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Digressions: A Report on Walter Mosley; Originally, I had planned on continuing and concluding the article begun in August on Raymond Chandler. But I've set Chandler aside for now because I have been distracted. Twice. First I was drawn into a discussion on usenet about Robert Aickman's short story, "The Hospice". The enthusiasm and thoughtful commentary of the posters there led me to read the story and I have been unable to get it out of my mind since. Shortly after, a second diversion visited Syracuse in the form
of Walter Mosley, author of several novels, including a series of mysteries featuring Easy Rawlins. I have only
read two of Mosley's novels, both with Rawlins: Walter Mosley Does Not Discuss, The Importance of Black Literature on American Culture On October 4, Walter Mosley opened this year's Rosamund Gifford Lecture series which is sponsored by the Onondaga County Public Library, and proceeds from which support the library. Mr. Mosley proved as entertaining a speaker as he is a writer. Mr. Mosley loosened up his audience with an anecdote about his first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress. About twenty years ago Mr. Mosley visited a friend in Syracuse. While here he took a liking to the name of a nearby town, Dewitt, and used that as the first name of one of his characters, DeWitt Albright. Very little could have better enlisted his audience's good will. Mr. Mosley soon stated emphatically that he would not speak on the ostensible topic of his lecture, The Importance of Black Literature on American Culture. He said he had sat at his keyboard one day several months earlier, planning on putting his thoughts on paper, but nothing came. Another day he again sat before his keyboard, again planning to write about The Importance of Black Literature on American Culture, and again nothing came. He tried several times, he said, and thought of nothing to say about The Importance of Black Literature on American Culture. Instead, he thought of six things that might bring people together regardless of race, and regardless of the chains we wear from labor or from other forms of repression: 1) We should all give up electronic media and organized sports for three months, though he admitted this would be hard for him to do. Usually we finish our work and come home and turn the tv on, and we do little else the rest of the evening. Instead, Mr. Mosley suggested reading a book, talking to one another, trying to get back in touch with yourself and your family; 2) Study history -- real history. Mr. Mosley distrusts the tendency to separate Black history from American history; for Mr. Mosley Black history is America's history, a history of resistance against the chains forged by labor. Mr. Mosley emphasized this later when he said that popular Western history was like bad fiction in which White men saved other cultures from the illogic inherent in their culture and never waged war on people, but only on concepts. 3) "Tell the truth once a day." We tell lies all day long from politeness or from convenience, so it would be good to tell, just once a day, the truth of what we feel. What might we accomplish simply by letting others know the truth we perceive? 4) Treat other people like you would treat the person in the mirror. 5) Consider in your planning that most people are six weeks from homelessness with no social net in case they fail. We work for corporations and make their profit, but we do not share in it. 6) Create your own platform for Presidency. If asked what qualities
we want in a President, we usually say intelligence, compassion, morality, and the ability to make hard decisions.
We know in reality that there are other qualities that determine who becomes President, qualities like being male,
rich, Christian, good-looking and White. That should not deter us from creating our own platform, though, or from
voting for the person who meets it. After enumerating these suggestions, Mr. Mosley spoke more about his inability to write about The Importance of Black Literature on American Culture. He was certain his inability did not stem from writer's block because over that time period he wrote a novel, a screenplay and some short stories. He began to wonder what reason he had for writing the piece and that led to thoughts on race. We are all bi-racial, Mr. Mosley stated, culturally if not personally. Though he cited Black contributions to our culture, like jazz and rock-and-roll, he did not neglect to mention Latino and Asian contributions. We identify, he said, with a culture and it is an act of will, conscious or unconscious, unless the identification is forced on us. Mr. Mosley had been a computer programmer until he decided to write, but once he made that decision he stopped working other jobs and did nothing but write. He was happy with his first novel, Gone Fishin', and sent it out to publishers. They, too, thought well of it but all of them told him it was not commercial enough. The prevailing wisdom at the time was, apparently, that, "Whites don't read about young Black men, Black women hate Black men, and Black men don't read." At this point, he decided to write something more commercial, a mystery, and to transfer into it his two main characters from Gone Fishin', Easy Rawlins and Mouse Alexander. This resulted in Devil in a Blue Dress. These reflections brought Mr. Mosley to consider lying, because fiction is composed of lies: people who never were do things no one would do and say things no one would say. There are other lies, Mr. Mosley said, from ads to the Internet, from Sunday sermons to the news to the statements of politicians. The only difference between these lies is that, "Fiction does not diminish the reader." And fiction, for Mr. Mosley, is the mediator of history, a medium for interpreting the events of the past (a belief put in practice in both Devil¼and A Red Death). The literature of the dominant culture -- and here Mr. Mosley was referring to the majority of literature produced over the last few centuries -- increases us but also segregates us, marginalizing and colonizing the lives of the minorities whose day-to-day existence is seldom considered important enough for study by the dominent culture. For a long time, whites were the writers, scholars and biographers of people of color and their culture. Only late in the 20th Century did people of color in Western society begin to tell their own stories fully. We are governed by the truth, Mr. Mosley concluded, whether we wish to be or not: the truth in our genes, the truth in the taste of food, the truth in our music. The lies of history tell us why people succeed or fail, and these lies make up everyday life in America. Literature undermines these lies; writing dominates our means of communication, and is the basis for our continuing civilization, as well as a tool for understanding our history, all of our history, not just the select portions popular history distorts. At this point, Mr. Mosley mentioned a story he had thought about, but has not yet written. In it a secret government agency creates a virus that only kills Blacks. On release, the virus mutates and does not affect Blacks, instead annihilating all Whites. Many survivors are amazed, and even ashamed, to learn their true heritage. Mr. Mosley ended his lecture with a short story. The story features Tempest Landry, and springs from Mr. Mosley's
admiration of Langston Hughes' Simple stories. The first Landry story, the one Mr. Mosley read at the lecture,
is scheduled to appear in the debut issue of Savoy magazine in February 2001. He has written twelve more that will
appear in later issues of Savoy. The Enigmatic "The Hospice"
"He was one who, when motoring outside his own
territory, preferred to follow a route 'given' by one of the automobile organizations, and, on this very occasion,
as on other previous ones, he had found reasons to deplore all deviation. This time it had been the works manager's
fault. The man had not only poured ridicule on the official route, but had stood at the yard gate in order to make
quite certain that Maybury set off by the short cut which, according to him, all the fellows in the firm used,
and which departed in the exactly opposite direction." Robert Aickman, author of "The Hospice," is a favorite
of the denizens of alt.books.ghost_fiction, indeed a favorite of most ghost story aficionados. Aickman did not
care for his pieces to be called, "ghost stories," however; he called them "strange stories,"
presumably because that designation allowed a broader range of effect and subject. "The Hospice" is not
a ghost story, but it is certainly strange. * * * * * Maybury's timidity keeps him following the route his manager insisted upon. Late in the day, the sun setting and his fuel dwindling, he looks for familiar landmarks, but finds none. A sign promises a hospice, but he is uncertain: his wife will worry if he doesn't reach home on time. He stops his car and gets out to look around, but the area remains unfamiliar and his uneasiness is exacerbated when a cat leaps from under nearby foliage and claws and bites his leg. Bleeding and fearful of infection, Maybury enters the driveway to the hospice. After knocking he is greeted and immediately treated as a guest by the manager, Mr. Falkner. Since it is dinner time, he is shown to the diningroom. There Maybury finds the hospice's residents seated at a long table, eating heaping portions of food. An attractive woman sits at a smaller table apart from them, and he is taken to a table diagonally across the long table from her's. He notes that one man's ankle is chained to a bar under the table. The portions prove large, and the temperature in the hospice too intense. Once full, he is uncomfortable and declines more food. His waitress begins to scold him for not eating more – no one else declines food – when Mr. Falkner intervenes. As the residents continue eating Maybury is ushered to a den. Shortly after Maybury seats himself on a couch, the attractive woman who had dined alone enters. She introduces herself as Cécile and sits beside him. Though smitten by her beauty and grace, his sense of decorum leads him to try to conceal his attraction to her. Cécile is distraught, tormented by thoughts of the poor and needy, though her speech indicates the poor and needy are rather abstract to her. There is the taint of snobbery in her protestations, of role-playing Garbo-esquely in her actions, of feigned compassion masking self-absorption. As Cécile talks, she inches closer to Maybury and takes his hand. To ward off her distress, she wants him to touch her, and lifts his hand to her breast. She then stretches out on the couch, laying her head in his lap. Maybury is recued from following his instincts by the arrival of other diners and she quietly invites him to her room later. From the circumspect comments of Mr. Falkner and the enigmatic statements of Cécile, the reader concludes that the residents of the hospice never leave, depending on Mr. Falkner and the staff to see to their needs. They have all the food they want, a warm shelter and little contact with the world outside. Cécile's statements in particular show a hunger for sensation which, for her, translates into the sexual. Shortly after his encounter with Cécile, Maybury attempts to leave the hospice. Mr. Falkner, though dubious about his departure, suggests that he siphon gas from the hospice's car. Maybury has never siphoned gas, and Mr. Falkner says the servant who cares for their car could do it for him. When asked to start his car, Maybury cannot. This leads to a curious meeting with the mechanic who says nothing, whose glowering surliness intimidates Maybury, and who starts the car with no trouble. Aickman seems to be indicating that people like Maybury and the residents are helpless without someone doing the practical things in life, and also emphasizing the strained relations between the supposedly sophisticated people like Maybury and the residents, and the unsophisticated, but skilled servants. Mr. Falkner remembers that their car runs on diesel fuel and so Maybury is stranded at the hospice. He is put up for the night with one of the regular residents, Mr. Brannard. Mr. Brannard is a small, spry, red-headed man overflowing with nervous energy. Maybury distrusts and dislikes him, resists his attempts to initiate conversation, and insists on going to bed. Maybury lies in the dark, certain that Brannard is sneaking up on his bed, preparing to murder him. Thus he is awake when Brannard slips out the door. Maybury is frightened to find the door locked. Remembering his wound, Maybury cleans it then sits wondering what to do. As he thinks about his wife and son, he hears, "a shattering, ear-piercing scream, and then another and another ?. the screaming went on and on, a paroxysm, until Maybury had to clutch at himself not to scream in response." When Brannard returns he looks worn, his hair grayer, than the man Maybury remembers, and about him Maybury can smell the scent Cécile wore. Maybury sleeps fitfully, awakened by a dream of his wife yelling
at him to wake up. In the morning, he tells Mr. Falkner he has decided to leave. While Falkner again disagrees
with the decision, he confides in Maybury that there was a death during the night and says Maybury could leave
with the hearse. We do not learn for certain who died, but the implication is that Cécile has and Falkner
wants to keep it quiet to avoid upsetting the other residents. Maybury leaves; he has to sit in the back of the
hearse with the coffin. The story ends, "... Maybury alighted unobtrusively when a bus stop was reached. One
of the undertaker's men said that he should not have long to wait." * * * * *
"Ever since [Maybury's] schooldays (and, indeed,
during them) he had become increasingly award that there were many things strange to him, most of which proved
in the end to be apparently quite harmless." -- from "The Hospice" "The Hospice" has a dream-like quality that may pull the casual reader along, though the resolution may also leave him or her baffled. What is difficult to capture in summary, is the sense of menace Aickman conveys: We are convinced that something, we are not clear what, threatens Maybury in spite of the gentility of his surroundings. Underlying the dreaminess and menace, though, is sly humor and satire. "The Hospice," at least in part, examines the sequestered, cooped-up life of the British middle-class. Maybury's fear and avoidance of risk – as symbolized by his disconcertion and discomfort when alone on a road without a map – has led him to avoid sensation as surely as the hospice's residents. On his own, he copes poorly without a map or plan in a world in which a cat, like an avatar of nature and the reality of the world around him, attacks his leg without reason or provocation. There is something comic in his scampering retreat to the nearest sanctuary, yet it also marks him as a perfect candidate for the limbo of the hospice. The hospice is like a hothouse for people. As in a hothouse, there is excessive, sticky heat, the residents are fed, cared for and pampered by attendents, and sheltered from the unpredictable batterings of daily life and the emotional demands of engagement with the outside world. Since nothing is demanded of them, they do nothing; since they know little or nothing of the world around them, their only subjects of conversation are some abstract notions of daily life, like Cécile's conception of the poor and needy, and Brannard's curiosity about Maybury's family. While they stay at the hospice to avoid the outside world, they -- in the persons of Cécile and Brannard -- seem unhappy there and eager for the stimulation they have escaped. Yet they also bruise easily: apparently Cécile dies, a victim of her need for stimulation, and Brannard is prematurely, if temporarily, aged by it. Other members of the news group thought that Brannard murdered Cécile, but I am not convinced of that from the text. It is more likely that she invited Brannard to her room as she had Maybury. Her scream may not have been one of pain or fear since Aickman does not characterize the emotion in the scream, so much as Maybury's reaction to it. Cécile's scream could as easily have stemmed from passion -- there are indications that Maybury is squeemish about sex -- as from fear. Certainly, this reading is made more probable by Brannard's reaction when he returns and talks to Maybury. His questions all center around Maybury's relationship with his wife. His own haggard appearance seems to come from unaccustomed exertion -- he looks fine to Maybury the next morning after a night's rest -- and that is the price he pays for feeling. If Brannard was diminished by his brush with physicality, and if Cécile died during sex, then we come to the conclusion that these hothouse products are not hardy enough to survive in the world of risk outside their door. A cycle is presumed: they fear and flee from the world, and when brought to face it, they are unprepared to survive the encounter. Ultimately, what seems to save Maybury from the purgatory of the
hospice are his roots in the life outside it, namely his attachment to his family. ( it could be argued that his
thoughts of his family are of a sentimental shallowness to rival Cécile's thoughts about the poor; Aickman
does not make interpreting his story easy.) Maybury's encounters with the cat, Cécile and Brannard all serve
to remind him of his homelife. These anchors to the world drive him to risk of rejoining the outside world. But
Aickman is too much of an artist to fall into easy allegory. While Maybury often thinks of his family, his thoughts
about them are sentimental and rival the shallowness of Cécile's concept of the poor. Aickman is also too
much of an artist to offer a happy-ever-after ending: the trip in the hearse and the undertaker's assistant's final
words remind us that where there is risk, death is always imminent. * * * * * For the full conversation on alt.books.ghost_fiction, go to, http://www.prairienet.org/~almahu/aickman.htm A link to the discussion comes a little past halfway down this page. (To be clear: this is a blatant attempt to get you to look at the site as a whole and not just the part I have in it.) All of the pertinent posts are included. As is the habit of news groups, some of the messages are not terribly informative (which means a couple of my more brain-dead ramblings are on display), but others will give a differing perspective on the story than my own and are well worth your attention. "The Hospice" is not considered Aickman's best story by the members of, yet it left me off-balance and unsure how to interpret it. I look forward to reading more of Aickman's work in the coming months, so you will probably hear more about him here. "The Hospice" is included in Aickman's collection, Cold Hand in Mine which in the U.S., along with Painted Devils and Wine Dark Sea, are the most easily found of his collections. A set of his complete stories has recently been published by Tartarus Press, and a second edition announced at a price of $150 per set. There have been complaints of lax proofreading and error correction in the first Tartarus edition, however. **** Addendum "After this column was finished and put up here at Conspire, a source at the alt.books.ghost_fiction newsgroup announced that the publisher at Tartarus was aware of typos and dropped lines in the first edition of the Aickman collection and has assured the source that these problems will be addressed in the second edition."
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Devil in a Blue Dress and A Red Death. Both mysteries are engaging and compelling because Mosley has discovered
a smooth, flexible language with a rhythm that seduces the reader into effortless entry into the stories' era --
Devil takes
place in 1948, Death
in 1953. Ezekial (Easy) Rawlins, the narrator, is a believable African-American male trying to survive in a nation
that insists upon his fealty and respect while little valuing him or his race. Mosley deftly captures Easy's rage
and feelings of helplessness, while also depicting him as intelligent enough to avoid pitfalls. Mosley also skillfully
develops the relationships between Rawlins and the people of his community and the people he meets in the course
of the novels, and nowhere more so when depicting the emotional and moral tug-of-war between Rawlins and Raymond
("Mouse") Alexander, his life-long friend and, possibly, his doppelganger. Somehow Mosley manages to
create a mystery, delineate character swiftly and surely, and not lose sight of the issues of race, then and now.
