The Man in My Basement

Walter Mosley's book portrays a young, unemployed, alcoholic, irresponsible black man, Charles Blakely, who allows a white powerbroker, Anniston Bennet, to take up residence in a cage in his family home in exchange for a large sum of money. Charles's conversations with Bennet about good and evil and power cause Charles to evaluate his life. The women in Charles's life--the passionate Bethany, the antiquities dealer, Narciss, and the wealthy white girl, Extine, as well as an elderly neighbor, Irene--all invest Charles with qualities they imagine they see in him, but Charles hasn't figured out who he really is. He feels that even his best friends Clarence and Ricky really have no idea who he is. Charles develops a sense of responsibility show more toward the heritage his family has left him, but by the end of the book still hasn't figured out how to connect with the people in his life in a meaningful way.

This is a book that will keep your attention and provoke a lot of thought. The image of the African masks that are part of Charles's inheritance, Charles's conversations with Anniston Bennet, and Charles's thought about himself and his role in life bring real depth to this novel. It's defnitely worth a second read. show less

The concept of this book is seemingly simple: Anniston Bennet, a white man with a dark past, asks a black man, protagonist Charles Blakey, to imprison him in his basement. The execution is much more complex. It asks the reader to contemplate philosophical questions of ethics, motivation, and self-deception. Would a strange request such as this be worth the risk for financial gain? I do not want to reveal too much about the storyline, since part of the enjoyment of this book is getting drawn deeper and deeper into the power dynamics of the situation. It is my first book by Walter Mosley but will not be my last.

The fantastical nature of this novel's plot is made believable by the way that Mosley creates two characters with enough depth to make the story plausible. This is a story of how two strangers have a huge impact on the life of the other when they unexpectedly become the focal points in each other's life. Each man benefits from the relationship, one ultimately finds exactly what he was searching for, and the other is given hope where he had none before.

Mosley includes some interesting details about a part of black history that is (or was to me, anyway) largely unknown, and which make even the minor characters into individuals with distinct personalities and personal histories. This is a well-written book that delivered more than I show more expected from it when I opened it to the first page.

Rated at: 3.5 show less

Charles Blakey is a young, unemployed man living in a house inherited from his parents. He has a mortgage, no prospects for future employment and not much meaning in his life. Along comes Mr. Bennet, who wants to rent the basement....more than that, he wants to be imprisoned in the basement, with Charles as his jailer, to atone for his crimes. A bit creepy.

The unlikeliness of this scenario is overcome by the strong character development of Charles. Having a man locked in the basement changes him, puts him more in touch with himself and his ancestry. It is, ultimately, a very disturbing but satisfying book as it raises many moral issues.

Like others, I found the weakness to be the secondary characters, who were less well-developed but show more important for the impacts they had on Charles. show less

Basically this is a character/philosophical study disguised as a novel . Anniston Bennet wants to atone for his perceived sins as well as his real sins. Charles Blakey is an aimless man looking for a philosophy that will allow him to continue his lifestyle without the nagging guilt of wasting his life. Anniston gives that to him during the incarceration he so longs for. He’s looking for permission in a sense and that’s why he adopts Anniston’s philosophy of life which is basically that bad things are going to happen anyway so what difference does it make that I am the cause. He also uses various authority figures to exculpate him and give him a scapegoat for blame. Because Charles doesn’t plan on hurting or killing anyone or show more assisting puppet régimes, he feels that he can continue his basically meaningless existence just fine since it doesn’t matter anyway.

But then he gets meaning. Before there was a man in his basement, there was the detritus of many Blakey generations. He cleaned it out with the help of a friend and that friend told him that the stuff is probably worth a lot of money and hooks him up with a woman who can appraise and sell the stuff. Turns out that he was right and the ‘junk’ is of historical significance. After toying with the idea of selling it all, the woman suggests they open a museum instead. Granted they wouldn’t see as much money, but he would be able to keep his ‘collection’ and still use it for good. He decides to do this, but without her help. Nice.

By this time he has collected the entire generous fee Anniston paid him to rent out the basement. The role of warden suited Charles in many ways; it allowed him to control another human being which considering he could barely control himself, was a new sensation, it allowed him to channel his cruel streak by punishing Anniston for infractions to rules they had in place that were designed to get Charles what he wanted without much harm to himself. But the question and answer sessions taught Charles a lot about himself as well as about his prisoner. In the end, Anniston killed himself and Charles buried the body in the family graveyard.

This money frees him from the need to sell his collection and the further bonus of another house in the Hamptons, gives him the financial freedom to continue his basically idle existence without the consequences that were plaguing him prior to that knock on his door. With his new philosophy and money he can drink, womanize and basically do nothing with impunity.

The narrative style was excellent; full of unusual and very fitting word choices. There was a lot of sex and I don’t know if that’s a Moseley thing or just Charles as a character. show less

Not *quite* a thriller or horror book, but it feels like it belongs in that category.
A fairly ordinary man in this 30s, Charles was recently let go from his job and feels like he has no direction in life, and no one really sees him, he's as good as invisible.
He's approached by a stranger, asking to rent his basement--Charlie immediately dismisses the idea, he doesn't want a housemate. It's only later when he finds he's late on his mortgage payment, and no one in town will hire him, that he starts to reconsider renting out his basement.
But why is this strange fellow asking to rent his dusty old basement?
This story gets more and more strange, and yet it doesn't fully tip into the supernatural that horror tends to, but some of the concepts show more are so bizarre it seems like it could. I felt very unresolved at the end of this book, but the writing is excellent, and thought-provoking. show less

I wanted to read a Walter Mosley book simply because I read about him becoming a writer and author at 34 years old. I am pushing 30, myself, and have the desire to author books of my own. My circumstances are a world away currently, but I eek out short writings here and there when I find the time at work, or before I sleep, etc.
Beyond that, I enjoyed the book (audio). It had an odd flow at times but I like odd flows and likened it to the odd flows of some of Ernest Hemingway's books, though not as extreme as Hemingway.
My overall taking was that a black man was able to profit from his ancestral history going all the way back to Africa. Which is pretty much unheard of, or at least an extreme rarity in the black America. And furthermore, show more at the same time, was able to "punish" a white man who was evil in many ways of the history a eurocentric world. One who had done many of his deeds in the continent of Africa and had been previously punished by Africans (Ugandans)... Bennett felt it was either him or someone else would do his evils, or that he was just a small cog in the big machine, or whatever. But his sins weighed down his soul. And Charles was able to cage and torment the savage man and be rewarded for it even... So this was like a book of symbolic reparations and vengeance.
A black man who wasn't worth a damn, accomplishment-wise, knew and profited from his history beyond his grandparents, and also was able to have an evil white man voluntarily pay for his own (pun intended). show less