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'Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned' by Walter Mosley

Mosley Outdoes Himself In Short-Story Collection

Sunday, January 18, 1998

By Michael Helfand

	Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned By Walter Mosley Norton $23.00

This new book, with its wonderful title (hard to believe no one has used it before), sounds like the next in the Easy Rawlins detective series that has earned Walter Mosley both critical and popular success. Rawlins, a black war vet, is a detective who lives on the edge of respectability but moves knowledgeably, if reluctantly, in the underworld of Los Angeles. But this book is not about Rawlins.

Instead, Mosley has given us a book of short stories on serious subjects held together by another fascinating character, a convicted murderer and rapist with the odd name of Socrates Fortlow.

Fortlow, like Rawlins, is well acquainted with violence in the world and in himself. He is an enormously strong man who survived 27 years in an Indiana prison and is determined not to go back. To avoid future crimes, Fortlow must constantly battle his own rage, a rage generated by the guilt he feels for the crimes he committed long ago.

When these stories take place, he is 58, eight years out of prison, living in two cheap rooms in Watts, and scrounging bottles and cans for a living. He is independent but lonely, and, despite his many hardships, enjoying life outside prison. During the course of these stories, Fortlow broods on his past, on the reasons for his violence and for the racial injustice and social corruption that have taken their toll on him and his people.

He knows too much about the police and the legal system to respect them. He does, however, have strong beliefs in personal responsibility and in loyalty to his friends and his race. And, like his Greek namesake, he believes in examining life, asking the big questions and acting on his conclusions.

In a recent interview on National Public Radio, Mosley remarked that one of his reasons for writing these 14 stories was to show how various African-Americans solve problems and consider the moral and ethical implications of their acts. He also wanted to reach a variety of audiences, including kids. In fact, nine of the stories originally appeared in places as different as Buzz, Esquire, the Los Angeles Times and Whitney Museum, and they are written in a correspondingly broad range of styles.

The first story of this volume, ``Crimson Shadow,'' is clearly aimed at teen-agers. Simply written, it is almost a Platonic dialogue between Socrates and Darryl, a young boy he catches killing his neighbor's rooster. The rooster, says Socrates, is his friend, and while he and the boy cook and eat the bird, they discuss friendship, the reasons for killing animals and the responsibilities of being a man.

Other stories, like ``Equal Opportunity,'' make us aware of the difficulties a poor person faces looking for work. Socrates applies for a job as a packer and delivery man at a Santa Monica supermarket. To those in charge, Socrates' race, as well as his ragged clothes, make him seem a less than desirable employee. When they learn he doesn't have a phone, they tell him he is ineligible since they notify applicants by phone.

Socrates replies that he needs the job to pay for the phone and asks to be notified by mail. This begins a series of confrontations (with violence seething just below the surface) that explore both the necessity and the irony of equal opportunity.

Another story, the last in the collection, becomes a dialogue between Socrates and a dying friend about the right to die and the good death.

But not all the stories are philosophical. In a few, Socrates remembers with nostalgia, bitterness and remorse moments of his past life - the woman he loved and lost when he went to prison, the pleasures of finding intellectual stimulation and companionship at a bookstore in Watts, his first days of freedom after 27 years in prison.

And, like all good story collections, this one plays variations on common themes and complicates the simplicity of the single tale.

In ``Black Dog,'' for instance, Mosley takes up the theme of animal-human relations again. Socrates attacks a man who is about to kill a dog he ran over. It is clear that at times Socrates values an animal's life more than some human ones and, ironically, he forms a strong bond with a female veterinarian who feels the same way. The stories take on a lot of important subjects - manhood, the usefulness and destructiveness of violence, friendship, freedom and social and familial responsibilities.

Good and ambitious writers often take chances, and ``Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned'' is certainly a chance Mosley is taking. Including stories for both children and adults in one collection is likely to leave any single reader dissatisfied at times. I was. But I was also impressed with Mosley's efforts to bring philosophy back to the marketplace.

In one of the stories, Socrates says to Darryl, ``You stood up for yourself. . . . That's all a black man could do. You always outnumbered, you always outgunned.''

Perhaps. But in Walter Mosley's world, not outsmarted. I hope the book finds the intelligent readership it deserves.

Michael Helfand teaches English at the University of Pittsburgh.