THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 13, 1995 TAG: 9509130023
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY TIM WARREN
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
MYSTERY WRITER Walter Mosley is trying his hand at literary fiction in his latest novel, ``RL's Dream'' (W.W. Norton, 267 pp., $22), and for that he'll automatically take some shots. Literary fiction and mystery novels are generally considered such discrete entities that anyone who moves from one camp to the other is instantly suspect. Joyce Carol Oates, who writes suspense novels under the pen name Rosamund Smith, and James Lee Burke are among the few writers to succeed in both areas.
Certainly one can be very good at one and inept at the other, because they have different goals. Literary fiction is character-driven and can be more interior and open-ended than the mystery, which is plot-driven, and must keep the action moving.
Then, too, there are the prejudices: A ``serious'' writer who attempts mystery is deemed to be slumming; a mystery writer who takes a whack at literary fiction is being pretentious. These may be unfair characterizations, but consider the outrage that P.D. James and Martha Grimes, two of the top contemporary mystery writers, have endured in recent years, when they dared to write ``literary'' novels.
And so it is that Mosley, after four extremely successful mysteries starring the brilliantly conceived, quixotic private investigator Easy Rawlins, has written a conventional novel in ``RL's Dream.'' It's a departure, of course, but in some ways it's similar to his mysteries. It's a generally satisfying novel, except for a major flaw that should surprise readers familiar with Mosley's work - one of the chief characters just isn't very convincing.
Unlike some authors of mysteries who aren't very good writers - Lawrence Sanders, say, or Clive Cussler - Mosley understands what makes good prose. His Easy Rawlins mysteries are terrific evocations of the Watts area of Los Angeles after World War II. Because of Mosley's feel for characters and his eloquent, often moody sense of tone, one gets a real sense of the neighborhood and its inhabitants. This facility carries over to ``RL's Dream'' as well.
The book really is a meditation on the blues - no surprise, what with the frequent mentions of black popular music in the Easy Rawlins books. Specifically, it involves an aging bluesman, Atwater ``Soupspoon'' Wise, who is sick and dying in New York, but whose mind, even as he slips toward death, keeps going back to his days as one of America's top bluesmen - and to the time when he was hanging out with one of the masters, Robert Johnson.
Mosley, a resident of Greenwich Village, describes both New York and the South with a discerning eye. Here is his take on Soupspoon's introduction to the blues:
``He was 11 years old the first time he heard the blues. The year was 1932. It was on a Saturday and Atwater had been hanging around at a barn party. He got to stay late because Inez forgot to send him home.
``It was Phil Wortham playing on a homemade four-string guitar with Tiny Hill working a squeeze-box. It wasn't like anything that Atwater had ever heard. The music made him want to move, and the words, the words were like the talk people talked every day, but he listened closer and he heard things that he never heard before.''
Early on in the novel, Soupspoon is evicted from his New York apartment for nonpayment of rent. He is rescued by an unlikely savior, Kiki, a scrappy red-haired woman who lives in an upstairs apartment and takes him to her place because, she tells him, he once said something nice to her in passing. She has her own wounds, both physical - from a recent stabbing - and spiritual (a history of abuse by her father in Arkansas).
She gets him medical attention, she nurses him, and the bond between them grows. It's an affecting one to watch; Kiki's spirit and bravery are touching, even if they are aided at times by generous swigs of Jack Daniels. She is sympathetic yet complex, and Mosley obviously took pains in developing her.
Soupspoon, on the other hand, seems equally undeveloped, and at times becomes quite tiresome. Perhaps it's the difficulty in rendering an illiterate, inarticulate character both believable and sympathetic, but there seems to be little depth behind his old-man cantankerousness. Mosley's ability to write of humanity in real terms is evident in his mysteries but jarringly absent in his depiction of Soupspoon, and detracts from what is otherwise a fine novel. MEMO: Tim Warren is a book critic who lives in Silver Spring, Md. by CNB