Understanding Walter Mosley

Jennifer Larson

Description

A survey of an award-winning author's extensive corpus written across a broad range of genres

Walter Mosley is perhaps best known for his first published mystery, Devil in a Blue Dress, which became the basis for the 1995 movie of the same name featuring Denzel Washington. Mosley has since written more than forty books across an impressive expanse of genres including, but not limited to, nonfiction, science fiction, drama, and even young adult fiction, garnering him many honors including an O'Henry Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a Grammy Award, a Pen Center Lifetime Achievement Award, and two NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Literary Work in Fiction. In Understanding Walter Mosley, Jennifer Larson considers Mosley's corpus as a whole to help readers more fully understand the evolution of his literary agenda.

All Mosley's texts feature his trademark accessibility as well as his penchant for creating narratives that both entertain and instruct. Larson examines how Mosley's writing interrogates, complicates, and contextualizes recurring moral, social, and even personal questions. She also considers the possible roots of Mosley's enduring popularity with a diverse group of readers. Larson then traces key themes and claims throughout the Easy Rawlins series to show how Mosley's beloved hero offers unique perspectives on race, class, and masculinity in the mid- to late twentieth century; explores the ways in which Fearless Jones, Mosley's second detective, both builds on and diverges from his predecessor's character; and looks at how the works featuring Leonid McGill, Mosley's junior detective, center on understanding the complex relationship between present-day social dilemmas and the personal as well as the communal past.

Regarding Mosley's other genres, Larson argues that the science fiction works together portray a future in which race, class, and gender are completely reimagined, yet still subject to an oppressive power dynamic, while his erotica asks readers to reconsider the dynamics of power and control but in a more personal, even intimate, context. Similarly, in Mosley's nongenre fiction, stories are revived through a reconnection with the past, a reclaiming of cultural heritage and lineage, and a rejection of classist visions of power. Finally, Mosley's nonfiction, which persuades his audience to act through writing, humanitarian efforts, or social uprising, offers a mix of lessons aimed at guiding readers through the same questions that inform his fiction writing.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Wystan Hugh Auden
• América
• Mr.
• Mel Watkins (author)
• Superiority (short story)
• True Identity
• Frederic Tuten
• Of Education
• Ishmael Reed
• Matthew J. Bruccoli
• Motto
• African American
• Inception
• American
• Sojourner Truth
• Black
• W. H. Auden
• Walter Mosley
• Don Cheadle
• Chester Himes
• MR
• Maus

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 31 octobre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781611177022
• Langue: English

Extrait

UNDERSTANDING WALTER MOSLEY
UNDERSTANDING CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE
Matthew J. Bruccoli, Founding Editor
Linda Wagner-Martin, Series Editor
Volumes on
Edward Albee | Sherman Alexie | Nelson Algren Paul Auster | Nicholson Baker | John Barth | Donald Barthelme The Beats | Thomas Berger | The Black Mountain Poets | Robert Bly T. C. Boyle | Truman Capote | Raymond Carver | Michael Chabon Fred Chappell | Chicano Literature | Contemporary American Drama Contemporary American Horror Fiction | Contemporary American Literary Theory Contemporary American Science Fiction, 1926–1970 | Contemporary American Science Fiction, 1970–2000 | Contemporary Chicana Literature | Robert Coover Philip K. Dick | James Dickey | E. L. Doctorow | Rita Dove | Don DeLillo | Dave Eggers Louise Erdrich | John Gardner | George Garrett | Tim Gautreaux | William Gibson John Hawkes | Joseph Heller | Lillian Hellman | Beth Henley | James Leo Herlihy David Henry Hwang | John Irving | Randall Jarrell | Charles Johnson | Diane Johnson Edward P. Jones | Adrienne Kennedy | William Kennedy | Jack Kerouac | Jamaica Kincaid Etheridge Knight | Tony Kushner | Ursula K. Le Guin | Jonathan Lethem Denise Levertov | Bernard Malamud | David Mamet | Bobbie Ann Mason Colum McCann | Cormac McCarthy | Jill McCorkle | Carson McCullers W. S. Merwin | Arthur Miller | Steven Millhauser | Lorrie Moore Toni Morrison’s Fiction | Walter Mosley | Vladimir Nabokov | Gloria Naylor Joyce Carol Oates | Tim O’Brien | Flannery O’Connor | Cynthia Ozick Chuck Palahniuk | Suzan-Lori Parks | Walker Percy | Katherine Anne Porter Richard Powers | Reynolds Price | Annie Proulx | Thomas Pynchon | Theodore Roethke Philip Roth | Richard Russo | May Sarton | Hubert Selby, Jr. | Mary Lee Settle Sam Shepard | Neil Simon | Isaac Bashevis Singer | Jane Smiley | Gary Snyder William Stafford | Robert Stone | Anne Tyler | Gerald Vizenor | Kurt Vonnegut David Foster Wallace | Robert Penn Warren | James Welch | Eudora Welty Colson Whitehead | Tennessee Williams | August Wilson | Charles Wright
UNDERSTANDING
WALTER MOSLEY
Jennifer Larson

The University of South Carolina Press
© 2016 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/
ISBN: 978-1-61117-701-5 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-1-61117-702-2 (ebook)
Front cover photograph by Leonardo Cendamo. leonardocendamo.com
CONTENTS
Series Editor’s Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 Understanding Walter Mosley
Chapter 2 Easy’s Evolution: Relationships, Race, and Genre
Chapter 3 Becoming Fearless: Symbiotic Identity in Fearless Jones
Chapter 4 New York, New History, New Detective: The Long Fall
Chapter 5 Mysterious Genres: Narrative Fragmentation in Blue Light and Diablerie
Chapter 6 Hero or Villain? Philosophical Fictions
Chapter 7 Nonfiction: Stories Come to Life
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
The Understanding Contemporary American Literature series was founded by the estimable Matthew J. Bruccoli (1931–2008), who envisioned these volumes as guides or companions for students as well as good nonacademic readers, a legacy that will continue as new volumes are developed to fill in gaps among the nearly one hundred series volumes published to date and to embrace a host of new writers only now making their marks on our literature.
As Professor Bruccoli explained in his preface to the volumes he edited, because much influential contemporary literature makes special demands, “the word understanding in the titles was chosen deliberately. Many willing readers lack an adequate understanding of how contemporary literature works; that is, of what the author is attempting to express and the means by which it is conveyed.” Aimed at fostering this understanding of good literature and good writers, the criticism and analysis in the series provide instruction in how to read certain contemporary writers—explicating their material, language, structures, themes, and perspectives—and facilitate a more profitable experience of the works under discussion.
In the twenty-first century Professor Bruccoli’s prescience gives us an avenue to publish expert critiques of significant contemporary American writing. The series continues to map the literary landscape and to provide both instruction and enjoyment. Future volumes will seek to introduce new voices alongside canonized favorites, to chronicle the changing literature of our times, and to remain, as Professor Bruccoli conceived, contemporary in the best sense of the word.
Linda Wagner-Martin, Series Editor
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks, as always, to my long-time mentors, Dr. Sandra Govan and Dr. Trudier Harris, as well as to my friends and family—especially Doug and Colin—for their constant support and encouragement. Also, a nod to Tim Davis, who gave me my first Walter Mosley book fifteen years ago.
CHAPTER ONE
Understanding Walter Mosley
Since Walter Mosley began his writing career with a series of immensely popular mystery novels, readers may be surprised to hear that he is “arguably the most prolific novelist of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries,” 1 publishing across genres, including—but not limited to—nonfiction, science fiction, drama, and even young adult fiction. All of these texts, though, feature Mosley’s trademark accessibility as well as his penchant for creating narratives that both entertain and instruct.
Mosley was born January 12, 1952, and raised in Los Angeles (the setting for most of his fiction)—first South Central, then West Los Angeles. His mother, Ella, was a Jewish school administrator; his father, Leroy, was an African American school custodian. Their marriage was a happy one, and neither Ella’s nor Leroy’s family was hostile about the interracial union. Both of Mosley’s parents encouraged his early love of reading, and his father, in particular, played a key role in shaping his view on race, community, and history. Variations on Leroy Mosley’s stories—especially his stories about his own father and childhood—reappear frequently in Walter Mosley’s fiction and nonfiction. And although he did not become a professional writer until he was in his thirties, Mosley looks back to a favorite high-school English teacher and a love of comic books as initially inspiring his interest in writing. 2
Mosley attended Goddard College in Vermont, but he felt more compelled to wander—by hitchhiking around the country—than study, so he dropped out of Goddard. After working in a variety of jobs, such as a potter and a caterer, he eventually returned to college at Johnson State College, also in Vermont, and graduated with a political science degree in 1977. From there, he went on to begin graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts while working as a computer programmer in Boston. He felt uninspired by these studies, however, and decided to move to New York City in 1981. 3
While still supporting himself as a programmer, Mosley read Alice Walker’s The Color Purple . He was moved by the language of this novel and was inspired to try writing his own novel. His inner writer discovered, Mosley enrolled in the City College at the City University of New York’s (CUNY) Creative Writing Program in 1985. There, he studied fiction writing with Frederick Tuten and poetry writing with Bill Matthews. During these studies, he wrote the manuscript for Gone Fishin ’ and in the late 1980s tried unsuccessfully to publish it. 4 With Gone Fishin ’, Mosley was hoping to create a series of stories based on experiences, like his father’s, of migration from the deep South. No publisher, however, saw Mosley’s works as “marketable” until he reworked them as mysteries. 5
Mosley was inspired to revise parts of Gone Fishin ’ into what would become the first Easy Rawlins mystery, Devil in a Blue Dress , after reading Graham Greene’s screenplay for the 1949 film The Third Man . Under the tutelage of Tuten, as well as his other CUNY mentors, Bill Matthews and Edna O’Brien, Mosley created a novel so impressive that Tuten took it to his own agent, Gloria Loomis. Loomis secured Mosley a contract with Norton to publish not only Devil , but also two additional novels. 6
This contract officially launched what would become one of American literature’s most prolific writing careers. In his first decade of professional writing, Mosley averaged a book a year. 7 In 2013–14 alone, he released four new books and produced a play. The tough and cool Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins would become the hero of over a dozen more books in two decades following Devil ’s release. In the years between Easy Rawlins stories, Mosley would produce three additional series, four science-fiction texts (one for young adults), two works of erotica, a play, a graphic novel, three sets of short stories, five nonfiction books, and seven additional novels—for a total over three dozen (and counting) works.
Mosley has won, among other honors, an O’Henry Award in 1996, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 1998, a Grammy Award in 2001 for his liner notes to Richard Pryor’s And It’s Deep Too , the 2004 Pen Center Lifetime Achievement Award, and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Fiction in 2007 and 2009. Mosley’s