Rating: 
Summary: Magnificent Mosley
Review: Walter Mosley's black, 60ish, ex-convict Socrates Fortlow is a unique hero. To start with, there's his stature: he's an enormous, powerful man with "killer hands" that are "weapons trained from childhood for war." Socrates is "more often than not the strongest man in the room" and his laugh sounds "like far-off explosions, a battery of cannon laying siege to a defenseless town."Then there's his past: 27 years in prison for murders he committed in some kind of daze. He's not just haunted by the evil he's put into the world, he's possessed by it. He'll always carry prison inside of him--even his dreams return him to a claustrophobic cell--but he's determined to do right and teach others likewise. He has to "see past bein' guilty" and that includes taking care of those who are helpless, guiding others with probing, Soctratic questions, and in effect nurturing a young black boy he works with. Fortlow may have lost his moral compass, but he's determined to fly right (as he sees it) and not let others do what he's done. It's the combination of simmering rage and brutality with a hunger for redemption that makes Walter Mosley's new collection of stories about Fortlow edgy and at times profound. The obstacles are enormous, because for the cops, this murderer is just "a prisoner-in-waiting." They come after him whenever there's a crime committed nearby and even "on a whim . . . just in case he had done something that even they couldn't suspect." Socrates has an ex-con's ability to sink into silence and out wait his oppressors, but in the end he'll take a very bold step--knowing "he had to stand up without killing--in his search for justice. Socrates' moral sensibility searchlighting his life brings a kind of monumentality to the character, who is larger than life in many ways. With his two-legged dog, he seems a figure out of myth. Ralph Ellison's name is brought up in the book, but for me he recalls figures from the brooding romances of Hawthorne and Melville, a man irrevocably marked by his past. The prose is finely crafted, supple, clear, powerful. The dialogue natural, and the truths fierce. This book is beautiful and sad, so compelling you may feel torn between wanting to gobble it down and read slowly to savor every insight. Not a bad dilemma. "Walkin' the Dog" makes you care, makes you think, makes you glad Walter Mosley is writing. This is not a book you're likely to forget, and it's one you'll want to share.
Rating:
Summary: socrates does it again
Review: when i received always outnumbered, i devoured it without getting up. everyone to whom i suggested it loved it as well. there aren't many characters in literature like socrates fortlow. i facilitate a group in a local prison and the book spurred much discussion. it also showed me that mosley is right on with socrates' feelings. walkin' the dog is just as powerful as the first collecton. socrates is changing due to his conscious efforts to address the world with integrity. these twelve stories continue his quest. my only complaint is the dust cover in which the man with the sandwich board doesn't match my image of socrates. usually, when you know an author is planning a sequel (like mosley does here, i hope), i feel manipulated. this time i am anxiously awaiting the next collection.
Rating: 
Summary: One great character walks and rides LA busses again
Review: _Walkin' the Dog_ is closer to being a novel than the previous stories featuring the menacingly large reformed ex-con Socrates Fotlow, _Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned_. Repetitions of basic information about the characters is rarer. If the stories were published separately, there is no indication of credits.
Socrates remains a compelling figure. He continues to develop, as he manages rage that is often provoked. Unfortunately, his quasi-son Daryl doesn't grow (as a character).
The final chapter/story in the book is particularly gripping, though I remain uncertain that someone conditioned to self-preservation in a long prison sentence would undertake such dangerous public protest. Several non-black, mostly Latino people champion him in his confrontations with police, developers, and coworkers. Mosley's prose is always compelling and any sentimentality rubs against a world of Brechtian pressures and troubles.
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