Practical Words to Live By

Since his first novel, “Devil in a Blue Dress,” was published in 1990, Walter Mosley has become one of America’s most celebrated black authors. Born in South Los Angeles and raised there and later the Pico-Fairfax area, Mosley has gained popular and critical acclaim for a series of novels set in post-World War II Los Angeles and featuring the reluctant private eye Easy Rawlins.

His most recent book, “Workin’ on the Chain Gang: Shaking Off the Dead Hand of History,” is a criticism of modern capitalist society and is Mosley’s second nonfiction work. Mosley, 48, now lives in New York with his wife, dancer-choreographer Joy Kellman.

Following is a question-and-answer session between Mosley and the Reading Page.

Q: Your parents both worked in the Los Angeles school system. Were they the ones that impressed the love of reading on you, or was that something you discovered on your own?

A: My parents liked to read and so I liked to read. I don’t know if they talked to me much about reading, but they just read. And because they read, I read.

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Q: Did they read to you?

A: Some. Not a whole lot. It was much more the activity of reading in the house. They would be reading books and magazines and newspapers.

I think that what’s important to parents is important to children. Parents don’t have to do a whole bunch extra. As a matter of fact, I think it’s even a mistake to say, “Oh, well if you read to your kids, then they’ll learn how to read.” Well, if you read to your kids, and that’s all you do, then kids will learn that you should read to kids. If it’s not a part of your life, it’s not going to be a part of your kids’ life.

It’s kind of a funny thing. People ask me, “How do I get my kids to read?” I say, “Well, do you read?” They say, “No. But I’m not worried about me.” It might happen, because some kids love to read anyway--but you can’t just tell them. Especially if you’re not doing it. You say, “Read a book.” They say, “Well, you don’t read no books. And I want to be like you.”

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Q: What do you think about parents who lock up the TV set?

A: It depends on who you are, and what your relationship to the kid is.

You can’t get rid of television permanently--I think it’s a good idea to get rid of it for a while--but you can’t get rid of it permanently, because it’s one of our media. It’s one of the ways in which information is channeled. And it’s an immediate way. There’s something happening right now; you may need to know that right now. You don’t have time to read it in the newspaper the next day.

And also it’s kind of a socialization thing. That’s another thing that you can’t ignore with kids. Every kid in school has a television, everybody’s talking about things happening on television and your kid doesn’t. That’s something you have to deal with. I think the idea of being able to control it makes more sense. You know, “This is one thing that you do.” This happens so many hours a day, or so many hours a week, or on the weekends, or whatever.

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Q: What about the computer?

A: Many of the things you get off the Internet, you read! So that’s reading . . . but the quality of writing on the Internet is really not so high, as a rule.

So the Internet has a long way to go, I think. And I don’t think it’s going to [get better]. I think it’s going to become much more like television. The reason that you’re reading things now is because they really can’t stream images quickly enough. One day the Internet and television will be interchangeable. I haven’t heard anybody seriously discuss the quality of writing on the Internet. And I think quality is important in writing.

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Q: Do you think, in general, in your lifetime, that reading has been on the decline?

A: No, I don’t think so.

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Q: Do you think that’s a misperception?

A: Is it a perception? I think more people are reading. I think that more people are reading, certainly, than there were a hundred years ago. More people know how to read. . . . I think probably because more is available, people are aware of how few people actually involve themselves with it.

At one time, you’d be living in a place and they wouldn’t have a library. There’d be no books to get. So you wouldn’t question, “Well, why aren’t people reading?” Well, of course they’re not reading; there are no books to read. Now you’ve got whole libraries sitting there, and just about the same number of people are reading. But it seems like more of a waste.

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Q: How does one bridge the gap from being a reader to becoming a writer?

A: Well you know, I have a problem. Everybody talks to writers like they were readers in some kind of special way. I haven’t noticed that it’s true. I know a whole lot of writers who don’t read very much. And I know a whole lot of readers who read a lot more.

But what I’m trying to say is that they’re two different things. I mean, I love reading. I have a lot of fun doing it. When I find a book that I love, I’m just like any other reader in the world--I want to read that book, and I want to read every other book that that writer ever wrote.

But on the other hand, writing is a different kind of thing. It’s a different exercise, even. Certainly you can learn things about writing from reading. There’s no question about that. But you can also learn things from storytellers and you can learn from observing.

The great poets, for instance--troubadours, or even Homer--they were illiterate. Homer, arguably our greatest novelist, with “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”--obviously he was a very intelligent, very educated man, who transferred this incredible story from place to place just by talking, and by remembering. What--am I going to say Shakespeare was a greater writer than Homer because Shakespeare was literate and Homer wasn’t? I don’t think so.

So it’s much more than a gap--they’re two different exercises, it seems to me. The other thing, though, is that I think people should write. I think people should try to tell stories. I think that’s wonderful. And anybody has the chance of doing it. You might be a C student in English and only like reading war novels, but it turns out that you’re an incredible writer. So one shouldn’t start to think that they can’t do it.

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Q: I think it takes a realization that you can do it. People just don’t think of themselves as writers, even if they are readers.

A: Reading is anywhere. It could be on the Internet, it could be newspapers, it could be on bubble-gum wrappers. It doesn’t have to be in the book. But the point is that a lot of people begin to identify writing as the book itself. And the book becomes like a holy thing, like the Bible or something.

Look at television. Every show on television is written. So the act of writing is becoming a larger and larger thing in the culture. So even if reading isn’t growing, or growing very slowly, there’s another whole issue going on--that writing is actually flourishing. Not necessarily good writing, by the by. But it’s flourishing anyway.

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Q: Can you tell me, in your own words, why is it important for kids to read? What is it about reading that’s so valuable?

A: I have a political answer for that. I love reading. But I don’t think that it’s something necessarily greater than basketball. I love reading, but if somebody says, “I love playing basketball,” I’m not going to say, “Well, the thing I love is better than the thing you love.”

But I will say this: The chances of you being able to negotiate this life, in this world, by playing basketball, are pretty slim. I think that you learn some things from it, and you learn some very good things from it.

But on the whole, what you need to learn about life is how to think, how to solve problems, how to make your mind fit around complex issues, or to simplify complex issues. The only things I know that do that are--there’s three of them: There’s relationships with people. There’s being taught on a one-to-one basis how to do something, like mechanics or shipbuilding or experiments in science.

The final thing is reading. It makes you a fuller person, and it makes you much more capable of dealing with life. As a matter of fact, if you can’t read, the chances are you probably won’t make it in this life, in this world, in the 21st century.

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Q: That’s a pretty practical answer.

A: I like to give people practical answers. Because I don’t think that a person who reads is better than a person who doesn’t. You have some great people who know how to think and how to act and how to be good people. I don’t think reading makes you a good person.

And I believe that this country, and this government, is against educating the children. And so learning how to read is actually a revolutionary act. You go to these public schools, especially poor public schools, and they don’t care. Nobody’s going into conniptions that you don’t read.

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Q: You think there are people who are consciously against it?

A: No, I don’t think it’s conscious. It’s just that they don’t care. They don’t care if you know how to read or write. I don’t think that it’s a conscious conspiracy.

But the thing is, you go to somebody--if they have a certain amount of money, a certain amount of energy and a certain amount of time--and then say, “Well, look. Only 80% of the kids know how to read words; 50% of them can give the basic ideas of a story; and about 10% of them really have a deep understanding of language and its use. We think that we could get it up to [where] 50% could have that deep understanding.”

And the guy says, “Well, how much does it cost?”

You say, “Well, $50 million.”

He says, “Well, that’s not worth it. That’s untenable. We don’t have $50 million to put there.”

We do have it for the S&L; bailout, we do have it for a war in Iraq or an embargo against Cuba, but we don’t have it to teach our children how to read.

So it’s not a conscious conspiracy, but when you ask somebody, “Well, how come you’re not doing it?” they say, “Well, we can’t afford it.” I mean, I’m living in the richest country in the history of the world. We can afford almost anything.

I think that it’s important to know--for parents and for their children--that it’s a revolutionary act to read. Knowing and understanding will make things different.