pelecanos was doing daily kitchen shifts and bartending at night, all he hoped for was that his father wouldn’t see him at work. “I remember washing dishes one day,” he recalls in a thick Washington drawl. “I kept praying he wouldn’t see me with food up to my elbows because he would have thought, ‘Son, you’re not getting anywhere, you’re just treading water’.”

As the child of a Greek immigrant, Pelecanos watched his father work 14-hour days in a coffee shop in downtown DC. At the age of 31, Pelecanos jnr was snatching time during a procession of menial jobs to write his first crime novel.

“This is all nice,” his father had told him. “But when are you going to get a real job?” Pelecanos smiles knowingly.
“I understood exactly what he was talking about, he wanted more for me and it was scary because I had no idea where any of it was going,” says the writer.

His father needn’t have worried. Almost three decades later, his 57-year-old son has picked up hugely impressive writing credits on and off-screen.

As well as bringing to life some of the key scenes in the massively influential TV series The Wire – such as the episode at the end of the third season when Stringer Bell and Avon Barksdale reminisce about how far they have come in life before the series reaches an incredible denouement  – Pelecanos is writing on the next David Simon production, the New Orleans-set Tremé. He has also released his 16th novel in paperback, The Way Home – a gritty tale about a white, middle-class kid who ends up in juvenile prison.

The more established he has become, the more access he has had to the police, the prisons and the justice system. The Way Home is influenced by one of those experiences. A few years ago he became friendly with a prison governor who’d been trying to help juvenile prisoners.

“I’d seen guards beating up kids with closed fists, but this governor’s thing was about nurturing kids – getting them ready for the world and for work,” says Pelecanos. But he also witnessed parents, the press and politicians running his friend out of town because the approach was unpopular. “During this guy’s four-year governorship there was reduction in recidivism, so something worked and I wanted to talk about that,” he shrugs. 

“You can’t keep punishing these kids because all you are doing is training them for the further life of crime. It’s not being soft. It messes up neighbourhoods and families. It messes up whole cities.”

But it’s an approach that “can bite you on the ass too”, as Pelecanos has learned the hard way. There’s an uncomfortable pause. It turns out he’s just been let down by a girl for whom he co-signed a £20,000 bank loan to help her through college. He lost the money and the girl gave up on an education.

“My wife and I have heart-to-hearts about it – about not helping anybody anymore – but you can’t give up because one kid disappoints you,” he says.

The incident clearly wounded him but he refuses to lose faith, and is enjoying working on Tremé. Set four months after hurricane Katrina, it follows musicians and restaurateurs as they return to New Orleans to rebuild their lives. But will the US public be as gripped as UK audiences?

Pelecanos is certain that Tremé, like The Wire before it, will not reap the slew of awards that shows like The Sopranos did.
While The Wire’s five seasons received critical acclaim in the UK, back home even Pelecanos’ friends were asking him why, when they drive through poor, black neighbourhoods every day, would they want to come home to them on TV?
“HBO will never say it, but I’ll say it – The Wire didn’t get many awards because it has a big black cast of characters,” he says. Pelecanos sees economic disparity as the next big prejudice. “We need people on the government payroll, rebuilding bridges. It’s getting people assimilated to the culture of work.

“Sons will see their fathers and they’ll know that’s what a man does when he grows up, because that’s what happened when I saw my dad wearing an apron.”

The Way Home (Phoenix, £7.99) is out on paperback.