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You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello, welcome to Bookworm from KCRW Santa Monica.

I'm Michael Silverblatt, and today my guest is Walter Mosley.

I'm very happy to have Walter Mosley here, and I should say at long last, I met Walter Mosley when his first

book came out, Devil in a Blue Dress. I had dinner with him and another writer who was writing

for Norton at that time, and I said, well, you know, I'd probably like your book, but you know, I don't

do mystery novels on my program.

And he acknowledged that he had wanted to write a different kind of novel when he started out and worked with poets like, is it, Bill Matthews, and Frederick Tutton, the novelist.

But that this was his gift.

And that I, being young and inflexible, said, well, never the Twain shall meet then,

Tut, tut.

Since then, there's been many, many books, mysteries, novels, essays, short stories, many award winners, many translations

into many languages.

And so I've not only read the novels and stories and essays, I've read the mystery novels

as well, and I think it is one sustained body of work of great interest. And I wanted to begin by asking you, when you

started out with Devil in a Blue Dress, were you aware of writing in a genre? Was that of importance

to you? Well, you know, to begin with, the first book I wrote was Gone Fission, which was

Easeen Mous before, any kind of genre thing, living in the deep south, kind of coming-of-age

...