Interview: Walter Mosley

By Marcus Gilmer in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 6, 2009 7:30PM

For fans of mystery novels, Walter Mosley needs no introduction. Mosley is best known for his Easy Rawlins mysteries such as Devil in a Blue Dress and Six Easy Pieces but his literary prowess spans several genres. In under 20 years, Mosley has written 33 books in genres such as mystery, science fiction, young adult, several nonfiction books, and even erotica. The winner of awards such as a PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, an O. Henry Award, and even a Grammy (for his liner notes on a Richard Pryor boxset), Mosley has also been recognized for the way he addresses race in his writing, winning the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.

But for all the genres he's covered, mystery has been where Mosley has made his name and now he brings us a new series based on a new character, Leonid McGill. In the new book, The Long Fall, Leonid McGill is a man trying to get back on the right path before it's too late. A private eye who plies his trade amongst a group of friends and an even bigger group of enemies, McGill - a hard-drinking ex-boxer - is trying to set things right for himself and his family, including his favorite son, Twill. As he tries to move from "crooked to slightly bent," McGill learns the hard way that transformation isn't always easy. When he turns information about a group of young men over to a client and those men start turning up dead, McGill searches for answers from the underworld to the mansions of New York City, all the while crossing paths with a wide-range of characters who remind McGill of the past he's trying to run from.

It's another masterstroke of mystery from a writer who knows how to create suspense at its best. We caught up with Mosley ahead of his appearance this week in Chicago and talked about Obama, the importance of race, the importance of father-son relationships in the book, and how Mosley keeps up his prolific pace.

Walter Mosley, Thursday April 9, 7:30 p.m., Borders (Beverly location - 2210 W. 95th St.)

Chicagoist: Several times in the book, the main character references the Obama candidacy and talks about how certain other characters aren’t judging him based on race, that the world has changed some in that regard. Do you share that perspective?

Walter Mosley: [laughs] What perspective? In the opening scene of the book, the secretary is more worried about what kind of clothes you wear, what age you are than she is worried about race. But when [McGill] goes to the bar in Albany, those people are very worried about race. When McGill goes to the office of The Most Important Man in New York, The Most Important Man in New York realizes only two African-Americans have ever been in his office.

When you ask, “Do I agree,” then yeah. The secretary doesn’t care. The people in Albany do care and The Most Important Man in New York doesn’t care, but many haven't gotten to the place where they have any impact on his life. What I’m trying to say in the book is that there are all kinds of different ways people respond to things.

C: It feels like in that first instance - when Leonid suggests the secretary isn’t judging him based on race - there’s a bit of cynicism in his voice.

WM: When you say cynicism, what do you mean?

C: That he says it with a grain of salt -

WM: No, no, it’s absolutely true. This woman doesn’t dislike him because he’s black. She doesn’t care. She’s protecting Roger Brown, who is a black man. She calls Brown “mister” in an office of first names. What’s important is that he [Leonid] has to be able to understand that at every moment. There was a time in America where everybody was racist to one degree or another, whether they knew it or not and it might still be true today. But it’s in such different ways and forms that Leonid has to really decipher what people were saying to him.

C: The story takes place while Obama is still a candidate.

WM: That’s correct. I had no idea he was going to win.

C: Did his victory have any effect on you in terms of writing characters like Leonid?

WM: No.

C: For several of the characters in the book, it seems origin is just as important in identifying them as their race, the way Leonid describes them. Specifically, the women in his life: his wife Katrina and Aura, another woman with whom he’s had a relationship. They’re introduced by way of their heritage: Scandinavian, etc. Is this a reflection of that issue, that people don’t view race in quite the same way they used to?

WM: Well, it’s so complex. There’s a moment in the book when there are three people. There’s a blousy kind of red-faced white guy who’s also big and hulking, there’s a little guy who looks like he’s carved from porcelain and there’s another guy who’s white but his skin is dark. Leonid remarks that in old-time Europe, those would have been three different races. That’s the way they would have looked at it.

In America, a lot of people ask me, “Do you feel like you have more in common with Obama because you’re multi-racial and he is, too?” [Ed's Note: Mosley's father is African-American and his mother is Jewish.] My response is that almost every black person in America is multi-racial. We’re all descended from the Scotch and the Irish and the English and the French and the Native Americans and the Ethiopians, there’s all this mixed blood in America. There are very few people who are purely white in America. At one point, that didn’t matter: you were colored or you weren’t and that was a definition. That’s no longer true and that’s what Leonid is dealing with. Again, he’s dealing with the complexity of race because it is an extraordinarily complex issue in America today. Not that it doesn’t exist, not that it’s less important, it’s just very, very different.

C: Another aspect of the novel that was very potent was the underlying thread of the father-son relationship. There are at least three different father-son relationships that play a role in the novel. How early on did this theme develop? Was it there since the beginning?

WM: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I had written a short story called “Karma” in which Leonid and Twill [one of Leonid’s sons] play important parts; it’s where I came up with these characters. The relationship with Twill is extraordinarily interesting because in previous books I had written about black men who adopt children, brings them in and is kind of unconventional. In this book, Leonid’s helping Twill - and his other kids, too - but he’s helping Twill negotiate a difficult life but at the same time, Twill is helping him. Twill is as much there for him and it’s kind of the way I see the modern world. That young people are extraordinarily important to the future of America and in many ways they know it and they’re doing the work.

C: That’s interesting because early in the book we learn that Twill is not Leonid’s biological son.

WM: No, but that really doesn’t matter.

C: But Leonid does seem to have a more open relationship with the two children who are not biologically his.

WM: Yeah, the one that’s like him is too much like him. [laughs] I mean he loves that son, he loves Dimitri [Leonid’s biological son], but the problem is they’re so much alike that they almost repel each other.

C: What was it like creating this new character, Leonid McGill? What was the best part of that for you?

WM: Some questions are hard to answer and that one’s impossible to answer but I can answer another one. I really enjoy writing about Leonid McGill. I find him an extraordinary character, mainly because he’s such a direct reflection of America today: a country that’s been going in the wrong direction for so many years who’s decided that they’re going to try to do right by themselves and the rest of the world. And in Leonid’s case, by himself and everyone else.

C: And like this country, finding it’s more difficult than just one action.

WM: Yeah, well you know, it’s like Obama deciding to close Guantanamo. It’s not easy. It’s like America saying, “Oh yeah, maybe we shouldn’t have allowed the owners of the banks, insurance companies, investment companies, and the oil companies to have free reign over whatever they wanted to. Maybe they don’t have our best interests at heart.” ... It’s a very interesting, very problematic thing. Internally, you know what you want to become but you are something else. That’s Leonid McGill. He knows what he wants.

There’s a scene in Moby Dick when Fleece is throwing stuff over the side and the sharks are coming after it and they’re eating each other and he gives a sermon and says if you sharks would learn to control your appetite, you sharks would be angels. It’s a wonderful scene and, in a way, Leonid McGill is one of those sharks and all of the sharks around him are eating each other.

C: Well, it’s interesting you bring up the sharks that surround him. The book is filled with dozens of characters, some directly related to the plot and others that seem to pass through just to fill in the reader on the life Leonid has lived and his background, characters I assume we’ll see in future novels.

WM: You absolutely will.

C: Like the gangster “Tony the Suit”?

WM: I’m not so sure about Tony. I think Tony sees his story end in this book. But the godfather of those gangsters who’s trying to lead Leonid on what to do even though Leonid couldn’t quite figure out what he meant, he’ll be back. The man who gets him information that’s described as looking like a moray eel, he’ll be back. A lot of those characters will be back. Even the girl, Twill’s friend, will be back.

C: Especially in a first book in a series like this one, do you worry at all about the reader’s ability to keep up with all the characters or do you just trust they’ll be able to?

WM: That’s the way I write. You know, in a day in your life, you’ll run into 30-40 people. I read novels, and a character will only see two people all day long. Who lives that life? One’s life is filled with people; we’re social beings living in cities. There’s the guy sitting in the lobby downstairs reading his newspaper, there’s the guy you buy your food from, there’s your boss, there’s the person working for you, there’s your girlfriend or your wife and your kids and your kids friends - there are all these people. I don’t understand how I can write a story without having the normal relations of life in it. So, yes, I hope the people can keep up with it, but this is my 33rd book and they’ve kept up so far.

C: That’s a fair point. And as someone who’s written so many books across different genres, how does writing mystery differ from writing other genres?

WM: Well, it’s hard to compare a literary novel to a mystery novel; they’re both literary. But with a mystery novel, you have to address the plot every three or four pages. Every three or four pages we have to get back to: what’s this story about? That’s what a mystery is; you’re solving the mystery therefore the plot is kind of ornate and very structured. In a literary novel, it’s boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again. That's enough plot for a literary novel. You can use a lot more space to get to know the characters and how these people feel: how they relate, what they do. They’re different kind of books and they both pose their own problems, but they’re still books, they’re still the same thing, really.

C: Who or what inspired you to begin writing mysteries?

WM: I had written a book called Gone Fishin' with Easy Rawlins that wasn’t a mystery but nobody wanted to publish it. And then I started writing another book about Easy Rawlins and I didn’t know it was a mystery until I reached a certain point and realized it was a mystery. It was almost like a non-event.

C: As you mentioned, you’ve written 33 books in just under 20 years. What inspires you to keep such a pace?

WM: You know, it seems like a hectic, daunting pace, but the truth is I just write every day. Just every day. And I write for about three hours so it’s not like I’m killing myself. And if you write every day, you write a whole lot and that’s all there is to it. I know a lot of writers who take time off or do other things and for good reasons; that's not a criticism. But for myself, the most enjoyable in my life is writing so I do it every day.