Keeper of noir's flame: An interview with Walter Mosley"When you encounter him unawares, without him seeing you for a moment, he looks too small to be such an outsized presence in American literature, too unassuming to have such a brash, powerful voice. If it weren’t for the white Panama hat pitched at a rakish angle and the subtly loud sport shirt, Walter Mosley could be anyone you’d pass on the street, as nameless, as faceless, as any good detective."
“It was Dec. 8, 1980. Leibovitz had photographed John Lennon for Rolling Stone that afternoon at the Manhattan apartment he shared with Yoko Ono and their son, Sean. Hours later, Lennon was shot to death outside by a crazed fan. In an instant, the work of a routine photo assignment had become the visual valedictory of one of popular music's transcendent voices.
“One Leibovitz photo, of Lennon curled around Ono, was on the cover of Rolling Stone eight weeks later. It's an image that endures in the popular imagination today.
‘ “It was devastating to me, it was shocking ... photographed him that day, and he was killed that night,’ ” she said. ‘ “I came out of it thinking that I had to renew my scruples about my dedication to my work, I had to be truer than I ever was before.
‘ “You knew it was the end of an era, end of a time. Things changed. We had to grow up.’ ”
“During the period when I was the only person here — no Bill Cosby, no Eddie Murphy, no Denzel Washington — I was carrying the hopes and aspirations of an entire people. I had no control over content, no creative leverage except to refuse to do a film, which I often did. “I had to satisfy the action fans, the romantic fans, the intellectual fans. It was a terrific burden.”
Grappling with the word: An interview with Charles Johnson
“I read an excerpt of what [Norman] Mailer said at the National Book Award ceremony when he was given a lifetime achievement award. He said he felt as if he was creating for the horse-and-buggy era in an age of automobiles. So, yes, on his gloomier days perhaps he thought the novel was obsolete. The problem with his statement is that people have been predicting the death of the novel for a couple of hundred years now, and the novel as a form always comes roaring back to life.”
