November 28, 2010
I have been reading Walter Mosley for years and he is a wonderful writer. His books, ranging from the Easy Rawlings and Leonid McGill mysteries to his wide-ranging novels to his clear and enlightening nonfiction, thrill my brain, warm my heart, and burrow deep in my memory, riches to feast upon when recalled and enjoyed all over again.
His latest novel, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, is another great book, and one of my favorites of 2010 . Ptolemy, named for the father of Cleopatra, has rarely been called by his full name; nevertheless, the pride he finds in the name's origins and in the Africa of legend has sustained him through times of oppression and fear. Now Ptolemy is ninety-one years old, and the most potent of fears has descended: the fear of losing his memories.
Caught in the early stages of dementia, Ptolemy knows that there is something he must do, a promise he once made that must be fulfilled, but he cannot quite remember what it is or how he is to achieve its fulfillment. Mosley captures the torment of the memory loss when Ptolemy explains that while his memories and thoughts are still his, "they were ... locked on the other side of a closed door that he'd lost the key for. So his memory became like secrets held away from his own mind. But these secrets were noisy things; they babbled and muttered behind the door, and so if he listened closely he might catch a snatch of something he knew well."
When his grand-nephew Reggie is killed in a drive-by shooting, Ptolemy's fears deepen: he is running out of time to elucidate his memories and set straight a long-ago promise but how will he achieve the necessary clarity of mind to do what he has to do? Robyn, a beautiful young woman ("You the kind pretty, the kinda beauty, that's like a mirror. Men an' women see themselves in you, only now they so beautiful that they can't bear to see you go") will help but Ptolemy must also make a deal with the devil (a doctor): "They call him the Prince of Liars, but he ain't no different than a bartender: you pays your nickel and drinks your poison." (In The Tempest Tales, another favorite Mosley of mine (reviewed below), a deal is made with Saint Peter: the lesson is that when life is hard, deals are made with heaven and with hell).
How Ptolemy's deal with the devil works, his relationship with Robyn (there is a wonderful line where Ptolemy explains "When I think about you my heart hurts and laughs"), the offer of new love from an unexpected angel, and the constant voice of the long dead Coydog (a character to remember always) merge in a plot that held me close and would not let me go. I sat still and read for hours, feeling anger, sadness, and hope, even laughing out loud at times. When the final resolution came, it was both satisfying and sobering. "And the door that was shut against his forgotten life was itself forgotten": promises kept, vengeance found, and a future, in death and in life, secured.
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December 7, 2009
The Long Fall by Walter Mosley introduces Leonid McGill, a private investigator who has done too many things he is not proud of and at age fifty-plus, is trying to turn over a new leaf. Circumstances conspire against him, however, putting McGill in the center of an evil plot of revenge, and making him both the cause of three murders and the intended victim of one more.
I love Walter Mosley as a writer. His Easy Rawlins mysteries are great, as are his novels, including last year's funny, moving, and profound The Tempest Tales (reviewed below). What drives Mosley's works are not just his artfully-crafted plots and his vivid landscapes and backgrounds but his always fascinating characters. Mosley's main characters are multi-dimensional, full-bodied, blood-pumping, brain-thumping men, tortured but sane incarnations of Everyman heroes. His supporting characters are just as richly developed, diverse and genuine and interesting, both in the adjunct roles they play in the books and in their own right (each could spin off into their own interesting book devoted to their own struggles and triumphs).
Mosley's latest creation, Leonid McGill, is a black red-diaper baby, long disillusioned with both The Communist Manifesto and the United States Constitution. His wife left him but has come back; his lover let him go but wants him back; his kids alternately respect, revere, and ignore him. McGill is an ex-fighter who still goes to the gym for physical and spiritual expiation. His cohorts in business range from a computer geek who never leaves his cave of technology to a slew of assassins, crime lords,and cops, both crooked and straight.
McGill is just trying to survive life and enjoy it a little, working to support his family and find some happiness himself. There are degrees of evil and goodness in his life, in this book, and in reality: Mosley captures the diversity of life's possibilities and pitfalls, and the dignity of a man trying to make the most of the former while avoiding the latter. The dark underside of New York comes across with power, but the light is not ignored: goodness can prevail over evil, and sometimes, it is just enough to try.
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| November 19, 2008
After reading The Tempest Tales (published in 2008) by Walter Mosley, I’m ready to believe in the hereafter. But only if I can go there with someone like Tempest by my side. This book is fabulous! Totally different from Nothing to Be Frightened Of (which I liked and which I reviewed yesterday), in Mosley’s book there is no fearing death or wondering about an afterlife. Mosley presents a concrete afterlife where you will come face to face with Saint Peter; your sins will be weighed against your acts of goodness, and, the best news of all, you only go to hell if you accept that you belong there. (Now that is good to know.)
Our hero, Tempest Landry, is the first man ever, in all eternity, who argues with Saint Peter that he most certainly does not belong in hell (although apparently it took quite a bit of time to separate “sin from saintliness in the arrogant Joan of Arc”). Mosley’s hero takes afterlife by the horns, refusing to go to hell for transgressions he argues were necessary for his survival and the survival of others. He argues his case to Saint Peter so well that he is sent back down to earth, together with heaven’s accountant of souls (named appropriately “Angel”). It’s Angel’s job to convince Tempest that he has sinned and should go to hell. But it’s not long before Tempest’s take on life as a black man in Harlem, sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking but always charming, has Angel twisted and turned and almost human. I was rooting for his humanity and Tempest’s soul all the way.
I like pretty much everything I’ve read by Mosley (and he’s written a lot) and this book is right up there with his best Easy Rawlins novels. Like the Rawlins novels, The Tempest Tales give a rounded and earthy view of what it’s like to be Black and poor and a man. Tempest is a hero not because he escapes poverty but because he sticks around his neighborhood and helps others get through it; the only free will he has is what he can do to make the best of the conditions placed on his life, given his economic status, his race, his gender.
But this novel is not about race. Just as Angel explains that the Jews in the Bible are a metaphor for all humanity, Tempest is also a metaphor for all humanity. We all have two absolutes in common: we are all born and we all die. Every single human being shares the coming fate. Our individuality is in how we choose to live but even there, our free will is confined within the circumstances often out of our control.
Mosley raises a very interesting and difficult question about the nature of time allotted to us in life. In heaven, there is time pressure:
“Time was an inexhaustible commodity on the heavenly plane. If something needed to be done, then it was done. If a thought took an instant or a thousand years, or a thousand thousand years, it was no matter. But on earth every moment fled leaving you with desperation, frustration, and fear.”
Yes, life is short and eternity is forever. It is a challenge for us as humans is to make life with its precious minutes worthwhile. But how to do that without pressure? How to live each day fully without arriving in bed at night thinking, "Oh no, didn’t quite live fully enough today. Better try harder tomorrow." It is a conundrum and a vexing one: how to live well and fully and as if you had all the time in the world, so as to enjoy it all, and yet knowing that time is actually the one thing none of us have?
Mosley also raises the question of what is our responsibility towards stopping evil in this world. Can we really make a difference against horrors that do not touch us, evil that we can choose not to see? Angels asks Tempest if he cares about the fate of the world and Tempest answers,
“People be dyin’ by the thousands every day, Angel…they dyin’ in Sudan an’ Congo an’ Iraq just t’name three places. But if you go out here in the streets you see people buyin’ Christmas trees and video games like they was gonna run out any minute. Nobody care if the world goin’ down in flames, just as long as their house don’t catch fire.”
Angel argues that such apathy is wrong but Tempest counters with what could anyone actually do, and asks what Angel is going to do about it. Angel answers that stopping evil is not his job (Ergo, not God’s job) and Tempest shoots back,
“Well, if it ain’t your job, then how in hell can it be mine?”
Good question. So is the answer, "do what you can in your own little world and hope the goodness spreads"? I don’t know. But that is what Tempest does and to me, he is a hero.
Great book, great read.
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