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The Right Mistake: The Further Philosophical Investigations of Socrates Fortlow

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Mosley churns out 2-3 books a year and unfortunately the wear and tear on his imagination is beginning to show. The one concept of his that hadn't seemed to jump the shark was his Socrates Fortlow series, featuring a wise ex-con living in the street of L.A.

I love this character, his world and the stories Mosley has traditionally applied to them. A little of the magic has worn off in this third installment, but not enough to stay away. The book looks like it maintains the short-story-collection charmof the previous books, but really it's just a more chopped-up longer, more traditional narrative, making it a book with significant chapters instead of separate stories that build to a theme or climax. It also contains a more spartan, less colorful style and a cast of characters that, when coupled with little description beyond one-liners, is unwieldly and tedious.

It's a fast read, and I say that as a slow reader. I love the series, but instead of getting better, it dipped. Mosley offers a book that artists sometimes create that feature well-known characters that they don't really want to interact with anymore. A little deus ex machina, a little over-the-top confrontation, and then the loose-thread offer of life-change that ensures that the character will never again be the character you know and love. If you're a fan, read it, but expect it to level off or dip, not exceed.

What if Plato was a pimp? What if Aristotle was a gang-banger? What if Nietzsche was a drug dealer? Would their philosophy be the same if they were these things on the streets of New York? Those were some of the questions I came up with as I was reading this book. Socrates is an ex-con (2 murders & 1 rape that we know of) who starts a thinking group to debate and discuss some of the issues directly relating with their community.

He assembles leaders and followers from around the community to his house that he... um... creatively leased from someone to hold the meetings. The guest list includes drug dealers, deacons, decent women, hookers, business owners, bums, Asians, Whites, Blacks, gay, straight, quiet, loud, lawyers and police. With this unique mix of people you know that trouble was just one comment away. One of the most interesting discussions was "who or what makes a REAL Black man"?

Socrates deals with life as it comes and is surprisingly astute for someone who spent 27 years in prison. Women love bad boys and he's about as bad as they come. This isn't Mr. Mosley's first visit with Socrates but it was MY first book about him. Now I'm curious to see if Socrates was always this "calm" and introspective or did prison and an extremely hard life create this persona.

I know I sound like a broken record... but this man's mastery of the craft is second to none! I only wish others knew what I know about Walter Mosley. Those who know him read and love him, but I can't help but think that his talent is simmering below the surface like lava for those who don't know and one day... sometime soon... it's going to erupt like Mount St. Mosley.

Walter Mosley's latest Socrates Fortlow novel, The Right Mistake, maintains an emotional intensity throughout that engages readers and made me catch my breath at the end of some chapters. Ex-con Socrates gathers people together in West Central Los Angeles to talk. Like his namesake, he asks questions, and claims no wisdom of his own. Along the way, he builds community, finds redemption alongside other characters, and in some way or another, each character finds a release from whatever constrains them. This is a finely written novel with real characters living as best they can. Recommended.

Many would argue that philosophy has gone south since the Greeks. As subsequent thinkers became muddled with questions of categorical imperatives, moral relativisms and systematized ethics, they lost the almost childlike simplicity of the discipline's original questions: What is good? How can I act right? More importantly, in a discourse of prosaic academic papers and windbag treatises, the act of gathering strangers around a table to discuss issues face to face has been deemed quaint --- so much for Socratic ideals.

Mosley's reincarnation of the philosopher is surprisingly faithful to the original: he is old, fat, poor, wise and highly aware of his limitations. He is put on trial for his ideas and defends himself superbly. Granted, he lives. And granted, he has raped and murdered women. Most damningly, he lacks most of Socrates's characteristic arrogance. But these are things we can let slide, especially since Mosley is out to create a new character, not a second coming. As a modern-day street-wise philosopher, Socrates Fortlow, ex-con and all, is a fictional and philosophical hero well worth rallying around, and his story of engaging others into questioning right action speaks to the very soul of what philosophy is about.

Newly out of prison, Fortlow opens the Big Nickel, an old house in the LA ghetto that opens its doors on a weekly basis to everyone interested in discussing moral problems of the day (the free gumbo also helps). The Thinkers, as they come to be known, are mostly from the bad parts of town, but that doesn't stop them from jumping right in to high-stakes moral debates about violence and compassion for other men, all under the common goal of bettering themselves. As the Big Nickel grows in renown, it sparks public interest in the goal of self-betterment, as well as attracts police spies suspicious of potentially seditious activity. Fortlow opens the Nickel as a site for peace talks between gang leaders; predictably enough, the bulk of people, too ignorant to conceive of such a hopeful establishment, just assume it's another crime den. While Fortlow is eventually put on trial for suspected murder, it's his honest moral activities that seem to be on trial.

Mosley deftly brings Fortlow to life as a modern man, a murderer with unknowable guilt and a Socratic figurehead. He is equal parts wise and humble, and while he's certainly inspirational as Socrates, he's most powerful as a troubled man looking for any salvation left to him. While Mosley goes a little overboard in referencing Fortlow's ubiquitous shame for his crimes, there's an honesty in the character that's hard not to admire.

The novel's other characters are nowhere near as well drawn, but considering the book's subtitle, "The Further Philosophical Investigations of Socrates Fortlow," they aren't expected to be. THE RIGHT MISTAKE is half-novel, half-philosophical dialogue in the style of Plato. But shockingly, it works. Mosley's tale is completely unpretentious, single-handedly sucking the wind out of academics everywhere. And at the same time, it's an engaging novel.

THE RIGHT MISTAKE presents a superb populist vision of philosophy as something anyone can do to better themselves. But it could have benefited from some more actual philosophizing. There is some narrative time devoted to the discussions at the Big Nickel, but it's mostly summary. Fortlow and his friends do apply their ever-questioning mindset and ideas on moral right to their everyday lives in many chapters, but these too are a little subdued. As a philosophical work THE RIGHT MISTAKE is lacking some meat, but this is a side issue. Mosley --- not too heavily --- forces us to consider what we know, and more importantly, what we think we know that isn't the case. Fortlow inspires not just his contemporaries but his reader as well. Mosley has reclaimed philosophy for those who need it most: people in the world, of the world, and far too often victims of it.

--- Reviewed by Max Falkowitz

This book felt so real I wanted to join the Thursday Thinkers Meeting.
Born with sin, or is it dysfunctional family? Perhaps both, no matter
come to the meeting and speak your mind. The main character is Socrates Fortlow, a paroled murderer, and a survivor of a atrocious childhood.
There is no messing with Socrates; raw with honesty, he knows we
are all cursed. He knows his loneliness is no way out. His solution is to meet and talk. He has come to this conclusion after being treated so coldly that his anger has overwhelmed his few moments of love. Socrates redemption can not be bought, or achieved alone. His heart must be melted by reaching out
to his community and by embracing the new love in his life.
Confrontation between righteous anger and paranoid authorities keep the action moving. But do not overlook Mosley's explosions of provoking thoughts. An unusual book that I loved to the last page.

Socrates Fortlow is one of my favorite literary characters. When I'm frequently mired in skirmishs with government bureaucrats on behalf of my son, who is disabled, I remind myself that we are "always outnumbered, always outgunned" so what. Some days progress is measured in small increments. What a treat to find a new Socrates Fortlow adventure. Mosley turns a fine phrase, in reference to the Thursday Thinkers dinners: "We are here because the world . . . the whole damn world is messed up," Socrates said simply and to the point. "An' all we do every day is shut our eyes hopin' that it'll get bettah wile we ain't lookin."

When you've grown up in Los Angeles, in the mid century, you remember the LAPD at its "finest" -- and Mosley has not forgotten these times either. It's all there: profiling, infiltration/spying, etc. Truth becomes the only defense when you're surrounded by lies. Perhaps some of the characters, the more "normal" lawyers or social worker or singer are a little one dimensional, and to the average reader they are perhaps more easily understood. Socrates Fortlow has paid a terrible price for his truth and freedom. Now he finds love with Luna, and companionship and philosophical discussions while breaking bread with friends and strangers.


This book is a good read: thought provoking, presenting possible solutions (only if we talk with each other) and lots of comic relief with the highly original gambler and cook, Billy Psalms. Utopian, perhaps, but if you don't imagine it's possible, where do you find hope? Or truth for that matter?

The Right Mistake is the third Walter Mosley book to feature Los Angeles street-philosopher Socrates Fortlow, a man keenly aware of how finely balanced are the forces of good and evil doing battle within him. He has learned to live with a constant personal struggle to ensure that the good inside him maintains its upper hand on the evil he knows to be buried not so deeply in his heart, a struggle he does not always win.

Socrates Fortlow, by the time that we catch up with him again, has spent some twenty-seven years of his life in prison for the crimes of murder and rape. He readily admits to the brutal rape and two murders that put him away and is somewhat surprised that he was ever allowed to see the light of day again as a free man. For several years now, Socrates has been content to live a quiet life, determined to fly under the radar of Los Angeles law enforcement, and he is still somewhat surprised at his freedom. But now he has a new project - one that will turn him into a celebrity of sorts and is guaranteed to catch the suspicious eye of the LAPD to such an extent that it jeopardizes his freedom.

Socrates has boldly finagled for himself an all-but-free lease on a big tin-covered house, nicknamed the Big Nickel that he wants to turn into a community center, a place that is large enough to host his new Thursday Night Thinkers' Meetings. The Thinkers are a diverse group, most of them members at the personal invitation of Socrates, comprised of several races, religions, and economic backgrounds. The group includes professional gambler Billy Psalms, hugely successful and wealthy "junk dealer Chaim Zetel, despised murderer Ronald Zeal, Zeal lawyer Cassie Wheaton, popular singer Marianne Lodz, respected carpenter Antonio Peron, and karate master Wan Tai. Led by Socrates, they come to the Big Nickel every Thursday night to discuss the world in which they all live and how they might change themselves in ways that would make that world a better place for all of them.

Socrates has put his group together in a way that cannot help but produce lively, often threatening, debate when the topic turns to race but in time its members come to relish the arguments that allow them to see their lives in ways they would otherwise have never considered. As the Thinkers learn to respect each other as individuals instead of focusing on racial and social differences, meaningful relationships and support groups are formed and even Socrates is challenged in a way he could never have foreseen.

Understandably, the LAPD cannot accept the possibility that nothing criminal is happening in the Big Nickel because there are simply too many known criminals coming and going from the place. Socrates has made the Big Nickel available to neighborhood gangs as a place to which they can come to safely negotiate their street differences. Known drug dealers and dangerous criminals like Ron Zeal are regulars. So sure that the Big Nickel is a way for Socrates to disguise his criminal activities, the department manages to place an undercover cop into the Thinkers, a decision that will indirectly lead to another murder trial for Socrates Fortlow.

What happens among those attending the Thursday night meetings will likely be seen as wishful thinking by some readers, a little too utopian for the real world, they will say. But what Walter Mosley describes is not impossible; hey, it could just happen. And Mosley has filled The Right Mistake with the kinds of people that will have readers wanting to believe that what he describes might actually happen someday, that one little corner of the world will become a better place because a man with nothing to lose decided to make a difference.

Socrates Fortlow is that man for his Watts neighborhood.

Walter Mosley, hands down, is the best writer of popular fiction in the U.S. today. He's most noted for his Easy Rawlins and Fearless Jones mysteries, but occasionally, Mosley gets the urge to write literature. This is where his Socrates Fortlow series comes in. Socco is Mosley's most ambitious attempt at character creation: a murderer, rapist, now ex-con, released from prison in the twilight of his life to find his way in the world. Socrates is burdened with more curses than Job--he's old, uneducated, thuggish, black, fat and worst of all, he has a conscience. In the first two books of the series, Socrates is just trying to figure out how a black ex-con with nothing can survive in a white man's world. Socco has little going for him except his bulldogged determination to make a place for himself.

But in THE RIGHT MISTAKE, Mosley has Socrates raise his sights. Not only must Socrates find redemption for himself, he must take on the all the man-made problems of the Watts community. Socco creates the Nickel House, where gang leaders can hold peace talks, where addicts and prostitutes can come for help, and, at which every Thursday night, the "Thinker's Club" gathers to discuss their community, their problems, and to come up with possible solutions. The gathering is a rag-tag collection from all walks of life: a black lawyer, a Hispanic carpenter, a Jew from Cheviot Hills, a suspected murderer, some local women, Socco's teenage protege Daryl, a self-important preacher, a gay couple from Venice, a martial arts teacher, etc.

Socrates's questions force the members of the group (including himself) to look inward and examine their deepest selves. At one point, he summons the black members of the "Thinker's Group" into a special Friday night session to argue what it is to be black and then to show them the answer isn't important. What is important is the quality of person each is. They are to judge themselves, not on the color of their skins, but on the content of their characters.

Not unexpected in a Mosley novel, the jaundice eye of the police is focused on the Nickel House. They assume that no good can be going on in a house where so many of the dregs of society gather. The police use their tactics of undercover agents, planted evidence and arbitrary arrests to intimidate and harass Socrates. But the Socrates of this book is a calmer, more self-controlled person than he was in the first two books. He is a man at peace with himself, and so the threats of incarceration and/or death hold no fear for him.

Literature helps us to better understand what it is to be human. In THE RIGHT MISTAKE, Walter Mosley through his Socrates Fortlow character takes on this task. Few writers today can do this as well as Mosley.

I would think that Walter Mosley could easily coast on his reputation at this stage his long career, but this excellent little book shows he still wants to go past other writers.

His main character is far from sympathetic; a convicted, and confessed, multiple murderer and rapist who has spent nearly all of his adult life in prison. Socrates Fortlow now lives on the fringes of society in South Central LA collecting bottles and cans to survive and living in a shack in a small alley. However due to a change in his life be takes on the responsibility of bringing together a mixture of people to discuss issues. The police do not care for this and what follows is a mixture of philosophical discourses and a police frame-up.

In 2004 Mosley published 'The Man In My Basement' that really changed my perception of the black experience in America. I don't think that any white person, such as me, can fully understand that or appreciate the subtleties, but Mosley goes a long way of educating me.

This is an excellent book and I highly recommend it.

I am a fan of Mr. Mosley's work and have read nearly all of his books. The Socrates Fortlow series is some of his best work, and this is by far the best of his offering in this series. The philosophy is here, people. It isn't that hard to do. Mr. Mosley captures the right approach to solving societies problems. Not in making mistakes and waiting for someone else to solve it for you, but taking the steps to solve your own problems. Taking responsibility for your own actions and walking the narrow path regardless of the consequences.

Bravo, Mr. Mosley. And thank you.