Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Walter Mosley Reads Known to Evil

Tonight, I'm very excited to welcome Walter Mosley to Cambridge to read from his new novel known to evil, the second in his Lenaed McGill series. Mr. Mosley is one over readers worldwide with his novels that exemplify the best qualities of mystery writing while at the same time breaching the boundaries of the genre. Time magazine called him a writer whose work transcends category and the Boston Globe has called him a cunning storyteller concerned with the more profound mysteries of American lives. So please join me in welcoming him to the stage. Hello. How are you? I was going around today going to, you know, to what you do, you go to radio stations and talk to people, newspapers and stuff. And you know, every place, I was, Ben, I've lived, you know, I lived in Austin, I lived in Newton Highlands, and I lived in Cambridge even for a while, you know. And then we were talking, some of you I lived there when I lived in Vermont and when I lived in, you know, and I guess I've lived in a lot of places.

It's funny. It's funny, it's funny being here, you know, because Boston has changed a lot since I ran away from it in 1979. So I'm always happy to be in Cambridge, though, always, I mean, you know, which is not exactly Boston, I guess. But you know, it's close, it's close to people across the border all the time, you know. You need a border guard. You know, this is being recorded by WGVH, so I have to be careful, be in trouble in Boston. What do I want to say? You know, actually, I feel, you know, whenever I'm going to be recorded, I always want to say bad things. And I have to control myself. But I wanted to talk a little bit about the transition from writing about Easy Rollins. You know, I mean, I write about all kinds of things.

I always get upset the New York Times, you know, I did this play. I wrote a play based on a book called The Tempest Tales, which is about a guy who dies, refuses the judgment of heaven as sent back to Earth with an angel, and a dialogue ensues, kind of based on or coming out of the simple stories of Langston News. And so the New York Times decided to write an article about it, and so they said, and they started off, you know, crime novelist Walter Mosley. And I'm like, what do I have to do to just be novelist Walter Mosley? I mean, you know, they're trying to save space in newspapers and everything. And I was talking to another reporter from the Times about it the other day, and she said, oh, yeah, I wrote that article, you know, I don't know. But anyway, she said, she asked them to change it, but they wouldn't, they wanted me to be that crime novelist. But anyway, regardless, I do write crime novels, and I don't mind it. I don't mind, you know, people knowing it. I've written the Easy Rollins series, and Easy Rollins series is an homage to my father and my father's generation.

You know, you have all these black men, you know, women too, but specifically me writing about black men and Los Angeles, who have no history because they're not in literature. They're a little bit in history books, but nobody reads history books, and they're not that much in history books, anyway. And these lives deserve discussion, you know, like any life deserves discussion, you know, at least, at least in general, so you could have a general idea of, you know, how people lived and what life was like, et cetera, you know, this mystery and it's a story, but there are other things going on. But you know, the truth is, is that after writing 11 books about Easy, I'd really written everything I could about him, and also I'm now in the 21st century, and even though everything I wrote about Easy was true, it's a little bit anachronistic to publish today. It's not bad if the book is out there, so if I don't read it, that's fine with me. But I kind of wanted to talk about my own life. I mean, the Easy's life is an interesting thing, and Easy's life, he knew what was going

to be behind every door he opened. You know, if there's a door in Beverly Hills, he knows what's going to be behind that door, and he knows how it's going to be treated every once in a while, he's surprised, but it's rare. And it's a surprise. This might treat him differently. You know, if he goes to a restaurant, yeah, everybody's going to stop him. Everybody's going to ask him questions. Everybody's going to ask him why he's here. If he's among black people, everybody's going to have a certain notion of who they are and what they are and where they live and who their enemies are, et cetera. And the reason I wrote those books is because a lot of people outside of the community didn't know those things, and didn't know the people who lived those lives. So I decided to write those stories, you know, to talk about his life. However, Leonid McGill is much more about my life. Every door he opens is different. Every place he goes, something else is happening. Some people like him, some people don't like him. Some people don't like him because he's short and middle class or working class and kind of tough because he has scarred hands. Some people don't like him because he's black.

Some people don't like him because he's a man. Some people don't like him because of his age. People like him for things that you can never tell in the recent book. One woman loves him because he has really big, strong hands. And those hands, she just can't get her eyes off him, you know. That's her own thing going on. And there's a world of all different kinds of possibility. So much more, in many ways, complex world than the world of Easy Rollins, though it's a world I would rather live in. Now, so what I'm going to do is I was trying to read later in a book, and whenever I'm reading mysteries, it's impossible because everything is based on the beginning. And so I was reading chapters, and I said, well, but nobody will understand that unless I read this previous chapter, and I go back, oh, they want to understand that, so I ended up on chapter one again. So what I'm going to do, you know, read short, as I always do, the first couple of chapters. And then, you know, we can talk about things, you know, like is this, indeed, post-racial America, or maybe, like, mediracial? I'm trying to come up with a new term, you know.

Mediracial. Anyway, so I'll read a little bit of this book, see if you like it. Not much of the mystery will be there, but that's okay. Why don't you like the food, Katrina, my wife of 23 years asked, it's delicious, I said, whatever you make is always great. In the corner, there's a wallnut cabinet that used to contain our first stereo record player. Now, it held Katrina's cherished Blue Danube China collection, which she inherited from her favorite aunt, Berrigan. On top of the chest was an old court pickle jar, the makeshift vase for an arrangement of tiny wildflowers, every color from scarlet to cornflower, blue to white. But you're frowning, my beautiful Scandinavian wife said. What are you thinking about? I looked up from the Philemon young, Gargonsola blue cheese salad to gaze at the flowers. My thoughts were not the kind of dinner conversation one had with one's wife and family. I have a boyfriend now, or a woman had told me that morning, I wanted to tell you, I

didn't want you to feel like I'm hiding anything from you. Where'd you get those flowers, Mom, Shelleya? His name is George, or a told me. The sad empathy in the words making its way into her face. I had no reason to be jealous, or and I had been lovers over the eight months Katrina abandoned me for the investment banker, Andre Zool. I loved Orra, but gave her up because when Katrina came back after Andre was indicted for fraud, I felt that she, Katrina, was my sentence for the wrong I had done in the long life of crime. I saw them at the deli and thought that they might brighten up our dinner, Katrina told her daughter. Shelleya had been trying to forgive her mother for leaving me. She was a sophomore at CCNY and another man's daughter, though she didn't know it. Two of my children were fathered out of wedlock, the only the eldest, Sauer and Tasset turned to Metri, who always sat as far away from me as possible, was of my blood. Do you love him?

I hadn't meant to ask or of that. I didn't want to know the answer nor showed the invulnerability. He's very good company, she said, and I get lonely. Well, Katrina asked something about those flowers and the echo of Orra's voice and my mind made me want a curse or maybe slam my fist down on the plate. Hey, everybody, Twill said he was standing in the doorway to the dining room, dark and slender, handsome and flawless, except for a small crescent star scar on his chin. You're late, Katrina scolded my favor. You know it, moms, the 17 year old man replied, I'm lucky to get home at all with everything I got to do. My PO got me working this after school job at the supermarket, says it'll keep me out of trouble. He's not a parole officer, I said. He's a juvenile, a fender social worker. Just seeing Twill brought levity into the room. It's not a heat, Twill said to see, slid into the chair next to me. Ms. Melinda Tara says that she wants me working three afternoons a week. And she's right too, I added.

You need something to occupy your mind to keep you out of trouble. It's not people like me getting trouble, pops, Twill said. I talk so much and know so many people, I can't get away with nothing, somebody don't see it. It's the quiet ones get in the most trouble, ain't that right, Bulldog. Can't you be quiet sometimes, Doward Dimitri said? Twill's pet name for his older brother was an apt one. Like me, Dimitri was short and big-bone, powerful even though he rarely exercised. His skin was not quite as dark brown as mine, but you could see me in every part of him. I wondered why he was so angry at his brother's chiding. Even though Dimitri never liked me much, he loved his sibling. And he had a special bond with Twill who was so outgoing that all he had to do was sit down in a room for five minutes in a party was likely to break out. Leigh in it. Yes, Katrina, are you all right? Even though we drifted apart like the continent had long ago, Katrina could still read my moves.

We had a kind of subterranean connection that allowed my wife to see at least partly into my state of mind. It wasn't just Aura's decision to move on that bothered me, it was my life at that table. Dimitri's uncharacteristic anger at his brother, and even those delicate flowers sitting where I had never seen a bouquet before. There was a feeling at the back of my mind, something that was big burgeoning into consciousness like a vibrating moth pressing out from its cocoon. The phone rang and Katrina started. When I looked into her gray blue eyes, some kind of wordless knowledge seemed to pass between us. I'll get it, Shelley shouted. She hurried from the room into the hall where the cordless unit sat on its ledge. Katrina smiled at me. This made me wonder. She'd been home for nearly a year. In that time, her smile had been tentative, contrite. She wanted me to know that she was there for the long run, that she was sorry for her transgressions and wanted to make our life work together. But that evening, her smile was confident.

And the way she sat was regal, self-assured. Dad, it's for you. Standing up from my chair and moving into the hallway, I felt as if I were displaced. Another man, or maybe the same man in a similar but vastly different world. The working poor lottery winner, who suddenly one day realizes that riches have turned his blood into vinegar. Hello? I said into the receiver. I was expecting an acquaintance, or maybe a credit card company asking about some suspect charge, no one who I did business with had my phone number. The kind of business I was in couldn't be addressed by an innocent. They in it, a man's voice said. This is Sam's strain. Why are you calling me at my home, I asked? Because even though strange was a leg man for Alfonso Ronaldo, one of the secret pillars of New York's political and economic systems, I couldn't allow even him to infringe on my domestic life, such as it was. The big man called and said, it was an emergency, strange said. Sam worked for the seemingly self-appointed special assistant to the city of New York.

I say seemingly because even though Alfonso Ronaldo was definitely attached to the city hall, no one knew his job description or the extent of his power. I had done a few questionable jobs for the man before I decided to go straight. And while I was no longer engaging in criminal activities, I couldn't afford to turn him down without a hearing. What does it you want, I asked? There's a young woman named Tara Lear that he wants you to make contact with. Sam rarely, if ever, spoke Ronaldo's name. He had an internal sensor like those old-time printers who replaced God with G-D in books. Why? He just wants you to speak to her and make sure that everything's all right. He told me to tell you that he would consider this a great favor. Being able to do a favor for a special assistant Ronaldo was like winning six lottery, rolled up into one. My blood might turn into high octane rocket fuel if I wasn't careful. Not for the first time, I wondered if I would ever get out from under my iniquitous path.

Leonid, Sam saying, strange said. One of my supposed to find this young woman, now, tonight, and you don't have to find her, I can tell you exactly where she is. If you know where she is, why don't you just tell him and he can go talk to her himself? This is the way he wants it. Why don't you go, I asked. He wants you, Leonid. I heard Twil say something in the dining room but couldn't make out the words. His mother and shelly laughed. Leonid, Sam, strange said again. Right now, immediately, you know I'm trying to be above board nowadays, Sam. He's just asking you to go speak to this lear woman, to make sure that she's all right. There's nothing illegal about that. And I'm supposed to tell her that Mr. Ronaldo is concerned about her but can't come himself? Do not mention his name or refer to him in any way. The meeting should be casual. She shouldn't have any idea that you're a detective or that you're working for someone looking out for her welfare.

Why not? You know the drill, strange said. You can't enforce his personal sense of hierarchy on me. Orders come down and we do as we're told, no, I said, that's you. You do what you're told, me, I got ground rules. And what are they? First I said, I will not put this tar as physical or mental well being at the jeopardy. Second, I will only report on her state of mind and security. I will not convey information that might make her vulnerable to you or your boss. And finally, I will not be party to making her do anything against her will or win. That's not how it works and you know it, Sam said. Then going down to the next name on the list and don't ever call this number again, there is no other name. If you want me, you got to pay by my rules, I said, I have to report this conversation. Of course you do, he won't like it. I'll make a note of that.

He gave me an address on West 60th and an apartment number. I'll be staying at the Oxford Arms Club on 84th until the situation is resolved. He said, you can call me there anytime, day or night. I hung up. There was no reason to continue the conversation or wish him well for that matter. I never liked the Green Eyed Agent of the City Special Assistant. Alphonse had two conduits to the outside world. Sam was the Aaron Boy, Christian Latour, who sat in the Chamber outside Alphonse's office, because the big man's gatekeeper and Crystal Ball rolled into one. I liked Christian, even though he had no use for me. I stood there in the hall trying to connect the past 15 minutes. The metri's uncharacteristic barking at his brother and their mother's newfound confidence, the crude vase with its lovely flowers and of course, the memory of Aura and her heartfelt concern and almost callous betrayal. I went to the closet in our bedroom looking to find one of my three identical dark blue suits. The first thing I noticed was that the clothes had been rearranged. I didn't know exactly what had been wear before, but things were neater and imposed upon

with some kind of strict order. My suits were nowhere in sight. What are you doing, Katrina asked from the doorway, looking for my blue suit? I sent two of your suits to the cleaners. You haven't had them cleaned in a month. What am I supposed to wear, I said, turning to face her? Sometimes when Katrina smiled, I remembered falling in love with her. It lasted long enough to get married and make the metri. After that, things went sour. We never had sex in, rarely even kissed anymore. You have the ochre one, she said. Where's the one I wore home tonight? It's in the hamper. The lapels were all spotted. Where the ochre one? I hate that suit. Then why did you buy it? You bought it for me. You tried it all and you paid the bill. I yanked the suit out of the closet. Where are you going? Yeah. It's a job. I have to go interview somebody for a client. I thought you didn't take business calls on our home phone.

Yeah, I said, taking off my sweatpants. Leigh in it. What Katrina? We have to talk. I continued on dressing. The last time you said that, I didn't see you for eight months, I said. We have to talk about us. Can it wait till later or will you be gone when I get home? It's nothing like that. She said, I've noticed how distant you've been and I want to connect with you. Yeah. Sure. Let me go take care of this thing and either we'll talk when I get back or tomorrow at the latest. Okay? She smiled and kissed my cheek tenderling. She had to lean over a bit because I'm two inches shorter than she. I put on the dark yellow suit in a white dress shirt. Since I was going off for such an important client, I even sensed a burgundy tie around my neck. The man in the mirror looked to me like a bald black-headed fat grub that it spent the afternoon drying in the sun. I was shorter than most men and if you didn't see me naked, you might have thought I was

portly. But my size was from bone structure and muscles developed over nearly four decades of working out in Gordo's boxing gym. Hey, Dad. To a call as I was going out the front door of our 11th floor pre-war apartment. Yes, son, I sat on the side. Marty Bitterman's back in town, her and her sister. Marty was a year older than 12. She and her sister had been molested by their father and I had to intervene when 12 got into his head to murder the man. I thought they had moved to their mother's family in Ireland. Turns out they weren't related, 12 said. Her father bought Marty from some pervert, her sister too. I don't know the whole story, but they had to come home. Okay. So, what do you want from me? I was impatient, even with 12. Maybe the fact that his relationship to me was the same as Marty to her father cut it me a little. Marty's taking care of her sister and she needs a job. She's 18 and on her own, you know?

So you're always saying how you want to receptions. I figured this would be a good time for you to have one. You know, Marty's real organized. She tear that shit up. 12 was a born criminal, but he had a good heart. I guess we could try it out, I said. Cool. I told her to be at your office in the morning without asking me. Sure pops. I knew you'd say yes. Now that's the end of the first two chapters. After this, Leonid drives, you know, gets some tax and he goes to a house, an apartment building that's been cordoned off by the police. He meets a policeman who doesn't like him, but he gets past him as a younger woman policeman who brings him in. She's kind of enchanted with him. A lot of people are enchanted with him because everybody thinks he's like, you know, the center of all crime in New York. He gets there and the apartment's filled with police and there's a woman, a dead woman on the floor with half her face shot off and there's a black man with a knife in his chest

through his heart. There's no gun, however. And the police, they don't like Leonid and they're from that moment on, he's considered somehow involved in this crime just because he walked through the door. That's the beginning of this book. I think that if you like the last one, you'll like this one. The Leonid lives an interesting life. He lives a life that I think is a 21st century life, you know, a lot of people want to deny it. They're very successful at denying it. I have to watch Fox News, forget that one out. But the truth is, is that the world is changing radically and how we deal with that world is very, very interesting and I believe for me, you know, for the last 40 years, America has been doing the wrong things, often, not always, but often, doing the wrong things. And now, all of a sudden, the past couple of years, we've decided to turn around and try

to start doing the right things, you know. And I think, like, most people are like me, they think, boy, it's almost impossible. After messing up for 40 years, after fucking up for 40 years, how do you do the right thing, you know? It's like, yeah, well, I've been killing people for the last 40 years. Now I want to go straight, there is no going straight after you've been killing people for 40 years. Lynne, it has this discussion with Hush, you know, he says, you know, maybe we should, you know, have some justice, you know, turn ourselves in, he said, man, there's no justice for people like us. We just have to do as much right as we can. And so anyway, that's my book. Any notions, thoughts, ideas, minor criticisms? Well, you know, when I found Marty in the first book, I knew she was going to end up being Lee and its receptionist, and a long time ago, I figured out that the only way, because I gave him a chance to say, what do you do? Because he had Twill, is really, like, I'm writing the third book now, and Twill has dropped out of high school because he's convinced, you know, Miss Tarris that she should

drop his probation. And he has an online bank account in Panama, because Gordo had given him a check for $250, and for, you know, for a few months, it's dated $250. Leonid logs in, and all of a sudden, it's $86,298.42. The 17 year old kid, all of a sudden, has this, all this money. The only way, I said, I keep on trying to figure out, how do you save Twill? How do you save him? The only way that Leonid can do it is to hire him as his partner. So I figured that out. One day, he's going to be a detective, now, of course, you know, even as a detective, he said, well, that, I think we should just kill this motherfucker here, you know. You know, I mean, there's no reason to turn him into the law, you know, because he get away with that shit, and, you know, we got to do what's right, pops. And of course, he's always right, you know, he's always right. One of the things is, you know, I'm doing a television series with this, based on the

long fall, with Jonathan Demi for HBO. You know, one of the things that Jonathan, he says, you know, it's very funny, he says, every time we read about Twill, he reminds me of my son, you know, Brooklyn, I go, really? You know, but, you know, I think it reminds him of who he wants his son to be, you know, at least it'd be a good thing, you know, his son is willing to, you know, kill the man who's raping his friend, you know. I guess it would be. But yes, I have notions and glimmerings, but I don't know everything. Well, you know, the last time I was here, I weighed a hundred pounds more than I do now. I decided, I figured, you know, one of the things I thought, you know, it's just like, Leonid has a lot of problems, and Leonid's great because he knows he's not going to live long. So he doesn't care about Eden, you know, you know, pigs feet. It's okay with him because he said, that's not going to kill me, I'm sure of that. Is it one thing I know, this pigs foot is not going to kill me. You know, the only reason he doesn't smoke is because he knows he needs to run and he

can't smoke. It's not because he's afraid he's going to get cancer. Yeah, but I was thinking about all the problems that I have. You know, as you get older, you have problems. You know, people sue you. People, you worry about your career. The economy goes down, terrorists, you know, get tried in your city, you know, things like that. You know, you think, well, you know, I could die, you know. But none of those things, most of those things, either I'm taking care of them already or there's nothing to do, but weighing a hundred pounds more, well, that was honestly going to kill me. One of my friends, Elin Harris, you know, he goes, he dies, you know, and it's like, you know, and, you know, maybe it wasn't because of that, but, you know, he was, you know, about the size I was and he did seem to have issues, haven't do with diabetes and heart and that kind of stuff. And so I decided I would only eat chicken fish and vegetables. And I lost a hundred pounds. It was wild. I said, God, it was so easy. I said, I thought it was going to be so hard, you know, because I can't do the, you know, when people start telling me do things, I can't do them. So I just said, I'm just going to eat chicken fish and vegetables. That's it.

And I lost a hundred pounds. Yeah. I don't do that. I have a friend, Paul Coates, who's, you know, published, he runs Black Classic Press and he's published a couple of my books. When I finish a book, I almost always, maybe I always give it to Paul to tell me what you're thinking. Either he likes it or he doesn't like it, but, you know, it's not what you're saying. You know, you know, I just, you know, it's interesting, you know, you know, because, you know, art is such an unconscious thing. And what you're trying to do and what you're doing and where you're going is such an unconscious thing. And so, you know, so often, people's criticism either have to do, you know, with style, you know, someone was arguing with me about Stephen King the other day and they said, well, you know, he's, you know, kind of unreadable. I said, you know, because of my sentence by sentence, the lines aren't good or something like that. I don't know what you said. And I was going to say, yeah, you know, but, you know, the thing about novels, I mean, you know, Sister Carey is really terribly written. It's a great novel, but it's terribly written.

But you know, it's, it's, it's those ideas. It's where you're going in your heart. And you know, if somebody knows your heart, not too many people know my heart and as far as this stuff is concerned, including myself. So no, I don't, I don't, I don't, and I, I'm not, I'm not concerned very often. So I wrote a book out there. A guy just, a guy told me he says, this is not a book. And, you know, and, you know, and I had to say, yeah, for you, it's not a book, you know, for you. You know, I was like, I was in Brooklyn. It's something. Yeah. But for me, it's a book, you know. And, you know, and so, yeah, so that's the answer to that question. A little bit, like a little bit, like I, like I'll, you know, get, you know, reviews, I mean, like, you know, because really, you know, like I don't speak Spanish, and I'm certainly not literate in Spanish, and so, like, you know, and very few people would say, well, I just translated this Spanish review for you to read, you know, so, like, so, like, yeah, some people tell me, you know, like, you know, I get, you know, because I'm publishing like 23 countries or something, and, and I, I, people seem to like it, you know, enough

to publish it, but, but, you know, I don't, I don't know really, I'm not, I'm not aware, but, you know, I'm not completely aware of what they think of my books in America. I mean, I know it, people, you know, like, like, for instance, I wrote the wave as a science fiction book, and I got a review, even the characters are not even strong cardboard wrote the reviewer, you know, and they called, you know, killing Johnny Fry, my, you know, erotic a book pornography. I'm like pornography, man, pornography is when you guys still live and you're eating his brain with a spoon, that's pornography. Having sex, that's erotic, you know, I mean, you know, how did I start it? Well, you know, I didn't start writing until I was 34. I was a computer programmer for many years, and I was a computer programmer then, and I was sitting there on a Saturday, and I got tired of typing code, so I typed onto the computer on hot sticky days, and Southern Louisiana, the fire ants swarmed, and I really liked that sense.

I said, hey, that's a really good sense. I could be a novice. You see, I'm from California. Yeah, I'm from California, and Californians have no sense of, you know, limitations, you know, the fact that I was 34 in a downtrodden programmer, you know, on 42nd Street in New York did not deter me from thinking that I could, well, not, I could be an op-list, you know, and so I just kept writing, and, you know, and that's that. All right, here, I know, I have an answer for that question, you know, a lot of questions I don't have answers for, you know, so I answer other questions, you might notice that too, but this one, I have an answer for that question, you know, like people try to like denigrate Freud, which is like amazing to me, you know, like, because, you know, as people like, you know, who do neuroscience more and more prove the things that Freud was saying, psychoanalysis doesn't work for most people, this is true, so like that, you can denigrate psychoanalysis all you want, it's fine, but like, you know, the notion of the unconscious, the notion of the instincts, the notion, I mean, all that stuff, yeah, yeah, it's true,

you know, but what, but let's go to psychoanalysis as a model, you know, it works like for like 3% of the people, so we're talking about that 3%, psychoanalysis, you go every day, you lie down on a couch, and you free associate, and sometimes it's fine, you go, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, and you're free associating, the free associating goes deeper and deeper into your unconscious, and, and you start to work things out, and every once in a while the person may be say something to help crystallize something for you, you go on, you know, do it for years, you do, but every, you know, five days a week, now, let's say you're going to go on vacation, you're going to Puerto Rico next week, so you go to your therapist, you say, well, listen, this Friday, can we do six hours? Because, you know, next week I'm going to be gone for a week, so I'd like to get those, those next five hours in, you know, but the therapist say, are you crazy, you do it every day, now that's the thing, you do it every day, you write, I write every day, I do it three hours a day, but you could do it one, if you write every day, you just sit there and you just start writing on your store, and then, when you're, you know, you get to the end of it, then for the

next 23 hours or 22 hours or 21 hours, the stuff is going on and you're unconscious, when you come back to it the next morning, you're deeper into the story, you will find that you're saying things that you weren't thinking about yesterday, that you weren't thinking about during the day, and the next day you'll be a little deeper and a little deeper and a little deeper, if you stop for a day, you start to move away. If you stop for three days, you're completely gone from it. You stay with it, that's how you, it's a very simple thing, you can do it, work in a job, you can do it and have any children, you can do it in prison, you can do it anywhere, you know, it's like, it's because, and it's a practice, it's a practice like anything else, like meditation, like anything else, you learn it. If you look at an artist, an artist is sitting there, and they're drawing, they're learning physically the form, doing it again, Archie Moore, when he fought Yvonne Derrell, Yvonne Derrell knocked him down twice, and he knocked him down hard, if I would, I would have bet my life that Archie Moore would have knocked out. When he was asked, many, he won the fight, many years later, when he was asked, how did

you win? He said, I used my left hand, which was very educated at the time, and then you watch the fight, it's true, he's like going like this, but his left hand is hitting this guy, you know, because he's been practicing it, his whole life, it's, it's natural, it comes naturally to him. It's the same thing with writing, same thing with anything else. I do love boxing. I don't think it's a sport, you know, none is for when you're trying to not batter somebody into unconsciousness. You can't say, my sport is to batter somebody into unconscious, we've got a lot of people in jail for people like you, man, but boxing is a really like, it's a really, really challenging form. More challenging than lyin, it can deal with actually, I mean lyin, it has never been a real boxing, you know, he studied it, but he could never, he could never stay on the bicycle as it were, you know, he could never do it every day, he had other things that he really did have to worry about, like, you know, making a living, that kind of stuff. But yeah, I'm very interested in the, in the challenge of boxing, about two months ago

in Cincinnati, one of the very good regional theaters, Playhouse in the Park, did this play, there was really great, I was like so excited. They had Marion McClinton, who was a director, and he, you know, he directed August Wilson, and they had the guy who designed the set for the Drosy Shapiro, and he won a Tony for that. They had the guy who designed the lights for lyin king, man, it was wild, you know, and it was great, and we did, it was like, for a month with this giant theater, 600 seats, they actually, I think broke even in the end after spending all that money out of shock. But I like plays, you know, plays are a lot of fun, and you know, you're sitting next to my publisher, my publishers telling me that I write too many books, and that I should write fewer books. And so like, so like, everyone's allowed to write a play, so I figured this is not exactly a book, it's a play, and I had to spend some time working at it, huh? It's not, not published yet, it's going to, the next time we're going to do, we're going to do it in St. Louis, which we're trying to get into, in the London, that would be fun to do, they like Marion over there.

And so, you know, maybe we'll do that, you know, oh, ten things, yeah, you know, Katrina Ben, who's like, really, she ties with the smartest person I've ever known, and one other person who I think is as smartest Katrina, well, you know, I met Katrina at a, at a, a fun, a nation fundraising dinner, and I was complaining to her because there were all these white people there, you know, it's a very, you know, common thing where there's only white people, you know, and I'm saying, I was complaining, I said this, I'm unhappy that there's only white people, because it's the nation, it's progressive, it was started by abolitionist, how come there's only white people here, you know, and she said, well, you know, whatever she said, you know, she invited me to come in and try to help, so I started getting involved, I'm on the editorial board there. And so, one of the problems that I have is I think that it's not, the nation is, you know, it's available to a certain intellectual class of people, but intellectual just means education doesn't mean intelligence necessarily, so what I wanted to do is to start doing some more pedestrian things, which would be helpful, so like when we did the 10 things, my, my,

my comm is called 10 things, we did 10, 10 ways to survive on the streets of New York, right? Now this is very good, because if you're a homeless in streets of New York, it was helpful. But also, if you, if you, if you weren't, you might say, is this what people have to deal with on the streets of New York, you know, so there was different ways to do it, next one we're going to do is like, you know, 10, 10 ways, 10 things that will kill you that you don't know about, you know, I mean, you know, it's like, you know, one of the things like almost every nation in the world has done studies on cell phones and brain cancer, and America is the only one who finds that it doesn't give it to you, you know, I mean, there's like a kind of, you know, it's like a lot of other things, you know, so, oh, no, this is okay for you, oh, yeah, alcohol is good for you, you know, you know, it's like, you know, and so, you know, and to do things like that, and, you know, and we try to get it, you know, syndicated with doing another newspapers and that kind of stuff, and that way, it feels like we're inviting in a different group of people, you know, it's

me and my, my young assistant who actually really does all the work, I mean, that's really true from Trinidad, it does a lot of work, and at the same time, you know, we're trying to open doors for people of color and like that, yeah, I was asking, you know, you know, but you know, this book is me talking about it, you know, it's, it's, you know, when you talk about a black man, you know, with his Scandinavian wife who's had these children who are also of color from other people, you know, when you start to talk and to look at this world, you know, okay, Obama's president, but you know, you know, or you start to say, well, who is a black man? And I don't know if you've seen my book the right mistake, but the right mistake is, is the third of the Socrates' foretellow story. And one of the things that, that Socrates does is he, he actually becomes a philosopher, he gets a house, he starts bringing people in, they're sitting around a table on Thursday nights and they said, let's discuss the problems of the world. So we can't do anything, say, no, we can't, but we could at least

talk about it. And so one night, somebody talks about black people, and there are all kinds of people in the room. And Socrates says, tomorrow night, I want every black person in this room to come back and we're going to talk about something. All the black people come back the next night. And he says to me, he says, well, what's a black person? And you know, every, every single person in the room had a different answer. The really dark skinned people say, I'm the black person, everybody hates me, the really light skinned people, they say something else. One guy says, well, I'm a black man, I say, no, man, you're a faggot, you know? Faggot can't be no black man, you know, and it, they go, it goes on and on and on, you know, it's like, like the notion of, you know, I mean, if you ask a pig me what a pig me is, pig me knows, if you ask why to see whether or why to see or I'm a side with a massage, there are people who know what they are. You go to Japan and say, what's Japanese? They can tell you. And they can say, it ain't no Chinese, it ain't no Korean. I know what a Japanese, I can smell one. They'll say it to themselves. I know whether they can or can, I don't know, but they'll say it. And so I think the notion in America is that we've actually gone beyond race, but we don't know it. You

know, we've gone beyond race, but we don't know it. We live in this meta-racial society. And we're kind of learning it. We're kind of, I mean, really, one of the great educators has been hip-hop, you know? One of the great educators has been hip-hop because, you know, it just crossed all the lines and crossed all the national borders and went everywhere, you know, and couldn't be stopped. And I think that it's, you know, I'm not happier, unhappy about it. I'm just like, it's something that we have to know and we have to deal with and we have to understand. And there's a great deal of resistance toward it, which is why people want to call post-racial, like there's no race, you know, which is, you know, crazy. They say it's post-racial, but it's a, it's, I think, more accurate to say meta-racial. That we've gone beyond it, we've gone beyond it, but it's still with us, you know what I mean? We're carrying it along with us. It's, here we are up above it, but it's still the base

that we're suspended from. I was walking out of street one day in New York and West Village and there was a young white gay fellow handing out tickets for a gay rave. That's why it's so me it was gay. And he said, come to the rave man, come to the rave, come to the, you know, and, you know, little things said, you know, faggot to this and that and the other, you know, they were giving it out and he was all happy. And a young black man took one of the things he was looking at and was, you know, looking at very closely and studying it. And, and finally say, hey, hey, man, man. And the white guy said, yeah, he said, tell me something. He said, what? Any bitches up in here? And the white guy smiled and said, no, man, just that's nigga. And the black guy smiled and he said, well, all right. What am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to say? Am I supposed to like, you know, like ask Jesse Jackson to come in and tell me something or Oprah or whatever, you know, it's like, you know, listen, we live in a world, you know, like language is there.

We use the language, you know, the context of the language is what matters. What you're trying to say is what matter. If I know what a guy is going to say and I change the language, then I make the experience in valid. I can't do that, you know, but even for them, who they are and what they are, it's each defined by each individual person. So, you know, so when Miles says something is one thing and when Joppy says something, it's something else. And, you know, and if Hutch says that you just listen because you scared us, you know, many years ago I was, I did this movie, Devil on Blue Dress. And well, thank you. And so they hired all the actors, they hired Jennifer Beals, Jennifer Beals who, you know, is gorgeous. She's still gorgeous. She was gorgeous. Then she gorgeous today. We're still friends. She called me and she said, Walter, I would like to take you out to dinner. I'm like, damn, Jennifer, how can I get something out of this, you know, this is before we're

friends. And so she takes me out to dinner and we're sitting there and she says, now she very serious, you know, she went to Yale, she's very smart. And she goes, now Walter, you know, I'm about to embark on this role and I find it very interesting, you know. And I want you to tell me the research you did in order to create this character so that I can follow in your footsteps and do the same research in order to create her on the screen. And I did no research whatsoever. Not a lick. And I was just sitting there looking at her thinking, should I lie? And, you know, I would align if I could have figured a lie that, you know, she wouldn't have figured out, you know, because I couldn't even think of a book or, you know, a person or anything. You know, I'm a fiction writer. What can I tell you? I write things, you know, and I don't do research. I'm sorry. And I feel bad, you know. It's like, you know, I feel bad about that. You know, the same thing is

that question when they ask you, you know, who your favorite writers are. You know, you guys go to, like, all these things with writers, right? But please ask them what writers influence them. And I promise you, every single one of them will lie to you. Every single one of them. Yes, Tim O'Brien. He's going to lie to you. You know, the reason is, is that, is that, you know, you imagine young black woman, you ask her who influenced her. Well, you know, we're in a business here. And there's a business of, you know, different kinds of business, you know, making money, you know, but also, you know, becoming more important, you know, working in the university, whatever. So, you know, you're going to say, well, you know, Zora Neal Hurston and Phyllis Wheatley to get some dead ones in there. And you have to say Tony Morrison and Alice Walker to get some that, you know, are very famous and sold a lot of books. Then you get somebody, you know, younger, you know, at Weege down to God in the 80s Smith and, you know, throw a guy in there, call some whitehead just to, you know, prove that you're liberal. But the truth is, it was Nancy Drew, right? Right? The truth is that when you were eight years old, because an eight year old girl, if she

read the love, if she would either kill herself or her mother, right? She said, mom, I read about you in this book and you ain't going to get me. Oh, I know you said, but no. You know, and when you're a child, your heart is wide open. It's wide open. You read things and bring them in and you believe them. They are real in your heart and your dreams and your mind. You just, it's amazing. And when you're an adult, you're not like that, you know? And, you know, and the books that influence you when you're a kid, you know, it's winning the pool. It's Superman. You know, it's Batman. You know, it's not like, you know, something, you know, important and good and smart. You know, it's like, you know, and it's, you know, and it's hard to be honest and to be a writer because, you know, people have expectations of writers, which are actually their expectations of themselves. You know, and, you know, I mean, I can't help it. I'm not, I'm not criticism. It's just that I have to be really cautious not to get pulled into it, you know, because it's easy to start to say that I did this and I did that and I didn't, you know, I write, I write pretty good. I can make, I can make

you believe almost anything. And that's like a talent, you know, but, but truth isn't, truth isn't the thing, you know, like, you know, it's like people getting mad at precious, you know, they say, well, yeah, isn't that terrible? The only way they can, they can show black life is just terrible black life is, I mean, this is great film. What are you talking about? You know, this is great acting, great film, great directing. You know, and it's like, yes, there's some bad people. I asked me last night, it says, don't you ever write about positive characters? I said, well, I think all my characters are positive, you know, they just a little flawed. That's all, you know, I write by hand a lot, you know, I mean, certainly when you do rewriting, when you're changing things, sometimes, you know, you know, and I'm making notes and stuff like that. But, you know, the truth is, if you went to a publisher with a handwritten novel, they give it back to you, you know, maybe if you're a Tom Clancy, they take it, you know, well, I know, but, you know, when you hand write and then you have to type it into the computer, that's like, that's like double work to me.

And, you know, type writing is even worse because you make one mistake, you gotta retype the whole page, it's really, it's like, you know, hand writing is better than type writing. But, you know, typing on the computer is something I do, you know, I do a lot of stuff though, I do a lot of writing in my hand, you know, I may write out a paragraph or a thought or a notion or idea, make lists of things, outline things. Also, always when I'm writing somewhere about the eighth or ninth draft of the novel, I read it out loud into a tape record. And I listen to it because very often, you know, you've gone over the novel so many times that you think you know what you're reading, but what you're reading is not really there. So, you know, yeah, so, you know, a lot of different ways. But, no, it doesn't, you know, all the old guys, like Victor Hugo and like these people, they were like 80 novels. Azola wrote 118 novels. Ballsack wrote 183 novels. You know, I mean, by hand, dipping ink, you know, they didn't with a hand, ball pins, you know, like they were dipping. Well, and then Christa must, you know, it's like, they wrote, and they wrote like four or five novels a year, big six things.

And they were, they were set by hand. Like people were like, okay, A, B, you know, so, no, it's, it's not that, you know, I would write more, but you know, I published from 11. And thank you all very much for coming. Thank the battle theater for having me here.