Walter Mosley

Before Walter Mosley became a writer of detective fiction, he spent several years working towards a graduate degree in political philosophy, giving up after coming to the conclusion that the ultimate end for that pursuit was to have a faculty position teaching some obscure and meaningless courses on some obscure subject, which, he realized was not something he wanted for himself.

But after establishing himself as a famous and well compensated fiction writer, he still had ideas from his show more coursework knocking around in his head, and took the opportunity to write this book to organize and share those ideas.

He introduces the term "untopia" to describe his vision for a more balanced society—rather than striving for an impossible utopian world, he suggests working toward a world that strengthens some "socialist" ideas, such as basic human rights (cf., the UN's Declaration of Human Rights), but adding in some basic universal income supports, government subsidy of basic foodstuffs, free education from K-12 and six additional years of university or trade school, free medical care, and access to decent and cheap public housing. Businesses would be expected to pay significant taxes and have limitations on their ability to export jobs to countries with lower wages, a flat tax would be imposed on everyone, rich or poor, and, simultaneously, budding capitalists would be encouraged to start businesses and protected from attempts by established businesses to crush them through legal means (he uses as an example kids selling candy outside stores selling the same candy for lower prices, or someone selling hot dogs in front of a restaurant).

His view of perfect socialism is some sort of hive species, such as termites, ants, or bees, where each member automatically works together for the good of the community, taking what they need to live and providing labor for whatever need arises, suppressing all individuality. He also defines perfect unfettered capitalism as a machine to produce profits from labor without any concern for the rights or well-being of the people providing that labor—too old or sick to work? Too bad for you. (Arguably, that's pretty close to what we have now, bolstered by the ability of capitalists to use their money and power to bend government policies to their benefit, and the prioritization of profit for the shareholders while ignoring any sort of responsibility for the well-being of employees or the communities where they operate.)

From my perspective, his view of socialism is far too limited and negative, and his ideas about moderating capitalism and the megarich are way too generous. I would hope that it's possible to maintain and even encourage communal ideals _and_ individuality and freedom of expression, but I'm much less sanguine that even his limited capitalism wouldn't continue the corruption and exploitation we see now, even if reforms change some of the specific mechanisms used.

In some ways his vision is similar to the one my friends and I came up with in our naïve way from reading Robert Anton Wilson and progressive science fiction in high school, but I think we posited a much more hopeful world than the one Mosley imagines, one where eliminating the need to work just to get the very basics to survive would give people the freedom to explore more satisfying pursuits.

These days I would lean heavily on Iain (M.) Banks's Culture, a mostly utopian society supported by machine intelligences and access to near unlimited resources. ("Mostly", of course, down to the Culture's interactions with other civilizations with different philosophies, some which are forced by direct conflict and some of which come from the incompatibility between the Culture's values and those of other societies.)

The Culture is fictional, of course, and relies on extrapolated and probably unattainable support systems, but even today many aspects of its world are attainable, if resources were fairly distributed rather than concentrated in the hands of a very few as they are now. Mosley's much lower aim seems to me to settle for much less than we all deserve. show less

Ptolemy Grey is almost past the point of no return on a decline into poverty, dementia and filth. His mind doesn’t play straight with him, the nephew (or is it grandson?) who has taken minimal care of him by escorting him to the bank and the grocery store on a semi-regular basis hasn’t been seen now for three weeks (or is it longer?), his stock of canned tuna is nearly gone and his toilet doesn’t work. As if all that weren’t enough, whenever he ventures out of his apartment alone, a show more manic neighbor woman with a heavy habit attempts to mug him for his pension money. Just when this story seems to be too grim to continue with, Ptolemy Grey is visited by nothing less than an angel in the person of an 18-year-old orphan who has been staying with his niece. This beautiful young woman takes on the job of bringing Pitypapa Grey back to the world, to live in it fully for the time he has left. Is she too good to be true? Should we trust her, or does she have an ulterior motive? When she takes him to a doctor who is conducting an experimental drug trial, is she selling his body to the devil, or saving his soul? Oh, this is a fine piece of writing. If you don’t love Ptolemy Grey and hold your breath waiting to see if he will rise to the final challenge he sets up for himself, look to your own soul. It needs your attention. show less

He only had one chair, and that had a book, a glass of water, and three stones he’d found that day at the park on it. They were blond stones, a color he’d never seen in rock and so he picked them up and brought them home, to be with them for a while.

That’s exactly why I read Walter Mosley -- to “be awhile” with his characters, whose situations and moral complexities I always think I haven’t seen, and whose unfamiliarity always softens into a fond recognition.

Here it’s 2006 and show more 91-year-old Ptolemy Grey lives alone in squalor in south-central LA. He has a small pension, he has a radio and a TV tuned 24/7 to a dueling background of classical music and cable news, and he has sporadic contact with extended family two and three generations down the line. But his home and mind have declined since his wife died decades ago, and now dementia keeps him obsessed about the ages-ago deaths of a childhood friend in a house fire and the lynching of a beloved mentor. So when another loved one dies in street violence, and a new young friend awakens Ptolemy's spirit, he embarks on a mission to protect his loved ones before his own time comes.

Mosley narrates almost completely in scenes here -- from Ptolemy’s perspective, a mix of confusion and distraction co-mingled with vestiges of philosopher and keen observer. A key plot point about experimental drugs did require a suspension of disbelief ... or maybe it just required me to fully enter a world where the rules don’t resemble the ones I know, and to appreciate the point of this book: being awhile with this man in that world. I loved every page of it.

(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.) show less

Walter Mosley has two currents in which his books are found. One, the Easy Rawlins detective stories, have the funky elegance of Chandler; the other, in which black men have the names of ancient Greeks, is his own, and is the more valuable of the two. This book falls into the second group, and is difficult to speak of because the book itself disciplines one's language. It tells its story clearly but in a hushed rustle; it performs the terrible tricks of memory in an aging mind whose loved show more people have died. Not only do you believe this voice, this mind, you become it. A resonant book, whose resonance is achieved by what's left out as well as what's included. show less