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Whistlingwoman
Newbie Poster
Username: Whistlingwoman
Post Number: 21
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 09, 2004 - 08:09 pm: | 
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I found the link to this on Nichelle Tramble's online journal. She'd classified it (in a funny way) as too much information. I think she meant the naked part.
A writer's life: Walter Mosley
(Filed: 07/06/2004)
The man of letters tells Marcus Warren he is most comfortable writing in the nude
America's best-known black male author is a self-disciplined sort. He bangs out the words daily, every morning, seven days a week. Indeed it is fair to say that nothing gets between Walter Mosley and his writing, not even clothes.
If it were not for the matter-of-fact way in which Mosley lets slip this arresting admission, you might suspect he was pulling your leg. But he blurts it out as though it were the most natural thing in the world. "Usually, I don't wear anything. I'm naked," he says and, clearly sensing that the point needs to be made again, "I write naked."
"You're not hearing this, Carine," he yells at his assistant who, among other things, meets and greets visitors to the Greenwich Village flat that is Mosley's office.
"I knew about that before I started working for you," echoes her voice from the upstairs floor.
"And you still came to work for me?" he fires back with a cackle of laughter.
Closer questioning reveals that the nude writing sessions take place not here in the office in front of Carine but at Mosley's home nearby. He doesn't feel uncomfortable without clothes and fails to understand why anyone else would: "Why would you?"
He is scrutinising me now. "Do you feel self-conscious when you take your clothes off?"
It's nothing to do with prudery, I suggest, adding that few people are narcissistic enough to feel absolutely at ease with their physique. To myself, I think that Mosley, while not bad looking for his age, is still 52 years old. But he won't let the matter rest there. No one can see into his apartment from outside, and he feels no shame in walking around in the nude.
"Don't people do that?" he asks. "Not you, I guess."
Clothes or no clothes, Mosley is something of a Renaissance man in modern American letters. His books only began to be published in the 1990s, but already there are noir-ish crime novels starring the detective Easy Rawlins, two collections of short stories featuring the urban philosopher Socrates Fortlow, science fiction and a polemic, What Next: a Memoir Toward World Peace. His latest work is The Man in My Basement, a meditation on good and evil and race that he describes as a novel of ideas in the tradition of such French thinkers as Albert Camus.
Some have hailed the new book, which revolves around a confrontation between the black owner of a mansion on Long Island and a white stranger who rents the cellar for the summer, as representing a new direction in his output. But for Mosley it amounts to "a seamless fit" with what has gone before. "It's a departure for my readers and critics in America but it's not a departure for me," he says.
The sum of Mosley's somewhat eclectic parts is on striking display in his workspace in the office, a venue for meetings and talks, as he puts it - talks, as in business negotiations, not literary soirées. It is also the headquarters for his production company and, sitting on a sofa behind a multi-line phone and remote controls for the television, Mosley looks more the flamboyant film type than the jobbing author.
To enhance the atmosphere of miscellany, the flat also boasts a stepping machine, a water cooler, two editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and, open at the letter N on a bookstand, a Webster's dictionary. "This is the real treasure," he whispers as he ushers me into a back room filled to overflowing with his collection of comic books, some 20,000 of them, he estimates.
Mosley is as flamboyant as his surroundings. Two features catch one's eye straight away: the first is the gap where his front teeth should be; the second, the enormous ring he wears on his left hand. "I couldn't tell you how gold it is but it's golden," he says of the Ghanaian ornament, a magnificent sculpture in metal of a bird pecking at coral. Later, on leaving, Mosley strides out into the Manhattan streets in a white straw hat, which would look less odd if it weren't a drizzling, grey, overcast afternoon.
The overall effect is one of nonchalant self-confidence, part of a desire to make his life look easier than it really is. But Mosley has always been up-front about the demands of writing, which he has likened to "gathering smoke" or "guerrilla warfare" with "no vacation, no leave, no relief".
He is insistent about the need to write every day, without fail, for fear that the ideas and the flow of creation will dry up. In fact, the day before our meeting, he broke the rule, overwhelmed by the demands of seeing an old friend from high school and escorting his 83-year-old mother to the airport. Doesn't his near-obsession with work border on the compulsive?
"Isn't being a human being compulsive?" he counters. "Cats and dogs are not compulsive. They always have food, they sleep most of the time, they eat, they want to have sex if they're not neutered. That's a non-compulsive life."
Mosley has always had "a good life", he says, even when his circumstances looked less than promising. His father was a black exile from the Jim Crow Deep South, his mother was Jewish. He jokes that the usual reaction his parents' background prompts in strangers is: "Man, they're against you on all sides."
He was born in Watts, Los Angeles, a district ravaged by the 1965 riots, which he witnessed as a child. Nowadays, his home is one of the smartest neighbourhoods of Manhattan. Monica Lewinsky lives nearby and, as I arrive, outside the block of flats where he has his office a precious-looking middle-aged white man has an animated chat with his Airedale dog.
Mosley has railed against the "limited circles of middle-class America" and their "utopian majesty", but he seems well-established in a comfort zone of the bourgeoisie. What about "keeping it real", I ask?
"My understanding of living in the ghetto is that it's not a place you want to live," he replies laconically. "Even if I'm not living in East New York [a particularly rough part of Brooklyn], my heart and my mind and my work are there so I'm not removed from it."
Sustaining empathy with people and places outside what is now his daily experience is a challenge Mosley can meet. But there are others as well, such as his political battles. He is a vocal and active opponent of the Bush presidency, which he calls "illegal". And then there is the creative struggle he submits to every morning.
The books keep coming and he is pretty prolific, though, I venture. He throws the word back at me. "'Though?'" he asks. "What's the though? Though I write naked?"
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 345
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 10:41 am: |
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Chris,
Mosley: "This is the real treasure." he whispers as he ushers me into a back room filled to overflowing with his collection of comic books, some 20,000 of them, he estimates."
Do you think diverse and prolific author/intellectual Mosley would agree with me that comic books offer a wonderful avenue to encourage reading and writing among young Black males?
Whistlingwoman,
Thanks. There's a lot of information here that an inspiring (and even experienced) writer should heed:
A) To be a successful writer, one must almost obsessive apply her/his craft at all times, because the greatest literary inspiration may occur outside of some prearranged days/times.
B) Mosley is very versatile (he's written novels, short stories, science fiction, essays, etc.). He has avoided being pigeonholed into one category and limited from others. So he can expand and even cross-pollinate subject matter among literary genres, which permits him to publish more books than his peers and garner a broader, more diverse fan base.
C) A good, prolific writer can effectively reproduce a subject matter (e.g., people, places and ideas) that may be atypical of his or her own background.
D) And most important: Don't let a little thing like underwear stop you from penning a wondrous literary opus.
I think all of the talk of writing in the buff was ol' Walt attempt to not-so-subtlety 'hit' on his interviewer (and perhaps his assistant as well). But I wonder why the interviewer (Tramble?) chose to emphasize Mosley's literary striptease act. Considering the amount of text the interviewer expended on Mosley's nakedness, it seems he may have had within her willing prey. Maybe she(?) sort of smitten by thoughts of Mosley 'going commando' while banging out tales about "Easy" and his (well-endowed) friend "Mouse". |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 298
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 12:17 pm: |
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Abm:
I think this confirms what I have suspected about Walter Mosley all along, that he is a dangerous maniac, possibly Osama Bin Laden himself in disquise, who is in possession of 20,000 pieces of mind rotting Anti-American pro-Saddam pornography and I am on the phone with John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge right now to descend on his backroom, a temple of cheap, four color Satanworshipping filth and cleanse it with fire and righteousness. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 469
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 12:19 pm: |
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chrishayden: you are a fool(in of good way of course). |
Whistlingwoman
Newbie Poster
Username: Whistlingwoman
Post Number: 22
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 12:42 pm: |
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I thought it was an interesting article. Mosley continues to be one of my favorites. After the Easy books, I enjoyed R.L.'s Dream the most. Haven't read the science fiction but I have seen Mosley speak on several occassions. Witty, intelligent, sharp-tongued.
Anyway, Tramble was not the interviewer. It was from a UK paper, and I just realized I left the writers name off (oops).
You can get to the direct link at www.nichelletramble.com/journal.htm |
Crystal
Regular Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 34
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 01:01 pm: |
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Thanks for the article WW. Mosley is one of my favorites too and I enjoy his different genres.
ABM: you remind me of Easy Rawlins - it's always about the booty with you. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 346
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 01:44 pm: |
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Chris,
I gottah go on and give you your daps, playah. Cause that $#@+ was HILARIOUS! The Bush-bashing Mosley would p!$$ his pants if he read that! HAHA!
And after your crack - help me LAWD! - I can't stop visualizing Mosley being nabbed by a team Ashcroft's goosestepping agents while he's caught in the nude rolling around in a stack of Spider-Man comic books. ~GAG!~
Whistlingwoman,
Thanks for clarifying.
Crystal,
And so your point would be...'what', Darling? |
Crystal
Regular Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 35
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 01:50 pm: |
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No point ABM, I'm just saying . . . |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 609
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 01:58 pm: |
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Ick! What visuals I get imagining the pale, portly, gapped-tooth, balding, Moseley sitting naked at a typewriter! Well, at least his last book, "The Man in My basement" was interesting. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 350
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 02:05 pm: |
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Crystal,
Just teasin' you, gurl. Hey, you wanna feel what I've got in my right pocket? |
Crystal
Regular Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 37
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 03:30 pm: |
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ABM: will it bite? |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 358
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 03:54 pm: |
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Crystal,
Well, maybe not "bite"...("though it might not mind being bitten")...but it sure can sting! |
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