This week, we sit down with Walter Mosley and discuss his work and the craft of writing. This program took place October 24th, 2018 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. At the time, Mosley’s novel John Woman had just been published. Mosley’s latest Easy Rawlins mystery comes out tomorrow, February 2nd!
Quick programming note: this discussion contains explicit language and references to sex, drugs and alcohol. Listener discretion is advised.
We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
“If you say your history is something that has nothing to do with the people who actually built your f***ing country, then what happens is that you strangle your own potential to know your history. And so the truth is gone. Which is what we feel in America today. Nobody even believes in truth anymore because they’ve been strangled.”
“Any real historian will tell you the best way to understand history is by a shopping list.”
“If you’re not self-trained, you’ve been brainwashed…If you go to school, school is there to brainwash you. You might make more money, you might do better, but you won’t know the truth. And you won’t know that you don’t know the truth.”
“I love Herman Melville, he was an autodidact. You know, he was reading Shakespeare while he was writing Moby-Dick and you can really follow it right through.”
“You gotta admit it…it’s the sociopath who makes it, especially in the system of capitalism because capitalism supports sociopathy. The more you’re willing to kill old people and widows out of apartment buildings the more money you’re gonna make.”