Read Bad Boy Brawly Brown Online
Authors: Walter Mosley
Bad Boy Brawly Brown (45 page)
imagination, where the strongest voices rise to control the destiny of the nation and the world. Maybe, in this make-believe world, a group is being held back by limits placed on their ability to imagine; their dreams have been infiltrated by the dominant group making even the idea of dissent impossible.
The metaphor of this speculative and revolutionary tale could be language as power—the hero, a dis-embodied choir that disrupts the status quo. “Jazz in the Machine” could be the title. Black letters on a white page would suffice for the jacket design.
Copyright © 2000 Walter Mosley. First Printed in
the
New York Times
, Nov. 30, 1999. Reprinted by permission of the author.
The Writing of
Fearless Jones
by Walter Mosley
When I began writing the novel
Fearless Jones
, it was simply to get involved once again with the characters Paris Minton and Fearless Jones. I’ve always been interested in those two amateur sleuths because of what their characters reveal about intelligence. Paris is a voracious reader and a logical thinker. There aren’t many chess players that can best Paris. In school he would be a top ranked student but on the street he has serious limitations. That’s because Paris is a normal every day kind of Joe. He’s afraid of violence and trouble. He yearns to live the safe and conservative life of a bookworm.
Paris is an unusual narrator for the genre because of his cautious attitudes toward violence, crime, and the law. His fears and observations, I believe, are closer to those of the average reader than the more prevalent hard-boiled narrators of the field. When Paris decides to pull out a gun or follow a criminal to his lair, it is with all the fear and trepidation that you or I might experience before embarking on such a fool-hardy
adventure. I hope that this type of narrator will allow the reader a different kind of entrie into this story of mayhem, doublecrosses, and corruption.
Where Paris is an intellectual, Fearless is the one with a brave and smart heart. Fearless has trouble with the logic of checkers but he can read what’s going on deep in a man’s soul. He’s a staunch friend and absolutely unafraid of death, love, or any other kind of pain.
Fearless can’t follow a clue but he can make out the scent of deceit and treachery. When you have Fearless on your side, there’s always a chance of survival.
So that’s where it began for me. Back on the streets of L.A. in the mid-fifties, talking about that chapter of American history that rarely gets mention in twentieth century literature; the lives and experiences of black men and women struggling to make it out from under the weight of history.
But as the story began to unfold I realized that
there was new element of mid-century African-
American life that I was getting into: the role of the black entrepreneur among African-American transplants from the south. On the first page we learn that Paris has opened a used bookstore on Central. As the story unfolds we meet beauty shop and restaurant owners, real estate managers, a bailbondsman who was once a lawyer, a woman whose dream it is to open a catering business. The struggle of Paris and Fearless to solve the mystery of the missing Swiss bond is carried out on a backdrop of the larger struggle for a disenfranchised group to become invested not only in the American experiment with freedom but also in the commerce that has made America so strong.
If I had to describe the genre of
Fearless Jones,
I would call it
comic noire
with a fringe of social realism.
I hope that you find it an entertaining interlude and a good read.
Copyright © 2000 Walter Mosley.