Walter Mosley writes about men who, if we can be colloquial here for a moment, don’t take nothing off nobody.
They swagger. They fight. They take names. And they’ve solved some of the most popular mysteries in modern American fiction.
Many readers came to know Mosley through his first series of Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins whodunits. Now Mosley is out with the third book in his new series of Leonid McGill private detective mysteries, “When the Thrill is Gone.” But Mosley is a prolific writer of nonfiction as well.
Mosley will be in town Thursday at the Carter Center to read from his latest work. We spoke with him about politics, second chances and superheroes.
Q: In your mysteries your protagonists are almost always African-American men who stare down danger and crush it. You've referred to them as superheroes. Who was the first superhero in your life?
A: It was my father. But also my father's relationship to other black men, all of whom were living really laudable lives, and who taught me what living a good life was. The thing is to talk about these men in a way that they haven't really been talked about.
Q: So is constructing these characters something of a revolutionary act?
A: I think that it's not common to portray and then talk about black men as good fathers, good providers. Now, they might go through all kinds of machinations in order to get there, but the final thing is, 'I gotta pay the rent. I gotta put food on the table. I gotta make sure that this boy doesn't turn into some kind of criminal.' That kind of thing is true in the community, but in literature it hasn't been.
Q: In your nonfiction work you've written extensively about the untapped intellectual prowess of the working class, as well as those who live on the margins of society. You see it as a great resource and tool in helping to solve some of the political and economic challenges we face. Where does that come from?
A: For me it becomes very political. It's watching Colin Powell point to yellow dots in the desert and telling me these are weapons of mass destruction. He's a much smarter man than I am. But he was lying. I would rather have somebody with half his experience tell me the truth or tell me that he didn't know. I'm much more interested in Joe the Bricklayer.
Q: Is this why you give your fictional characters names like Socrates and Tolstoy, as a tweak on traditional thought on who can be an intellectual?
A: Oh, yeah. Certainly.
Q: You've now begun to write plays, in addition to your fiction and nonfiction work. And you're a visual artist. Is the creative release from painting different from that of writing?
A: Well, I'm not a very good artist. I don't have a great deal of skill. I can't sit there and draw portraits or the Empire State building and make it look like something. Actually I have a voice, which is the only thing I think is important in art. For me it's pure abstract expression. It has no gender, it has no race, it has no age. I'm connected to the world in much more specific ways when it comes to writing.
Q: The Leonid McGill series is in development with HBO now. But recently a friend and I were lamenting the fact that there is no Easy Rawlins movie marathon on cable or anywhere. Those mysteries were your first and best known. They spawned one highly praised movie, "Devil in a Blue Dress" starring Denzel Washington. It seemed a natural for a series like the Bourne novels or even James Bond. Why do you think that never happened?
A: You know, I've never really understood it. It's kind of amazing. I wrote a script based on the [Rawlins] book "Little Scarlet." And today I just sent it off to Spike Lee to take a look at it to see if he's interested. My dream is, because "Little Scarlet" happened so much later than the first book, which was in the mid-1940s, that enough time has passed that if Denzel and Don Cheadle reprised the roles, they'd be the right age.
Q: You have another nonfiction work coming out later this year. You wrote one right after Sept. 11, 2001, which dealt with the fallout from that attack. What will this one be about? The bailout? An assessment of the Obama presidency?
A: No. I didn't decide to take that on. I wrote a book called "12 Steps Toward Political Revelation," coming out from Basic Books. It looks at Americanism.
Q: Leonid, Easy, Fearless Jones are all characters of yours. What are the characteristics in those men that you see in yourself?
A: I'm not sure where the characters begin and I end. There's nothing about Leonid that's like me. Leonid's like people I've known. They all have aspects of people I've known. But very few of them are me.
About the Author
