Walkin' the Dog

by Walter Mosley

Book Overview

Socrates Fortlow, an ex-convict forced to define his own morality in a lawless world, confronts wrongs that most people would rather ignore and comes face-to-face with the most dangerous emotion: hope. It has been nine years since his release from prison, and he still makes his home in a two-room shack in a Watts alley. But he has a girlfriend now, a steady job, and he is even caring for a pet, the two-legged dog he calls Killer. These responsibilities...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316966207
• ISBN13: 9780316966207
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Excllent storyline and street philosophy

After residing as a guest of the State of Indiana for half of his life, sexagenarian Socrates Fortlow has gone straight for the past decade, living in Los Angeles. However, once convicted as a murderer-rapist, always convicted by the police. Any violent crime in the neighborhood means Socrates is one of the usual suspects. In his brave barren world, Socrates is becoming a champion of the underdog (human and canine), but has no idea where his new role will lead him. WALKIN' THE DOG is actually an interrelated short story collection that works because Walter Mosley makes each story show growth in Socrates. Nothing is sacred especially society's major social, political, and racial issues as the star of the book lives up to his more illustrious namesake with a street corner philosophy. Readers will enjoy this anthology and want to read the first Socrates story (see ALWAYS OUTNUMBERED, ALWAYS OUTGUNNED) as well as demand from Mr. Mosley a follow-up tale that shows what happens to the lead protagonist at the crosswalk of life.Harriet Klausner

Magnificent Mosley

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.

An original character from a powerful writer

Socrates Fortlow is one of the great creations in American fiction. A man still living out his sentence even though he's been out of prison nine years, he struggles to be a good man, a decent man, a man who makes a difference. He takes care of his two-legged dog, his adopted son Darryl, and tries to defend his neighborhood from the depredations of a bad cop; but Mosley, a writer whose prose is poetic, does not romanticize him. There is life in this collection of scenes set in LA's South Central.

New Moseley fan

I've never read any other Walter Moseley titles before, so I can't compare this to his other works. But I loved this book. The characters were well drawn and represented an entertaining and realistic cross section of L.A. types. I thought the device of putting the characters in a discussion group was wonderful... a setup to let Mosely voice his own internal arguments, but done in a way that still seemed natural. I liked hearing the complex, paradoxical, conflicting and human mix of views that these characters hashed out in their meetings.

socrates does it again

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.