Title: The Awkward Black Man
Author: Walter Mosley
Themes/Subjects: Race, Self-Sufficiency, Science Fiction, Oddness, Familial Relations, Individuality, Loneliness, Infidelity
Three Words to Describe the Stories: Celebrating All Blackness
Favorite Short Story: “Cut, Cut, Cut”
Blurb from Back of Book: “Bestselling author Walter Mosley long ago proved himself a master of narrative tension, both with his extraordinary fiction and gripping writing for television. The Awkward Black Man collects seventeen of Mosley’s most accomplished short stories to showcase the full range of his remarkable talent. Mosley presents exceptional characters as they struggle to move through the world and navigate relationships, and paints a subtle, powerful portrait of each of these remarkable black people. In "The Good News Is," a man’s insecurity about his weight gives way to a serious illness and the intense loneliness that accompanies it. Deeply vulnerable, he allows himself to be taken advantage of in return for a little human comfort in a raw display of true need. "Pet Fly," previously published in the New Yorker, follows a man working as a mailroom clerk for a big company—a solitary job for which he is overqualified—and the unforeseen repercussions he endures when he attempts to forge a connection beyond the one he has with the fly buzzing around his apartment. And "Almost Alyce" chronicles failed loves, family loss, alcoholism, and a Zen approach to the art of begging that proves surprisingly effective. Touching and contemplative, each of these unexpected stories offers the best of one of our most gifted writers.”
Summary and Comments: This was the first book that I read overall this year, and, by the time I was done with it, reading it over the course of four days, I found myself questioning if I will not only not read another short story collection this year that was as good as this book, but whether or not it might be the best book that I end up reading all year.
This was also my first time reading Walter Mosley’s fiction. I have read two of his non-fiction books about writing, which I enjoyed, but for some reason, I have never sat down with a fiction book by this prolific author. He is well known for his mystery/crime novels and thrillers, and arguably his most well-known works are the Easy Rawlins series of mystery/crime novels. So, when I stumbled upon this collection of short stories in the ‘New Books’ section of the local library, all of them seeming to sound nothing like the novels that he is most famous for, I decided to check it out and give it a try.
These stories are everything and more that I could’ve wanted from Mosley, and I think a lot of it has to do both with his style and the fact that many of these stories have a veneer of plotting to them, but are more importantly character studies. What I mean by this is that there are two types of short stories for the most part: genre stories, i.e. science fiction, fantasy, crime, etc., that are almost exclusively about plots. They tell stories that revolve around what happens in the story, and there is little to no character building. On the other hand, there are short stories, mostly literary, that are more focused on telling the story of a character, instead of a story that a character takes part in. It’s a character study, in other words, and some people don’t like these types of short stories because of the seeming lack of an overarching plot.
In The Awkward Black Man, Mosley somehow fuses both types of short stories into one, and not one story was bad in the entire collection. For a collection containing seventeen stories, that is an absurd statement to make, but Mosley somehow does the unthinkable and pulls it off. Also, a key part of the collection, compared to so many other short story collections on the market today, revolves around the characters themselves: all of the stories either have black male protagonists, or they are stories where black men are main characters in them. I can't think of another mainstream short story collection that is exclusively about black men or black individuals, and it brings a uniqueness and 'Own Voice' sentiment to the collection.
In my personal favorite story, titled ‘Cut, Cut, Cut,’ the narrator is a black woman who finds herself enthralled with a peculiar black man she meets on a blind date, and the surface of the story is an exploration of the relationship that ensues between the two of them. For most of the story, the black man, named Dr. Martin Hull, is wrapped in a shroud of mystery. He is smarter than most human beings in regard to the STEM field, and the two of them engage in scientific and metaphysical conversations between romps in the bed. The story takes a sinister and genre-tinged turn in the last third of the story, and, without spoiling the plot twist and ending of the story, it goes from a character study of two lonely black individuals to a full-blown genre-based thriller that comments on misogyny and the male-centric God complex. It is somehow a literary story contained in a genre story contained in a social commentary-tinged story, and it’s incredible. If it is not anthologized in future ‘Best Short Stories of the 21st Century’ short story anthologies, I would be incredibly surprised.
‘Otis’ was another short story that caught me off guard and explored two types of people that many writers of fiction often leave in the dark. The main gist of the short story revolves around a black teenager who is smarter than his peers (with implications of possible autistic tendencies), gets caught cheating at school (or so he thinks), and runs away to avoid punishment. He sets up camp in a park, and another black teenager stumbles onto him. This black teenager is physically huge compared to the narrator, and the narrator is scared at first—he realizes he is vulnerable, being in a park in the dark at night, with no one else around if this other teenager decides to rob or beat him. We learn over the next few pages that this other teenager is actually an emotionally broken young man, his speech simple but his emotional trauma deep, and he tells the narrator that his name is Otis, and that he has trouble in school frequently because of his violent outbursts. It makes our narrator nervous, but the two young men end up befriending one another and spending the night together swapping stories. Near the end of the night, Otis insinuates that he might be sexually interested in the narrator, but the narrator politely rebuffs him, and the two go to sleep. In the morning, the narrator wakes up and sees that Otis has taken his wallet and other goods, but he has a positive outlook on the entire situation: he is not mad at Otis for taking his belongings, but instead glad that his belongings can help Otis, who Mosley insinuates is homeless and running away the few times he seems to have a place to land. The story then jumps through the years before finding the narrator attending Otis’ funeral one day, and it ends with Otis’ mother explaining to the narrator that Otis would tell her about how he, the narrator, was his best friend, despite them only talking that one time so many years ago in the park. The uniqueness of this story in regard to how it treats black homosexuality, a taboo in much of the fictional world, and the exploration of black manliness and brotherhood, is both touching and deep. The way that Mosley writes about the two characters, and the message that he seems to be sending about how friendships can occur from simple moments and end up lasting lifetimes with little contact, is also thought-provoking and endearing.
Many of the other stories reveal truths and themes just as deep. In ‘Reply to a Dead Man,’ Mosley explores the trauma of family history, mental problems when conjuring past memories, and how to move in on life after a significant setback. In the story, the main narrator is given a letter from his deceased brother via a unique fictional company that specializes in sending and delivering messages by deceased individuals, named Final Request Company. The main plot of the story involves the letter revealing a secret to the narrator that turns his world upside down forever, but it’s a good thing that is revealed. The story plays with the concept of expectations and the stereotype of the ‘abandoned black child,’ and he flips both on their heads in completely satisfying and captivating ways. In ‘Haunted,’ the main narrator of the story is a dead black man. It chronicles how he wrote a thousand stories over sixty years of his life but never got one published, and his girlfriend’s attempt at getting a few of them published posthumously. He watches her, as a ghost, go on her crusade, and he recounts the way that her character morphs and grows or shrinks, depending on your perspective. Mosley takes a critical lens to the concepts of an author’s legacy after death, sexual infidelity, and exploitation throughout the piece, and, despite its seemingly absurd circumstances, it reads as a completely realistic tale. Another short story that stood out to me, titled ‘The Sin of Dreams,’ has echoes of Philip K. Dick running throughout the entire piece. The main framing device of the story is that it is a recounting of a trial, where a man who invented a way for a person’s consciousness and thoughts and memories to be transferred into a new physical body before death kills said person’s old body, and what happens when the surgery goes awry in one instance. It explores the concepts of personal responsibility, corporate greed, and the flawed nature of ‘Great Men,’ and it is a sci-fi-tinged literary story that is written in beautiful but simple prose.
Other stories in this collection contain and examine many other themes and subjects: physical satisfaction with one’s body (‘The Good News Is’), the idea of eccentricity, especially through the lens of a black eye (‘Pet Fly’), alcoholism (‘Almost Alyce’), infatuation (‘Starting Over’), conspiracy theories (‘Between Storms’), what the company of strangers can do for you emotionally (‘The Black Woman in a Chinese Hat’), racism and the inversion of racist stereotypes (‘Showdown on the Hudson’), and infidelity (‘The Letter’).
The two biggest triumphs for this collection, in my opinion, are the celebration of the black individual, both male and female, and the fact that Mosley is able to so successfully blur the line between genre and literary fiction, often doing so in the course of one story. All of the stories themselves are beautiful character studies with enough of a veneer of plotting that they read at a quick pace, and Mosley’s biting dialogue, simple prose, and beautiful descriptions of the world around these characters creates an enthralling collection. If you’re looking for an amazing short story collection to read for 2021, start here.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Where to Find It: Library Catalog, Amazon, Boswell Books
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