June 3, 2014, 7:30pm. Ticket $25. At the Ann and Jerry Moss Theater at New Roads School, 3131 W. Olympic Blvd., Santa Monica. Immediately west of Centinela. Limited free parking on the campus; please arrive early to get a space. Tickets, $25.
Walter Mosley, creator of Easy Rawlins (Devil in a Blue Dress), one of the most beloved private eyes in Los Angeles literary history, walks away from mystery and returns to literary novels in surely one of his most powerful and electrifying books to date, Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore.
While Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series gave us a glimpse into Watts from post World War II for several decades, Mosley takes us into the porn world– the strange, degrading, ruthless world of adult film. We loved Mosley’s truth in Easy Rawlins– and his truth is louder, sometimes more difficult, with international porn star Debbie. When she finds her husband electrocuted in their bathtub with a young “actress,” Debbie opts out. But opting out isn’t as simple as she imagined. Walter Mosley is a writer whose characters sound so real within their times, who bring us to a new level of understanding about the world in which we live– even though that world, most often Los Angeles, can be pretty harrowing. While the direction and characters have changed direction, fans of Walter Mosley will recognize and welcome the familiar elements that have made him a bestselling and award winning novelist.
David Ulin is the book critic for the Los Angeles Times and knows the back streets of Los Angeles in literature like no one else. He is the editor of several anthologies, including Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology; Another City: Writing from Los Angeles; and Los Angeles: Portrait of a City. He is also the author of The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time.