Easy does it

NEW YORK - Walter Mosley begins each day typing away -- "the love of my life is waking up every morning and writing for two or three hours." He does it without a net, or even clothes, diving brain-first into each work without an outline, a notion of how his characters will evolve or even who will survive.

"You discover it along the way. That's how I write," said the best-selling author between bites of an omelet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Trustees Dining Room. "Art, almost all art, is an unconscious activity. I think it's a mistake to be a perfectionist in art. If you can't make mistakes, you can't be an artist.

"One of the reasons people have so much trouble becoming artists is that they see finished pieces of work, and they believe the artist started off there. And then they read things like how Fats Waller walked into a studio and when he walked out, he had 'Ain't Misbehavin'.' Well, yeah, but he had a whole life that led up to there."

It certainly worked that way for Mosley, who was 38 when his first book, the Easy Rawlins novel "Devil in a Blue Dress," came out in 1990. His 10th Rawlins mystery, "Blonde Faith," ends with a cliffhanger that he says is literal. "That's it. I'm finished writing Easy Rawlins novels," said Mosley, who was dressed in black down to his sneakers, but clearly not in mourning. "I have so many other things to do, to think about, to wonder about. I have a lot of books to write."

Which is saying something, because in less than two decades, Mosley has published 28 books, which have garnered consistently strong reviews and a broad following. Easy Rawlins and Fearless Jones mysteries and Socrates Fortlow short stories make up the bulk of his oeuvre, but even they defy classification: Raymond Chandler-meets-Richard Wright-meets-Albert Camus sort of begins to cover it. Maybe. Throw in science fiction ("Blue Light"), carnal noir ("Killing Johnny Fry"), sociopolitical tracts and even a how-to on writing ("The Year You Write Your Novel") and you have ... what?

"He's very, very hard to classify and even quantify because he's such a prolific writer," said W. Paul Coates, director of the publishing house Black Classic Press. "When I'm in Walter's presence, I'm always looking at what's going to be left of his works 50 years from now, so I look at him as someone who creates a legacy every day. He's got more in him than we may see in our lifetime."

'From the bottom up'

Mosley remains on a rapid-fire release schedule. "Blonde Faith" arrived last month, and the riveting noir thriller "Diablerie" is due out the day after Christmas. Then, in short order, will come "The Tempest Tales" (a short-story collection and homage to Langston Hughes' "The Simple Stories"), a third book of Socrates Fortlow stories and a literary novel.

Oh, and he's developing a screenplay for the Easy Rawlins novel "Little Scarlet" and working on a potential television show with Kerry Washington and David Moskow.

Aside from that ... well, Mosley is somehow devoting a lot of time, writing and otherwise, to political concerns. Suffice to say that he's less than enamored of the state of the nation.

"I love America. It's a great country; there's great power and potential here. I think we've been, as Malcolm X said, bamboozled. But that doesn't mean we can't set it straight," Mosley said, his brown eyes darkening behind teensy, egg-shaped glasses. "We're told and we believe on the whole that we live in a democracy. Indeed, it seems to me provable that we live in an oligarchy. Our laws are written by lobbyists who represent the major corporations in America. ... Everybody in America now is in the same place that black people were when I was a kid."

But rather than be just an unhappy camper, or decamper, Mosley is taking action. He is aiming to effect change "from the bottom up," by launching a website called the Democracy Initiative; look for it in March. People will define their major and secondary political interests; through the database they then can form networks based around certain issues, sometimes even uniting folks who might be at loggerheads in other areas.

"Let's say I'm prochoice and you're prolife, but we both believe in a living wage," he said. "We'll have what we call a Blind Call, for everyone who's interested in a living wage and we say, 'We need everyone to come out on this day and do this.' You and I can work together. ... The Blind Call is about why do I love you, not why do I hate you."

Why isn't Mosley enlisting the help of his most famous fan, Bill Clinton, who called Mosley his favorite writer? After all, the then-president's encomiums for "Devil in a Blue Dress" helped propel heavy sales of the Easy Rawlins books.

"We have to come to an identity in America that isn't based on hero worship, believing people are kings, believing that we have leaders instead of public servants," Mosley said. "As president, Bill Clinton was a public servant, but people treated him like a king. It wasn't necessarily his fault, but it's a problem."

The deeply held beliefs don't interfere with Mosley's day job. "You don't find that political ideologue in his characters," said Coates. "I'm amazed at his ability to make critiques on society at large and particularly society as seen through the eyes of a black man without standing on a political platform."

Keeping it simple

Mosley comes by his leftist views somewhat naturally. He's the only child of a black Southerner and a white Jewish woman whose family was heavily involved in the Russian Revolution until 1910, "when the people who took over the Socialist movement were a bunch of anti-Semites. So her parents came over here."

LeRoy and Ella Mosley settled in Los Angeles, where most of Walter's novels are set and where his mother still lives. But he has spent most of his life in the East, getting a bachelor's degree in Vermont and working as a potter, computer programmer and even a caterer during early adulthood. He read voraciously, Dashiell Hammett and Ross MacDonald mixed in with Camus and Gabriel García Márquez. He dabbled in writing in his early 20s, but didn't get serious about it until his mid-30s.

As with Fats Waller, Mosley's works reflect a lifetime of experiences and the black experience in particular. In that vein, Easy Rawlins came along at just the right time, said Mathia Diawara, chairman of the African Studies literature department at New York University.

"When Alice Walker and Toni Morrison brought to light a 'new black woman' in the 1980s, it created a void when it came to black manhood in literature," said Diawara. "Easy Rawlins was a black man who lived in America, and who understood America."

Another Mosley creation, the urban philosopher named Socrates, resonates mightily with seniors at Minneapolis' Patrick Henry High School, according to their English teacher, Patrick Pelini.

"The Socrates Fortlow character is living, I think, in an identical world to the one our students living in poverty on the North Side are experiencing," said Pelini. "Our students immediately recognized the world he inhabits and immediately recognized the struggles as well as the triumphs he experiences. They could not be more engaged."

They're not alone. Mosley has a sizable following in the black community that recognizes protagonists such as Fortlow, Rawlins and Jones. They might be laconic or sardonic, thoughtful or naive, footloose or grounded. But most of all, they're real, and focused primarily on trying to do the right thing.

"When I started out writing books, a great majority of the black men who read prided themselves on not reading fiction, because they were always misrepresented in fiction," said Mosley. "The writers were either white people who didn't really understand their lives or black women who were angry at them. I've gathered a very large audience of black men who say, 'I can read these books because I know the characters. That's the real world.'"

Sounds a lot like the equally searing works of the late August Wilson, the former St. Paul resident to whom "Blonde Faith" is dedicated.

"The thing is, August and I used to be confused for each other," said Mosley, flashing his ever-ready gap-toothed smile. "I'd be walking through an airport and someone would say 'Man, I love 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.'" When Mosley jokingly complained to Wilson, the playwright said, "Nah, nah, nah, it happens to me, too. People will say, 'Oh, you wrote that "Devil in a Blue Dress.' 'No, man, I didn't write that.'"

What Wilson did write resonated mightily with Mosley: "His plays for me are plays about language, language that I know, that I remember, that I have experienced."

Nailing black dialect, capturing street life and concocting sharply drawn characters with delightful names (Atwater "Soupspoon" Wise, Easter Dawn, Lionel "Charlemagne" Sterling) are among Mosley's greatest gifts.

"His books are very accessible, and I mean access in a sense that he doesn't take you around the corner with his words and leave you in a tree. You understand what he's saying," said Coates. "Most of his writing is simple writing that captures complex notions. His ability to say what he wants to say and put it out there for people to think whatever they want to is incredibly brave."

Bill Ward • 612-673-7643

Bill Ward • bill.ward@startribune.com