Mosley, Walter

▪ 2005

      The year 2004 offered a golden opportunity for Walter Mosley to showcase his talents as both a popular novelist and a progressive voice on social issues. In January he published The Man in My Basement. Through the bizarre exchanges between the two main characters, Mosley reflected on the dark side of human nature while he explored themes of injustice and manipulation. In July Mosley brought back his best-known fictional character, Ezekiel (“Easy”) Porterhouse Rawlins, in Little Scarlet, his highly anticipated ninth entry in the Easy Rawlins mystery series.

      Walter Ellis Mosley was born on Jan. 12, 1952, in Los Angeles and grew up in the Watts neighbourhood, where violent race riots raged in 1965. His father, a school custodian, had moved to California to escape Jim Crow-era Louisiana, while his mother was from a family of Polish-Jewish immigrants who had witnessed segregation and racial atrocities in Eastern Europe. Mosley later attributed his strong feelings about injustice in the world to his parents' experiences. After graduating from Johnson (Vt.) State College (B.A., 1977), he moved to New York City, where he worked for more than 10 years as a computer programmer. He also wrote stories and attended the writing program at the City College of New York.

      His first published novel, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990), introduced Rawlins, an African American amateur detective living in the jazz scene of 1940s Los Angeles. Mosley helped adapt the book for the big screen in 1995; actor Denzel Washington played the role of Rawlins. During his presidential campaign in 1992, Bill Clinton proclaimed Mosley one of his favourite writers. This endorsement immediately tripled Mosley's sales and elevated his reputation among the general reading public. Other Easy Rawlins mysteries such as Black Betty (1994) and A Little Yellow Dog (1996) went straight to the New York Times best-sellers list. RL's Dream (1995), based on the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, won the 1996 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award. Mosley introduced Socrates Fortlow, an ex-convict who moves from the Deep South to South Central Los Angeles immediately after the 1992 riots, in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (1998), which he adapted for HBO television. Fortlow reappeared in Walkin' the Dog (1999). After publishing two science-fiction works, Blue Light (1998) and Futureland (2001), Mosley introduced Fearless Jones in the mystery novels Fearless Jones (2001) and Fear Itself (2003).

      Mosley became (1996) the first artist in residence for New York University's Institute of African American Affairs, which served as the catalyst for an ongoing forum of black intellectuals and artists, and was coeditor of the forum's collection of essays, Black Genius: African American Solutions to African American Problems (1999). He also started a publishing training institute at the City College of Harlem.

      He temporarily set aside fiction to explore his political conscience with the nonfiction Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking Off the Dead Hand of History (2000) and What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace (2003). Mosley's two new novels in 2004, however, showed that he was not about to abandon his many fans.

Sara Wood

* * *

▪ American author

born January 12, 1952, Los Angeles, California, U.S.

 

 American author of mystery stories noted for their realistic portrayals of segregated inner-city life.

      Mosley attended Goddard College and Johnson State College, and he became a computer programmer before publishing his first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990; film 1995). Set in 1948, the novel introduces Ezekiel (“Easy”) Rawlins, an unwilling amateur detective from the Watts section of Los Angeles. It presents period issues of race relations and mores as the unemployed Rawlins is hired to find a white woman who frequents jazz clubs in black districts.

      In all his Easy Rawlins novels, Mosley used period detail and slang to create authentic settings and characters, especially the earnest, complex main character, who continually is faced with personal, social, and moral dilemmas. In A Red Death (1991), set during the McCarthy era, Rawlins is blackmailed by the FBI into spying on a labour union organizer. In White Butterfly (1992) the police call on Rawlins to help investigate the vicious murders of four young women—three black and one white. Other novels featuring Rawlins include Black Betty (1994) and A Little Yellow Dog (1996). For the publication of Gone Fishin' (1997), a prequel to Devil in a Blue Dress, Mosley chose a small independent black publisher, Black Classic Press, over his longtime publisher W.W. Norton. The series continued with Bad Boy Brawly Brown (2002), Little Scarlet (2004), Cinnamon Kiss (2005), and Blonde Faith (2007).

      Mosley's other novels include RL's Dream (1995), the story of a dying former blues guitarist (based on Robert Johnson (Johnson, Robert)) who is befriended by a young woman, and The Man in My Basement (2004), an examination of wealth, power, manipulation, and shifting relationships. Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (1997; filmed as Always Outnumbered for television, 1998), a collection of stories set in contemporary Watts, features the ex-convict Socrates Fortlow. Mosley returned to the Fortlow character in the stories of Walkin' the Dog (1999). In 2001 he returned to the mystery genre with the publication of Fearless Jones, introducing the title character and bookseller Paris Minton. In this book and its sequel, Fear Itself (2003), Mosley revisited the setting of Los Angeles in the 1950s. In 2008 he published Diablerie, a novel about a reformed alcoholic who confronts a violent secret from his past.

      Mosley also tried his hand at other genres. He essayed science fiction in Blue Light (1998) and Futureland (2001), a group of interlocking stories, and nonfiction in Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking Off the Dead Hand of History (2000) and What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace (2003).

* * *