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

You know I you know I feel you know whenever I'm going to being recorded I always want to say bad things. And I have to I have to control myself. But I want to talk a little bit about the transition from writing about Easy Rawlins you know I mean I write about all kinds of things like it all. I always get upset there are 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 is sent back to earth with an angel and and a dialogue ensued. So kind of based on her coming out of the simple stories of Langston Hughes and you know and so the New York Times decide to write an article about it and so they said and they start off you know crime novelist Walter Mosley and I'm like what do I have to do to just be a 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 then she said Oh yeah I wrote that article. You know I. MEAN WHEN SHE SAID SHE ASKED THEM she asked them to change it but they they

wouldn't. They wanted me to be that crime novel. 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 Rawlins series an easy Raan series is an homage to my father my father's generation you know you have all these black men you know women too but but specifically me writing about black men and Los Angeles who had no have no history because they're not in literature. They're a little bit in history books but nobody reads history books they're not that much in the history books anyway. And the date and these lives like this deserve discussion. You know 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 what life was like etc. you know this mystery and it's a story but but there are other things going on. But you know the truth is that after writing 11 books about Easy had 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 to.