There are things I should be doing. Many of them important (like writing this column, which pays for my cat's food). But none are as interesting as reading Walter Mosley's story of Fearless Jones and his buddy Paris Minton, two proud black men, as they traverse LA in the '50s trying to unravel the mystery and danger thrown into their lives by the elusive beauty, Elana Love. Mosley's book has taken over my life like I'm a kid on a Harry Potter binge. It started at the Riviera, where I was supposed to be covering the Bouchercon book convention; but instead of talking to people, I sat reading Fearless Jones. The book was my first mystery, and I only picked it up because I'd arranged to interview the author after he appeared on a panel. When I made it to the panel, I opened the book for a quick peek and quickly forgot about the voices onstage. The only time I perked up was when an audience member asked Mosley about the next Fearless Jones novel.
It was Professor Baker who first warned me about mysteries. Baker was the most neurotic teacher I ever had as an undergraduate. A major hypochondriac, Baker would become unhinged if a student even sneezed in the front rows of his class. In pure panic, his eyes would dart around, seeking the sneezer, and he would quickly move to the other side of the room. His lecture, of course, would come to a complete stop as Baker began a Socratic investigation of the student, regarding other symptoms, the causes of the illness, etc. Inevitably, Baker would then cancel the next class, having contracted the bug.
Baker's specialty was finding problems with the endings of novels. Baker believed all novels, in creating closure, reached for a false unity—a unity noticeably unavailable in life—that therefore worked to undermine and contradict crucial elements of the plot. (Baker did make an exception for the Great Gatsby: "There is no other possible ending for Gatsby.") Once, some students challenged him about mysteries by arguing that a crime takes place at the beginning and is solved by the end. I'll never forget Baker's dismissive response: "Genre books set out to do nothing and accomplish it."
I wish Walter Mosley had been in that class. "The notion of genre is a very modern thing and a loss, I think, for a great part of the literary community. I've heard people like Harold Bloom say Stephen King writes 'penny dreadfuls.' If you look at Shakespeare, what is Shakespeare? Isn't it witches and ghosts and goblins? Stephen King has predecessors. Mark Twain is a predecessor. Charles Dickens, Homer and Shakespeare. The university accepted them but they didn't belong to the university in the beginning. I'm not trying to put down literary fiction, I like it and I write it. But I do get unhappy when people say, 'This is not good because of the genre.'"
Mosley, in fact, has made something of a crusade against genre distinctions. In addition to the mysteries, his 17 books include examples of political commentary, science fiction, literary fiction and essays. Asked to edit the prestigious Best American Short Story series earlier this year, Mosley made sure to select from as broad a range as possible. "There's science fiction and a couple of hard-boiled. There are also a couple stories from The New Yorker. It is important to have it all there."
Next month Mosley will present Stephen King with a lifetime achievement award at the hoity-toity National Book Awards banquet. The decision to honor King predictably has some critics grumbling. King has never won a National Book Award. None of King's books have even been finalists for the prize. Mosley brushes off the controversy as beneath comment.
In the end, Mosley argues that the main distinction for writers is the larger audience a genre like mystery can draw (Bouchercon's attendance this year was 1,700). "If you were writing a book about a Chicano political activist in the grape-growing community of California, the people who will buy and read that book are people who are interested in it. People who know about it and are politically aware about that. But if you were to write almost the same book about a Chicano detective among the grape growers, you would open it up to all kinds of different people, from all kinds of different backgrounds, who will buy that book, read that book, think about it very deeply and respond to it in some way. Genre attracts many different kinds of people no matter what world you are talking about. It is wonderful for a writer."
And, the rewards for a writer of this greater readership are not abstract. A signed first edition of the 1990 mystery that debuted Mosley's detective Easy Rawlins quickly sold for $150 at Bouchercon's book sale. When Mosley sat down to sign books, there was a long line waiting. So Mosley lives in a different world than the one of grant-groveling and academic welfare that replaces book royalties for the sneering literary elite. Mosley happily staked his publicist $100 for gambling, and when he left the convention it was to repose in his suite at the Bellagio. Ah, the writing life.
So, next time I pick up a hefty tome that is good for me, like spinach, a War and Peace, I'm going to think twice about reading all those pages only to have everything crumble at the close as Professor Baker predicted quality work should. For now, I am going to explore the world of mysteries and dwell in the pleasures of perfect endings—of course, knowing that things will never be so perfect that Fearless Jones won't be afflicted again. Or, at least, I hope not. And I admit, though I loved Ulysses, I never once yearned for or lamented the fact that Joyce didn't bring Stephen Dedalus back for another sequel.