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John Woman
The New York Times bestselling author of the Easy Rawlins novels delivers “a taut, riveting, and artfully edgy saga” of one man’s self-transformation (Kirkus). At twelve years old, Cornelius Jones, the son of an Italian-American woman and a black man from Mississippi, secretly takes over his father’s job at a silent film theater in New York’s East Village—until the innocent scheme goes tragically wrong. Years later, his dying father imparts this piece of wisdom to The person who controls the narrative of history controls their own fate. After his father dies and his mother disappears, Cornelius sets about reinventing himself—becoming Professor John Woman, a man who will spread his father’s teachings through the classrooms of an unorthodox southwestern university and beyond. But there are other individuals who are attempting to influence the narrative of John Woman, and who might know something about the facts of his hidden past. Engaging with some of the most provocative ideas of recent intellectual history, John Woman is a compulsively readable, deliciously unexpected novel about the way we tell stories, and whether the stories we tell have the power to change the world
377 pages, Hardcover
First published September 4, 2018
493 people are currently reading
2172 people want to read
About the author
Walter Mosley
206 books3,908 followersWalter Mosley (b. 1952) is the author of the bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins, as well as numerous other works, from literary fiction and science fiction to a young adult novel and political monographs. His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and the Nation, among other publications. Mosley is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a Grammy, and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 376 reviews
January 3, 2021
This is one of the most deeply aggravating novels I've ever read. The characters are unbelievable, the story line ridiculous, the action implausible, the relationships between men and women misogynistic and frequently repulsive. The hoped-for scenes of denouement come and go without resolution: after many pages of anticipation of a big show-down, two antagonistic characters finally meet and nothing happens. Over and over again.
Why am I giving it 5 stars? Well honestly it could have been 1 star just as easily except for this: I've decided to take a leap of faith with Walter Mosley.
I've decided to think, for instance, that when he writes a misogynistic scene it's for a purpose other than revolting me. It is a big leap to make, and I understand if other readers can't quite see the other side of the chasm.
But let's just say for now that this masterful storyteller isn't just blowing off steam, writing a quickie because he has nothing better to write. Let's say every sentence here is purposeful, up to and including when a prostitute says to her john the most limp and clichéd line possible: "I'm just a whore." Let go of your judgmental thoughts, and also, notice that a good third of the dialog in this novel consists of historiographical meanderings all leading to the conclusion that stories, even true ones, even what we call history, are imaginary constructs, made up by the powerful to take away even more power from the weak.
Let's say you start applying these historiographical meanderings to the story you're reading here on the page. Interesting things start to happen.
For instance you learn the whore has a day job and all sorts of other lives and she knows that about herself even when the narrator in a previous chapter made her say "I'm just a whore."
You learn that the protagonist, John Woman, who has been presented as having agency and as the hero of this story, is actually a pawn in a rich white man's cultish game.
There are many other mind tricks and challenges being thrown at the reader here, all at once, and the act of reading and interpreting the story demonstrates very literally the core thesis, that there is no truth, no cause-and-effect, no matter how we search for it, or try to make our own connections in this story.
You might hate it. It could be I'm just making this all up. But that, too, would turn back to the core philosophical thesis that threads through this entire novel. Is Cy Twombly's art a scribble on the canvas, or something deeper? Is this book a meandering journey without a moral, or is it a way into thinking about the nature of storytelling, and truth, and the uses of history?
I'll be thinking about this for a long time.
Why am I giving it 5 stars? Well honestly it could have been 1 star just as easily except for this: I've decided to take a leap of faith with Walter Mosley.
I've decided to think, for instance, that when he writes a misogynistic scene it's for a purpose other than revolting me. It is a big leap to make, and I understand if other readers can't quite see the other side of the chasm.
But let's just say for now that this masterful storyteller isn't just blowing off steam, writing a quickie because he has nothing better to write. Let's say every sentence here is purposeful, up to and including when a prostitute says to her john the most limp and clichéd line possible: "I'm just a whore." Let go of your judgmental thoughts, and also, notice that a good third of the dialog in this novel consists of historiographical meanderings all leading to the conclusion that stories, even true ones, even what we call history, are imaginary constructs, made up by the powerful to take away even more power from the weak.
Let's say you start applying these historiographical meanderings to the story you're reading here on the page. Interesting things start to happen.
For instance you learn the whore has a day job and all sorts of other lives and she knows that about herself even when the narrator in a previous chapter made her say "I'm just a whore."
You learn that the protagonist, John Woman, who has been presented as having agency and as the hero of this story, is actually a pawn in a rich white man's cultish game.
There are many other mind tricks and challenges being thrown at the reader here, all at once, and the act of reading and interpreting the story demonstrates very literally the core thesis, that there is no truth, no cause-and-effect, no matter how we search for it, or try to make our own connections in this story.
You might hate it. It could be I'm just making this all up. But that, too, would turn back to the core philosophical thesis that threads through this entire novel. Is Cy Twombly's art a scribble on the canvas, or something deeper? Is this book a meandering journey without a moral, or is it a way into thinking about the nature of storytelling, and truth, and the uses of history?
I'll be thinking about this for a long time.
May 6, 2020
I'd previously read a couple of Mosley’s books (Cinnamon Kiss and Down the River Unto the Sea) and though I’d appreciated the prose I didn't really enjoy the way in which the stories were stitched together. But I knew the man could write and I’d read enough about this book to know that this was a departure from his normal output. And in fact this book certainly is different – different from pretty much anything else I’ve read, in fact.
It starts off as a story about a boy, Cornelius (or CC), who is juggling the requirements of school with the need to cover his sick father’s job as a projectionist at the local cinema. Money is tight and this is the only way they can make ends meet. It’s clear early on though that his father isn't going to recover from his illness. In the meantime CC is learning a good deal from his intellectual dad. CC reads to him at his bedside and they discuss all manner of challenging tomes. His mother is living a separate life and though CC loves her dearly there is no chance of a reconciliation with his father. A fateful event brings this section of the book to a close.
From here on we pick up CC’s story when he’s managed to complete his education and change his identity. He’s now a history professor at an unorthodox university. His new name is John Woman (you’ll have to read the book to find out why he adopted this moniker) and the course he runs challenges the views and accounts espoused by conventional historians. In essence, he propounds a theory that we should not trust what history books tell us as we can never know what truly happened – history was written by people with an agenda or without knowledge of the full facts.
A good deal of what follows amounts to a discussion between JW and his students: he talks, they ask questions of him and he asks questions of them. It’s interesting stuff but the language is sometimes challenging and I found that it wasn't always easy to follow the thread of JW’s arguments. There is the additional intrigue of his personal relationship with at least one of the students and the office politics that arise from the contrary views of some of his colleagues concerning his course. Then there's the university itself – it really is very unorthodox indeed.
Don't get the idea there's no mystery or excitement here, there is. But at heart this is very much a literary novel, so fans of the author’s crime fiction beware. It’s intelligent, sometimes confusing but always readable. I found myself missing the book when I wasn't engrossed in reading it. I never really knew where it was taking me but that was part of the fascination.
My only real grumble is that I was confused by the ending. I read the last section twice but I still wasn't clear on either the ‘what’ or the ‘why’ of it. But maybe that's just me. Please don't be put off from trying this one out – I’ll wager that it’ll stretch your mind and make you re-consider some long held views (it did me). Above all, I believe there's a better than even chance it’ll entertain you.
My thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
It starts off as a story about a boy, Cornelius (or CC), who is juggling the requirements of school with the need to cover his sick father’s job as a projectionist at the local cinema. Money is tight and this is the only way they can make ends meet. It’s clear early on though that his father isn't going to recover from his illness. In the meantime CC is learning a good deal from his intellectual dad. CC reads to him at his bedside and they discuss all manner of challenging tomes. His mother is living a separate life and though CC loves her dearly there is no chance of a reconciliation with his father. A fateful event brings this section of the book to a close.
From here on we pick up CC’s story when he’s managed to complete his education and change his identity. He’s now a history professor at an unorthodox university. His new name is John Woman (you’ll have to read the book to find out why he adopted this moniker) and the course he runs challenges the views and accounts espoused by conventional historians. In essence, he propounds a theory that we should not trust what history books tell us as we can never know what truly happened – history was written by people with an agenda or without knowledge of the full facts.
A good deal of what follows amounts to a discussion between JW and his students: he talks, they ask questions of him and he asks questions of them. It’s interesting stuff but the language is sometimes challenging and I found that it wasn't always easy to follow the thread of JW’s arguments. There is the additional intrigue of his personal relationship with at least one of the students and the office politics that arise from the contrary views of some of his colleagues concerning his course. Then there's the university itself – it really is very unorthodox indeed.
Don't get the idea there's no mystery or excitement here, there is. But at heart this is very much a literary novel, so fans of the author’s crime fiction beware. It’s intelligent, sometimes confusing but always readable. I found myself missing the book when I wasn't engrossed in reading it. I never really knew where it was taking me but that was part of the fascination.
My only real grumble is that I was confused by the ending. I read the last section twice but I still wasn't clear on either the ‘what’ or the ‘why’ of it. But maybe that's just me. Please don't be put off from trying this one out – I’ll wager that it’ll stretch your mind and make you re-consider some long held views (it did me). Above all, I believe there's a better than even chance it’ll entertain you.
My thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
May 12, 2019
Ah, another book by Walter Mosley. If you are familiar with Mosley from his Easy Rawlins series, this may not be a satisfying read for you. If you are familiar with Mosley from his Leonid McGill series, it might be an easier transition.
Mosley has given his readers many facets of the plight of the poor (mostly urban, mostly African-American) segment of American society. They include: the challenges of maintaining a family; the lack of a safety net of social services; the police indifference and harassment; and, the difficulties of getting through a day without grievous bodily harm. Those are continuing themes.
This book is more of an excuse or vehicle for Mosley’s thoughts about history, the intangibles that parents bequeath to their children, and the intricacies of self-reinvention. The plot is subservient to excursions into the realm of the mind and we readers are given Mosley’s “professorial” ruminations.
The plot involves the arc of the life of “John Woman” (pronounced Woe’ man) from a teenager to a man in his thirties. “John” is the product of a mixed marriage. His mother is the “ying” and his father, the “yang” in a relationship that is tenuous at best. Mosley casts the father as a self-taught intellectual intent on conveying his view of humanity and life to his son. For example:
“What I tell you here is the understanding of all things human. From architecture to xenial relations sex is the root, the infrastructure, if you will, not only of human activities but of all life. Once you understand that you will have mastered one of the four pillars of historical thinking.” Not surprising that “John” becomes an unconventional historian and with his Ivy League education is hired by a rather new university in America’s desert Southwest.
“John” has a big secret that drives much of the plot. It is the most conventional part of this novel. It includes an element about the "deep non-state" that is particularly jarring. The plot lacks some of the structure and rich characterization that was part of Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. Perhaps, I am being too critical, but if I am going to take a trip down “the allegory trail” I would like to know that in advance. The reader reaction that Mosley is reaching for may be the one which one of his characters articulates as follows: “The last time I saw you you said that history is a tool like a hammer or a saw…And you were just talkin’…but what you said was new to me. It stuck. I thought about it for weeks and weeks. It seemed so important but I couldn’t tell how. I was going to ask you but you never came back. And that was better because the question stayed in my mind; I couldn’t let it go…Thinking and thinking…and finally it hit me.”
For me, this book owes much of its structure (and pedantry) to Plato and how he used his cave in his very famous Republic. I am one who is very interested in what Mosley has to say, but I wonder whether this “lecture” format will be satisfying for those who are less comitted. Certainly, this is NOT the place to start in enjoying what Mosley has to offer.
Mosley has given his readers many facets of the plight of the poor (mostly urban, mostly African-American) segment of American society. They include: the challenges of maintaining a family; the lack of a safety net of social services; the police indifference and harassment; and, the difficulties of getting through a day without grievous bodily harm. Those are continuing themes.
This book is more of an excuse or vehicle for Mosley’s thoughts about history, the intangibles that parents bequeath to their children, and the intricacies of self-reinvention. The plot is subservient to excursions into the realm of the mind and we readers are given Mosley’s “professorial” ruminations.
The plot involves the arc of the life of “John Woman” (pronounced Woe’ man) from a teenager to a man in his thirties. “John” is the product of a mixed marriage. His mother is the “ying” and his father, the “yang” in a relationship that is tenuous at best. Mosley casts the father as a self-taught intellectual intent on conveying his view of humanity and life to his son. For example:
“What I tell you here is the understanding of all things human. From architecture to xenial relations sex is the root, the infrastructure, if you will, not only of human activities but of all life. Once you understand that you will have mastered one of the four pillars of historical thinking.” Not surprising that “John” becomes an unconventional historian and with his Ivy League education is hired by a rather new university in America’s desert Southwest.
“John” has a big secret that drives much of the plot. It is the most conventional part of this novel. It includes an element about the "deep non-state" that is particularly jarring. The plot lacks some of the structure and rich characterization that was part of Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. Perhaps, I am being too critical, but if I am going to take a trip down “the allegory trail” I would like to know that in advance. The reader reaction that Mosley is reaching for may be the one which one of his characters articulates as follows: “The last time I saw you you said that history is a tool like a hammer or a saw…And you were just talkin’…but what you said was new to me. It stuck. I thought about it for weeks and weeks. It seemed so important but I couldn’t tell how. I was going to ask you but you never came back. And that was better because the question stayed in my mind; I couldn’t let it go…Thinking and thinking…and finally it hit me.”
For me, this book owes much of its structure (and pedantry) to Plato and how he used his cave in his very famous Republic. I am one who is very interested in what Mosley has to say, but I wonder whether this “lecture” format will be satisfying for those who are less comitted. Certainly, this is NOT the place to start in enjoying what Mosley has to offer.
November 2, 2018
I've read several of Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins titles and have enjoyed them all, but there is something special about his most recent offering "John Woman."
As always, Mosley's characters are fully filled out with strengths and weaknesses that allow them to be believable and achievable. Men and women are treated alike in this manner by the author.
It is hard to pigeonhole John Woman's genre. There is suspense, unpunished crime, a conspiracy that is actual rather than theorized and there is family. The author examines several cultural constructs through the eyes of his protagonist, taking the reader on several journeys in one book.
In my mind, John Woman is literature. It is a book I will reread because I don't feel as if I "got" everything I could from the story's complexities and thought-provoking ideas. Perhaps I'm making too much of the stories within the story, but if so, don't disabuse me of my thoughts. I like the awakening in my thinking and a different perspective from which to view life.
As always, Mosley's characters are fully filled out with strengths and weaknesses that allow them to be believable and achievable. Men and women are treated alike in this manner by the author.
It is hard to pigeonhole John Woman's genre. There is suspense, unpunished crime, a conspiracy that is actual rather than theorized and there is family. The author examines several cultural constructs through the eyes of his protagonist, taking the reader on several journeys in one book.
In my mind, John Woman is literature. It is a book I will reread because I don't feel as if I "got" everything I could from the story's complexities and thought-provoking ideas. Perhaps I'm making too much of the stories within the story, but if so, don't disabuse me of my thoughts. I like the awakening in my thinking and a different perspective from which to view life.
Read
August 30, 2018DNF-no rating. I read to 39% and I'm done.
I am really not enjoying this at all. First off, I have an issue with any sexual relationship between adults and teens. I don't care how 'mature' the child (17 yr old) is supposed to be, how hard his/her life has been to make them grow up fast. A 31 year old woman has absolutely no business having sex with a 17 year old. Not just sex, but aggressive sex that leaves him confused about his own reactions to her.
I made it through the first part of this story thinking that MAYBE there would be some story development that would engage me enough to get to and through the murder and investigation, but with the emergence of John Woman as an adult and the introduction of his life as a professor, I am so disinterested that I am just throwing in the towel. Between the pretentious debate about what history is and isn't and John Woman's internal dialogues and musings I'm going to just assume that I am not the kind of reader who can stick with and enjoy this story. I am apparently not avant-garde enough to enjoy this esoteric story. I'm highly disappointed as I love the Easy Rawlins series. Every story isn't for everyone and this one is definitely not for me.
**I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.**
You can find me at:
•(♥).•*Monlatable Book Reviews*•.(♥)•
Twitter: @MonlatReader
Instagram: @readermonica
Facebook: Monica Reeds
Goodreads Group: The Black Bookcase
I am really not enjoying this at all. First off, I have an issue with any sexual relationship between adults and teens. I don't care how 'mature' the child (17 yr old) is supposed to be, how hard his/her life has been to make them grow up fast. A 31 year old woman has absolutely no business having sex with a 17 year old. Not just sex, but aggressive sex that leaves him confused about his own reactions to her.
I made it through the first part of this story thinking that MAYBE there would be some story development that would engage me enough to get to and through the murder and investigation, but with the emergence of John Woman as an adult and the introduction of his life as a professor, I am so disinterested that I am just throwing in the towel. Between the pretentious debate about what history is and isn't and John Woman's internal dialogues and musings I'm going to just assume that I am not the kind of reader who can stick with and enjoy this story. I am apparently not avant-garde enough to enjoy this esoteric story. I'm highly disappointed as I love the Easy Rawlins series. Every story isn't for everyone and this one is definitely not for me.
**I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.**
You can find me at:
•(♥).•*Monlatable Book Reviews*•.(♥)•
Twitter: @MonlatReader
Instagram: @readermonica
Facebook: Monica Reeds
Goodreads Group: The Black Bookcase
don-t-count
December 23, 2025I gave this the ol' college try, and I think, well, it's just not for me. The writing is vivid and perfect--I do love how Mosley writes--but, well. Let me be blunt. At the point where the 14 year old is (trigger warning) I was quite done. The child has been raised in a very misogynistic household, so it feels like one of those John Irving books where the lead male character has one of those Complicated Reactions to Women Syndrome and is unconvinced they may actually be People. Maybe someday I'll go back and read more, because I think the story jumps ahead a decade shortly after this, but not any time soon.
September 5, 2018
A most unorthodox novel from Walter Mosley. But as the master he is, Mosley is able to write across genres without any falloff from his usual focus. You the reader, may never think the same way about the subject of history and its convention as useful and practical for study. Mosley delights with John Woman, the professor of historyish class offerings. John Woman is not his birth name, that would be Cornelius Jones, but after a bit of trouble he renames and remakes himself Professor John Woman.
His predicament that causes the name change starts with him being a very loving son to an auto-didactic father, Herman Jones. The writing that fleshes out this story is fantastic with lots of references to books, philosophers and philosophy allowing the readers to experience along with Cornelius/John the brilliance of his father’s mind as he is dying at a much too early age from heart disease.
The teaching and insights gained are often of the unconventional type, like
“Nothing ever happens in the past,” Herman was fond of saying, sitting erect among the pillows Cornelius would prop up behind him. “The past is gone and unobtainable. It is more removed from our lives than is God and yet it controls us just as He is purported to do.”
Or this gem of a lesson, “We all fade into the tapestry of the past,” Herman often said, “becoming like so many tiny knots in the weave of fine Chinese silk. There is nothing to distinguish you, me, or even who we might think is a great man. Time passes and we all diminish until the fabric of our age renders unto dust.”
This makes this novel so much more interesting than it would have been if done ‘conventionally.’ Mosley has packed a lot in these pages and the unpacking is challenging, intriguing and always fun. Not for the prudish, as there are some sex scenes that heat up the page. I don’t want to give away too much, so I’m being very reserved in how I write this review. Just know that the journey from Cornelius to Professor John Woman is lined with knowledge, inspiration and wisdom.
“All the books I have read swirl around like an ocean, with every page a wave. And now I drift in that vastness buoyed up by slippery knowledge, starving from want of anything with sustenance.”
The ending is a bit disappointing, only because it leaves more questions than answers but undoubtedly that is by design and I somehow believe that we will hear from John Woman again. Well done, Mr. Mosley. Thanks to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for an advanced DRC. Book will be available Sept. 4, 2018. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
His predicament that causes the name change starts with him being a very loving son to an auto-didactic father, Herman Jones. The writing that fleshes out this story is fantastic with lots of references to books, philosophers and philosophy allowing the readers to experience along with Cornelius/John the brilliance of his father’s mind as he is dying at a much too early age from heart disease.
The teaching and insights gained are often of the unconventional type, like
“Nothing ever happens in the past,” Herman was fond of saying, sitting erect among the pillows Cornelius would prop up behind him. “The past is gone and unobtainable. It is more removed from our lives than is God and yet it controls us just as He is purported to do.”
Or this gem of a lesson, “We all fade into the tapestry of the past,” Herman often said, “becoming like so many tiny knots in the weave of fine Chinese silk. There is nothing to distinguish you, me, or even who we might think is a great man. Time passes and we all diminish until the fabric of our age renders unto dust.”
This makes this novel so much more interesting than it would have been if done ‘conventionally.’ Mosley has packed a lot in these pages and the unpacking is challenging, intriguing and always fun. Not for the prudish, as there are some sex scenes that heat up the page. I don’t want to give away too much, so I’m being very reserved in how I write this review. Just know that the journey from Cornelius to Professor John Woman is lined with knowledge, inspiration and wisdom.
“All the books I have read swirl around like an ocean, with every page a wave. And now I drift in that vastness buoyed up by slippery knowledge, starving from want of anything with sustenance.”
The ending is a bit disappointing, only because it leaves more questions than answers but undoubtedly that is by design and I somehow believe that we will hear from John Woman again. Well done, Mr. Mosley. Thanks to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for an advanced DRC. Book will be available Sept. 4, 2018. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 20, 2020
6% Done: Hwhhhhhhhhat in dahell is going on up in here.......................................
30% Done: Unpopular Opinion:
I feel like I'm being preached too by Umar Johnson or some brutha who follows the teachings of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem. You get this feeling that there's this pretentious, hotepishness sprinkled with facts and honestly and it's exhausting. No bueno.
75% Done: I don't understand why all the sex. It seems excessive and misplaced. I'm annoyed.
You know I was excited when I heard WM had a new book coming out. I immediately added myself to the wait list and allowed myself to get all excited. THEN THIS COMES OUT. I have never been so pissed about a story line in my life. It's getting 2 stars because Mosley is a national treasure.
30% Done: Unpopular Opinion:
I feel like I'm being preached too by Umar Johnson or some brutha who follows the teachings of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem. You get this feeling that there's this pretentious, hotepishness sprinkled with facts and honestly and it's exhausting. No bueno.
75% Done: I don't understand why all the sex. It seems excessive and misplaced. I'm annoyed.
You know I was excited when I heard WM had a new book coming out. I immediately added myself to the wait list and allowed myself to get all excited. THEN THIS COMES OUT. I have never been so pissed about a story line in my life. It's getting 2 stars because Mosley is a national treasure.
May 13, 2020
A remarkable accomplishment by Walter Mosley, which unfortunately will not appeal to many readers because of the weird discourses within. Almost certainly an ode to his own father, we follow the life of Cornelius (CC) Jones, who basically supports his ailing father Herman by taking over his job as projectionist in an old movie theater. He rushes through school, where he has no friends, to run the movies and be educated by his self-taught father, studying the great books of history and philosophy. Abandoned by his mother, who has run off with a mafioso, Cornelius eventually kills the theater owner when he fires Herman/CC. The lead policewoman investigator and CC start a sexual relationship. When Herman gets sick, she helps bring him home and he imparts final wisdom to CC. One of his gifts is a large sun of money from the ticket-taker, who has been skimming for years, which allow CC to start life anew. We next see CC as Professor John Woman, teaching unorthodox thoughts in history at a small liberal arts school, where he is loved by students and hated by his department colleagues. Eventually, his past catches up with him. A marked departure from his other series, this novel is a thoughtful, erudite story of a young man's journey to self-enlightenment. 3.5 stars, rounded up.
November 27, 2018
This is not your usual Walter Mosley novel. Young Cornelius Jones is forced to take over his father's job as a projectionist when he falls ill. As his mother has already left the household the weight of taking care of his ailing father and their home rests on his shoulders. One night he is surprised by the owner of the movie house. In his desperation he kills the man and hides his body within the walls of the projectionist room. When the police come calling he finds himself intrigued by the young brown eyed female officer. Although he is 17 and she is quite a bit older than he, the two start meeting up and eventually engage in a sexual affair. Their first encounter cannot be construed as anything less than assault. I admit I clutched my pearls. But this is Walter Mosley so I endured and this is where the book gets good, real good. Upon his father's passing Cornelius reinvents himself into John Woman. As such he becomes a passionate, albeit unconventional professor. It is in his deconstruction and reinvention of history that Mosley's literary prowess shines. Such thought provoking and unsettling fare. This book was brilliance. Sheer brilliance.
June 28, 2018
Mosley is one of the most unusual contemporary writers. His style and choice of topics are mind bending and his take is slanted at a contortion not to mention his idiosyncratic language usage. I came to appreciate his books only over the past five years or so assuming he was just another mystery genre writer. He was also guilty in my mind of being overly hyped. I don’t think that anymore.
I’ve read some of his series works without starting at the beginning which might put me at a disadvantage though is enjoyed them nonetheless but his one off books are transcendent though that might come across as overly fawning, my favorite was Debbie Doesn’t Do it Anymore which is about a prostitute in the throes of life changes. John Woman also has a character with the same profession which is one of the few weaknesses of the book...it feels repetitive to the early book but that’s a side issue. The odd title is offputting as well though, again, that’s a cosmetic feature.
John Woman is a history professor who’s survived, barely, an odd childhood. In his early thirties he’s just beginning to take responsibility and realease the blame towards his dysfunctional background. Mosley’s use of extreme plot devices are equally off putting and exhilarating. He creates a shorthand encapsulating current social issues and how they impact society and individuals. It’s a tightrope walk that made me almost afraid to look down while I worried to the last page whether he could pull it off or lose his audience to the stratosphere where we may not choose to follow him. I’m actually still debating if he was successful or not. It think this is the first of his books I’ve given four rather than five stars. No way will I miss his next book.
Thank you to the publisher for providing an ecopy.
I’ve read some of his series works without starting at the beginning which might put me at a disadvantage though is enjoyed them nonetheless but his one off books are transcendent though that might come across as overly fawning, my favorite was Debbie Doesn’t Do it Anymore which is about a prostitute in the throes of life changes. John Woman also has a character with the same profession which is one of the few weaknesses of the book...it feels repetitive to the early book but that’s a side issue. The odd title is offputting as well though, again, that’s a cosmetic feature.
John Woman is a history professor who’s survived, barely, an odd childhood. In his early thirties he’s just beginning to take responsibility and realease the blame towards his dysfunctional background. Mosley’s use of extreme plot devices are equally off putting and exhilarating. He creates a shorthand encapsulating current social issues and how they impact society and individuals. It’s a tightrope walk that made me almost afraid to look down while I worried to the last page whether he could pull it off or lose his audience to the stratosphere where we may not choose to follow him. I’m actually still debating if he was successful or not. It think this is the first of his books I’ve given four rather than five stars. No way will I miss his next book.
Thank you to the publisher for providing an ecopy.
November 22, 2018
John Woman’s unfitting name is a big clue he has identity issues. Those issues relate not just to his name, but to his roles in society as a man, son, lover, educator, victim, attacker, gamer, pawn, and black man. His identity crisis also concerns the intersectionality of these roles.
John Woman was born Cornelius Jones. His friends called him CC. After committing a crime, he created another identity for himself—Reflex Minton—in case he needed to run. He was Anthony Summers before forging papers and attending Yale. He settled on the name John Woman upon accepting a job as a professor at an Arizona university, where most of the story occurs.
A major theme in the novel is John’s frantic need to learn who he is. His mother leaves him in his teens, and his father, who is his mentor, dies at a young age when John is 16.
“His alienation from culture and community cocooned or camouflaged John in nonentity.”
“[H]e was afraid of seers and holy men, worried that their powers might be based on something real, that they’d find him out if he got too close.”
“But the gaze [of a boss] held no power over John—he felt safe behind an exhaustive facade that had taken him nearly half a lifetime to create.”
John’s backstory is contained in a Prologue called “Before the Beginning.” It’s a wild ride. John is between about fourteen and sixteen. His mother runs off with a gangster leaving him alone with his father.
His father is seriously ill. John selflessly cares for him. John takes over his father’s job at a movie house so they don’t become destitute. On the verge of being caught doing his father’s job illegally and becoming poverty-stricken, unable to pay hospital bills, John kills the owner and buries him in a secret wall in the projection room.
John is brutally raped by the policewoman investigating the owner’s disappearance. (It seems John has subconsciously chosen the name John Woman. During the attack, the cop made John say he was her woman as he cried.) John falls in love with his rapist and they have sex multiple times, usually violently. John begins doing pushups and is thrilled when he becomes strong enough to restrain her during sex instead of the other way around.
John’s father, Herman, teaches John about the great philosophers, economic theories, and his personal pearls of wisdom before he dies. The greatest gift his father gives him before his death is when he says:
“[T]he person who controls history controls their fate. The man who can tell you what happened, or did not happen, is lord and master of all he surveys.”
John didn’t know it at the time, but this was the birth of John Woman. And this is another major theme of Mosely’s: History depends on who’s telling it and is subject to interpretation.
There is about a ten-year time jump, and we learn that John (as Anthony Summers) received a doctorate degree from Yale. He’s offered a teaching position near Phoenix at the New University of the Southwest which he accepts as John Woman. He teaches history, specifically, deconstructionist history.
“We must, as scholars of an impossible study, realize that while history is definite, the human investigation of the past can only be art, the one truly deconstructionist art-because the only way to capture the essence of history is to make it up.”
And this is where the novel begins. John Woman as a popular history professor. He’s been there two years. The dean and history review committee are waiting for him to complete a paper for review and publication. He makes enemies with Dean Eubanks who thinks he’s attempting to undermine the department by teaching that all, or most, history texts are fabrications designed to obscure the past. He tells the president, Colin Luckfield, that is exactly what he is teaching.
President Luckfield is rumored to be an elite cult member of a new age religion centered on meta-psychic determinism—the belief that the manifestation of the universal unconscious can be controlled by strong-minded individuals acting together. Luckfield has called him to his office to ask if Willie Pepperdine can audit his classes. Willie’s presence turns out to be a clue that it may not be just Woman who is gaming the system, that he may be being played as well.
Psychologically, the novel is at times, impenetrable. The thought of a 16-year-old methodically bashing in the skull of a man with a wrench is horrifying. So, too, is the police officer’s rape of a minor. That they continued to have sex on occasions after the rape, actually happens. I googled it. But the point Mosley really seems to be making is one of historical context. Once Cornelius Jones becomes John Woman, will anyone ever say a rape occurred? Similarly, will history show Cornelius Jones murdered the owner of the movie house? History depends on who is controlling the facts and the context.
Misogyny reared its ugly head in the novel more than once. But Mosley seems to use it intentionally. A female student speaks to Professor Woman on the first day of class and “John, for some reason, didn’t use the term Ms. for her.” “Because of her indecision at the doorway he assumed that she was unfocused, flighty. He dismissed her potential…” Is the point that he listens to her when she speaks and determines she’s smart, crushing his stereotype? He uses a student in his class purely for his physical pleasure. Or was she using him? The world in the novel is thrown on its head.
Mosely alludes to race, but doesn’t openly discuss it. As readers, we understand one of Professor Woman’s main problems is slavery is omitted from the history books. In fact, one of the central questions the novel asks is who should have the power to write history? John Woman answers that question at the end.
John Woman is engaging and thought-provoking. It leaves you with a desire to care for your own history. Amor fati.
John Woman was born Cornelius Jones. His friends called him CC. After committing a crime, he created another identity for himself—Reflex Minton—in case he needed to run. He was Anthony Summers before forging papers and attending Yale. He settled on the name John Woman upon accepting a job as a professor at an Arizona university, where most of the story occurs.
A major theme in the novel is John’s frantic need to learn who he is. His mother leaves him in his teens, and his father, who is his mentor, dies at a young age when John is 16.
“His alienation from culture and community cocooned or camouflaged John in nonentity.”
“[H]e was afraid of seers and holy men, worried that their powers might be based on something real, that they’d find him out if he got too close.”
“But the gaze [of a boss] held no power over John—he felt safe behind an exhaustive facade that had taken him nearly half a lifetime to create.”
John’s backstory is contained in a Prologue called “Before the Beginning.” It’s a wild ride. John is between about fourteen and sixteen. His mother runs off with a gangster leaving him alone with his father.
His father is seriously ill. John selflessly cares for him. John takes over his father’s job at a movie house so they don’t become destitute. On the verge of being caught doing his father’s job illegally and becoming poverty-stricken, unable to pay hospital bills, John kills the owner and buries him in a secret wall in the projection room.
John is brutally raped by the policewoman investigating the owner’s disappearance. (It seems John has subconsciously chosen the name John Woman. During the attack, the cop made John say he was her woman as he cried.) John falls in love with his rapist and they have sex multiple times, usually violently. John begins doing pushups and is thrilled when he becomes strong enough to restrain her during sex instead of the other way around.
John’s father, Herman, teaches John about the great philosophers, economic theories, and his personal pearls of wisdom before he dies. The greatest gift his father gives him before his death is when he says:
“[T]he person who controls history controls their fate. The man who can tell you what happened, or did not happen, is lord and master of all he surveys.”
John didn’t know it at the time, but this was the birth of John Woman. And this is another major theme of Mosely’s: History depends on who’s telling it and is subject to interpretation.
There is about a ten-year time jump, and we learn that John (as Anthony Summers) received a doctorate degree from Yale. He’s offered a teaching position near Phoenix at the New University of the Southwest which he accepts as John Woman. He teaches history, specifically, deconstructionist history.
“We must, as scholars of an impossible study, realize that while history is definite, the human investigation of the past can only be art, the one truly deconstructionist art-because the only way to capture the essence of history is to make it up.”
And this is where the novel begins. John Woman as a popular history professor. He’s been there two years. The dean and history review committee are waiting for him to complete a paper for review and publication. He makes enemies with Dean Eubanks who thinks he’s attempting to undermine the department by teaching that all, or most, history texts are fabrications designed to obscure the past. He tells the president, Colin Luckfield, that is exactly what he is teaching.
President Luckfield is rumored to be an elite cult member of a new age religion centered on meta-psychic determinism—the belief that the manifestation of the universal unconscious can be controlled by strong-minded individuals acting together. Luckfield has called him to his office to ask if Willie Pepperdine can audit his classes. Willie’s presence turns out to be a clue that it may not be just Woman who is gaming the system, that he may be being played as well.
Psychologically, the novel is at times, impenetrable. The thought of a 16-year-old methodically bashing in the skull of a man with a wrench is horrifying. So, too, is the police officer’s rape of a minor. That they continued to have sex on occasions after the rape, actually happens. I googled it. But the point Mosley really seems to be making is one of historical context. Once Cornelius Jones becomes John Woman, will anyone ever say a rape occurred? Similarly, will history show Cornelius Jones murdered the owner of the movie house? History depends on who is controlling the facts and the context.
Misogyny reared its ugly head in the novel more than once. But Mosley seems to use it intentionally. A female student speaks to Professor Woman on the first day of class and “John, for some reason, didn’t use the term Ms. for her.” “Because of her indecision at the doorway he assumed that she was unfocused, flighty. He dismissed her potential…” Is the point that he listens to her when she speaks and determines she’s smart, crushing his stereotype? He uses a student in his class purely for his physical pleasure. Or was she using him? The world in the novel is thrown on its head.
Mosely alludes to race, but doesn’t openly discuss it. As readers, we understand one of Professor Woman’s main problems is slavery is omitted from the history books. In fact, one of the central questions the novel asks is who should have the power to write history? John Woman answers that question at the end.
John Woman is engaging and thought-provoking. It leaves you with a desire to care for your own history. Amor fati.
August 12, 2018
When I was in college, one of my professors handed out the text of a very old newspaper article about a violent mob that rioted and how the army restored peace. It made it abundantly clear that the fault lay with the mob and sure enough, in time, the soldiers who fired on the rioters were acquitted. It was the Incident on King Street, something we call the Boston Massacre and describe very differently. It was an early example of how history is not just facts, but facts seen through different lenses depending on the viewer. That idea is the central theme of John Woman, a bold and engaging new novel from Walter Mosley.
Mosley is best known for his Easy Rawlins series of noir mysteries but has also written several stand-alone novels and nonfiction books. He is a public intellectual who has, in John Woman, married his fiction to his passion for history and historiography. The book introduces us to the child Cornelius. Growing up, Cornelius reads history and philosophy books to his father, becoming deeply steeped in history and in his father’s wise understanding of the power of narrative. This understanding of narrative helps him when he commits a crime to protect his father and himself. It guides him in reinventing himself as John Woman after his father dies at the end of Part One.
Much of the story is his struggle with other historians on the faculty where he worked and his exploration of history. He also has relationships with two women though no one would ever call those relationships love affairs. His lectures sometimes go viral and someone knows who he is as he receives a few vaguely threatening letters to Cornelius.
The university where he works is associated with a powerful cult-like group with a noble mission of saving humanity from its worse impulses. They aid John Woman a lot, seeing in him a potential asset, but who then is writing the narrative?
John Woman is fascinating for lovers of history. John Woman deconstructs history as a challenge to think for ourselves, to realize we must control our narrative. Some of his conflict with fellow history professors is they misunderstand his message. He’s not erasing history, he is expanding history. He’s taking the commonplace idea that history is written by the winners and suggesting a truer history is written by everyone.
The plot is a bit contrived with some all-powerful people intervening in unlikely ways, though considering the cult of Scientology and its overweening regulation of its members, I guess the Platinum Path is not completely unrealistic. They are the least interesting part of the book and other than as a plot device to move things along, I would happily see them gone from the book. John Woman is far more interesting as a person than as a pawn.
I liked John Woman a lot, but then, isn’t everything Walter Mosley writes excellent?
John Woman will be released September 4th. I received an e-galley from the publisher through Edelweiss.
John Woman at Grove Atlantic
Walter Mosley author site
★★★★
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...
Mosley is best known for his Easy Rawlins series of noir mysteries but has also written several stand-alone novels and nonfiction books. He is a public intellectual who has, in John Woman, married his fiction to his passion for history and historiography. The book introduces us to the child Cornelius. Growing up, Cornelius reads history and philosophy books to his father, becoming deeply steeped in history and in his father’s wise understanding of the power of narrative. This understanding of narrative helps him when he commits a crime to protect his father and himself. It guides him in reinventing himself as John Woman after his father dies at the end of Part One.
Much of the story is his struggle with other historians on the faculty where he worked and his exploration of history. He also has relationships with two women though no one would ever call those relationships love affairs. His lectures sometimes go viral and someone knows who he is as he receives a few vaguely threatening letters to Cornelius.
The university where he works is associated with a powerful cult-like group with a noble mission of saving humanity from its worse impulses. They aid John Woman a lot, seeing in him a potential asset, but who then is writing the narrative?
John Woman is fascinating for lovers of history. John Woman deconstructs history as a challenge to think for ourselves, to realize we must control our narrative. Some of his conflict with fellow history professors is they misunderstand his message. He’s not erasing history, he is expanding history. He’s taking the commonplace idea that history is written by the winners and suggesting a truer history is written by everyone.
The plot is a bit contrived with some all-powerful people intervening in unlikely ways, though considering the cult of Scientology and its overweening regulation of its members, I guess the Platinum Path is not completely unrealistic. They are the least interesting part of the book and other than as a plot device to move things along, I would happily see them gone from the book. John Woman is far more interesting as a person than as a pawn.
I liked John Woman a lot, but then, isn’t everything Walter Mosley writes excellent?
John Woman will be released September 4th. I received an e-galley from the publisher through Edelweiss.
John Woman at Grove Atlantic
Walter Mosley author site
★★★★
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...
July 30, 2018
“Language is the pinnacle of human achievement.”
Walter Mosley’s latest novel is an example of this axiom uttered by the book’s oracle, Herman Jones. In “John Woman,” the author has crafted an intelligent, perplexing, learned, and worldly story of a young man’s journey to self-knowledge.
For readers familiar with Walter Mosley's work, the main character in this novel, Herman Jones’ son Cornelius Jones, aka John Woman, is as much Mouse as Ezekiel Rawlins. Subordinating action to ideas, the author explores the nature of human history and skewers the belief history is knowable or immutable - yet declares it is also inescapable.
The story follows a familiar Mosely pattern where a character, backed into a corner, reacts and so alters his life forever while also creating a secret that must remain hidden. The hero – Jones/Woman – is part victim, perpetrator, observer, and, mimicking the coyote, trickster. The multiracial son of African-American from the deep South, and Italian-American mother, his father taught himself to read and with his son, consumed volume after volume of history. Herman shared his insights with his young son and instilled in him a passion for knowledge.
As a teen, Cornelius commits a murder to protect himself and his invalid father’s livelihood. He evades detection but his father soon dies and Cornelius attempts to reinvent himself, changing his name, attending college, and earning a doctorate in his father’s beloved field of history. He is hired to teach at a small private college in Arizona. His specialty is in deconstruction as a kind of anti-epistemology, not what and how we know but proposing the impossibility of ever knowing. His approach is not to revise interpretations but jar the observer’s perspective, to expose biases and preconceptions, and to encourage thinking about history in a different way, one that doesn’t automatically infer kings and queens, presidents and premiers; a personal history from which the individual cannot escape and thus remains accountable. Many of the ideas Mosley wishes to express are couched in lectures delivered by Professor John Woman. They also serve to document Professor Woman’s journey toward the inevitable destination where he must own up to his actions.
An exchange between Professor Woman and an African-American student, Johann Malik illustrates much of the books central concept of history. Malik complains the history of African-Americans has been stolen and he wants to get it back. John’s response goes further: “Not stole, Mr. Malik but utterly destroyed. Where our people came from was ripped from the minds of our ancestors. We can rebuild but never retrieve. And there’s an even larger catastrophe intrinsic to that crime…in destroying our history,” John said, “they asphyxiated their own.” John’s thesis, developed with his father, is written history contains lies, omissions, and misinterpretations – supremely unstable ground on which to build the future. John tells Johann the past shaped who we are; it happened, you can’t go back, recover it, or change it, even through reinterpretation. You have to “battle for the future, not the past.”
John takes an extreme view to rattle his student but his point is well-taken. Having covered up, obscured, disguised the past, the realities have become conveniently forgotten. Current events are treated as new, first-time occurrences when they represent a pattern of behavior that has persisted from Revolutionary times. (For example the accusation of “fake news” was widely spread during the First World War.)
Herman Jones stated History rested on four pillars: sex, technology, economics, and the shopping list. It appears that in writing this novel, the first took precedence which for me diminished the overall impact. While speaking to John Woman’s character, enough was enough. The shopping list was more thought provoking as Professor Woman used it as a basis for a lecture demanded by his department head. Herman described the list as needs from which historical events might be extrapolated and providing and entry point into the lives of ordinary people. After finding a diary in a city trashcan, John returned daily to examine the contents and retrieve items he thought represented aspects of local life. He placed the items in a trunk he called the Containment Report, developed a lecture and a visual presentation around the possible meaning, purpose, importance of each item illustrating the impossibility of knowing for certain what was or was not true.
The title of the book, the main character’s assumed name, is unusual. Stemming from an early experience in his life, which Cornelius/John states was the reason he chose it, there is possibly some not so subtle manipulation on the author’s part. To backtrack, the Arizona college is the creation of a society called the Platinum Path dedicated to the betterment of humankind. A wealthy, widespread, and secret society, John, with his variant interpretation of history, is seen as a candidate for a position of importance in the group. Unknown to him, they have influenced his life and offer him protection when his crime is finally discovered. Torn between rejecting their offer or joining the cause, he observes: “What they want is to make the world in their own image. They want to be God and here I am the Woman holding out an apple.” I had to wonder if this image and sentence occurred to Mosely before or after he decided on his character’s name and profession. In moments of self-doubt John wonders if he is the fake his peers label him and frequently identifies with the coyote, alternately the wild animal and the trickster. Is a professor a “temptress,” offering the dangerous gift of knowledge?
“Reading is re-reading” is another axiom repeated in the novel. John Woman is a novel that will bear new fruit with each iteration.
Walter Mosley’s latest novel is an example of this axiom uttered by the book’s oracle, Herman Jones. In “John Woman,” the author has crafted an intelligent, perplexing, learned, and worldly story of a young man’s journey to self-knowledge.
For readers familiar with Walter Mosley's work, the main character in this novel, Herman Jones’ son Cornelius Jones, aka John Woman, is as much Mouse as Ezekiel Rawlins. Subordinating action to ideas, the author explores the nature of human history and skewers the belief history is knowable or immutable - yet declares it is also inescapable.
The story follows a familiar Mosely pattern where a character, backed into a corner, reacts and so alters his life forever while also creating a secret that must remain hidden. The hero – Jones/Woman – is part victim, perpetrator, observer, and, mimicking the coyote, trickster. The multiracial son of African-American from the deep South, and Italian-American mother, his father taught himself to read and with his son, consumed volume after volume of history. Herman shared his insights with his young son and instilled in him a passion for knowledge.
As a teen, Cornelius commits a murder to protect himself and his invalid father’s livelihood. He evades detection but his father soon dies and Cornelius attempts to reinvent himself, changing his name, attending college, and earning a doctorate in his father’s beloved field of history. He is hired to teach at a small private college in Arizona. His specialty is in deconstruction as a kind of anti-epistemology, not what and how we know but proposing the impossibility of ever knowing. His approach is not to revise interpretations but jar the observer’s perspective, to expose biases and preconceptions, and to encourage thinking about history in a different way, one that doesn’t automatically infer kings and queens, presidents and premiers; a personal history from which the individual cannot escape and thus remains accountable. Many of the ideas Mosley wishes to express are couched in lectures delivered by Professor John Woman. They also serve to document Professor Woman’s journey toward the inevitable destination where he must own up to his actions.
An exchange between Professor Woman and an African-American student, Johann Malik illustrates much of the books central concept of history. Malik complains the history of African-Americans has been stolen and he wants to get it back. John’s response goes further: “Not stole, Mr. Malik but utterly destroyed. Where our people came from was ripped from the minds of our ancestors. We can rebuild but never retrieve. And there’s an even larger catastrophe intrinsic to that crime…in destroying our history,” John said, “they asphyxiated their own.” John’s thesis, developed with his father, is written history contains lies, omissions, and misinterpretations – supremely unstable ground on which to build the future. John tells Johann the past shaped who we are; it happened, you can’t go back, recover it, or change it, even through reinterpretation. You have to “battle for the future, not the past.”
John takes an extreme view to rattle his student but his point is well-taken. Having covered up, obscured, disguised the past, the realities have become conveniently forgotten. Current events are treated as new, first-time occurrences when they represent a pattern of behavior that has persisted from Revolutionary times. (For example the accusation of “fake news” was widely spread during the First World War.)
Herman Jones stated History rested on four pillars: sex, technology, economics, and the shopping list. It appears that in writing this novel, the first took precedence which for me diminished the overall impact. While speaking to John Woman’s character, enough was enough. The shopping list was more thought provoking as Professor Woman used it as a basis for a lecture demanded by his department head. Herman described the list as needs from which historical events might be extrapolated and providing and entry point into the lives of ordinary people. After finding a diary in a city trashcan, John returned daily to examine the contents and retrieve items he thought represented aspects of local life. He placed the items in a trunk he called the Containment Report, developed a lecture and a visual presentation around the possible meaning, purpose, importance of each item illustrating the impossibility of knowing for certain what was or was not true.
The title of the book, the main character’s assumed name, is unusual. Stemming from an early experience in his life, which Cornelius/John states was the reason he chose it, there is possibly some not so subtle manipulation on the author’s part. To backtrack, the Arizona college is the creation of a society called the Platinum Path dedicated to the betterment of humankind. A wealthy, widespread, and secret society, John, with his variant interpretation of history, is seen as a candidate for a position of importance in the group. Unknown to him, they have influenced his life and offer him protection when his crime is finally discovered. Torn between rejecting their offer or joining the cause, he observes: “What they want is to make the world in their own image. They want to be God and here I am the Woman holding out an apple.” I had to wonder if this image and sentence occurred to Mosely before or after he decided on his character’s name and profession. In moments of self-doubt John wonders if he is the fake his peers label him and frequently identifies with the coyote, alternately the wild animal and the trickster. Is a professor a “temptress,” offering the dangerous gift of knowledge?
“Reading is re-reading” is another axiom repeated in the novel. John Woman is a novel that will bear new fruit with each iteration.
July 20, 2020
I can't remember the last time I gave a book one star, and I can't believe I'm doing it to Walter Mosley, but I found much of the writing in this book unforgivable. I can get past the professor-student sex because I don't sense any power imbalance or coercion in the relationship, and in his B&D fixations, John Woman is always the B. In theory, I like many of the threads in this book - the crime plot, the examination of the practice of history, the protagonist's complicated relationship with truth. The first 80 pages covering his childhood were fine, but after that, so much went sour for me.
Among my aggravations: The female characters were wooden puppets; John Woman's much ballyhoo'ed genius as a historian and teacher were nowhere in evidence; his supposedly brilliant lectures were either tedious, or unrealistic Socratic dialogues, with students asking perfectly positioned questions (only Plato can get away with this); the cult thread was simultaneously grandiose and threadbare. So that's for starters.
But most unforgivable of all is the writing. There were some great moments, but they were few and far between. Mosley has a bizarre habit of giving a brief inventory (not description) of what a character is wearing whenever they make an appearance - it happens continually, and rarely adds anything to an understanding of the character. They felt like non-sequiturs to me, and after a while, almost laughable. What was Mosley thinking???? John Woman's pedantic speaking voice was so overdone that I was developing eye roll fatigue. In fact, in one snippet of dialogue, I think even Mosley was making fun of him:
Mosley also makes it a point to describe the exact skin color of each non-white character. While this also stilts the writing, I can see more of a point here - if you're going to describe someone's skin color, then do it, don't resort to race categories and all the historical baggage they carry.
When the writing did work for me, it was wonderful though, as in this passage, where John compares himself to the father he revered, the self-taught Herman:
“John read the same books as Herman, had tried his best to disappear into stories that were both true and indecipherable. But rather than a king in exile he’d become a kind of Tallyrand agitating between the ruling classes, the workers and the revolutionists. Where Herman had been heroic John was just a scarecrow, forgotten in a barren field that had once been flush and fruitful.”
Among my aggravations: The female characters were wooden puppets; John Woman's much ballyhoo'ed genius as a historian and teacher were nowhere in evidence; his supposedly brilliant lectures were either tedious, or unrealistic Socratic dialogues, with students asking perfectly positioned questions (only Plato can get away with this); the cult thread was simultaneously grandiose and threadbare. So that's for starters.
But most unforgivable of all is the writing. There were some great moments, but they were few and far between. Mosley has a bizarre habit of giving a brief inventory (not description) of what a character is wearing whenever they make an appearance - it happens continually, and rarely adds anything to an understanding of the character. They felt like non-sequiturs to me, and after a while, almost laughable. What was Mosley thinking???? John Woman's pedantic speaking voice was so overdone that I was developing eye roll fatigue. In fact, in one snippet of dialogue, I think even Mosley was making fun of him:
Mosley also makes it a point to describe the exact skin color of each non-white character. While this also stilts the writing, I can see more of a point here - if you're going to describe someone's skin color, then do it, don't resort to race categories and all the historical baggage they carry.
When the writing did work for me, it was wonderful though, as in this passage, where John compares himself to the father he revered, the self-taught Herman:
“John read the same books as Herman, had tried his best to disappear into stories that were both true and indecipherable. But rather than a king in exile he’d become a kind of Tallyrand agitating between the ruling classes, the workers and the revolutionists. Where Herman had been heroic John was just a scarecrow, forgotten in a barren field that had once been flush and fruitful.”
March 29, 2020
Nothing is what it seems...or is it? Renowned author Walter Mosley, most affectionately known for his thrilling Easy Rawlins mystery series, creates a provoking novel that grapples the above question and tackles the idea of dual identities, unconventional historical theories, and twisted interpretations of the truth.
Fans and past readers of Mosley will appreciate his masterful narrative and meticulous character building. However, prepare for head scratching moments of confusion. Mosley seems to purposely leave some things for the reader to determine and interpret.
Walter Mosley's award winning skill in prose allows the reader to escape into a provocative journey of self-perceptive reality and truth. Not a five star book in my opinion, but a good body of work indeed. *3 1/2 stars*
Fans and past readers of Mosley will appreciate his masterful narrative and meticulous character building. However, prepare for head scratching moments of confusion. Mosley seems to purposely leave some things for the reader to determine and interpret.
Walter Mosley's award winning skill in prose allows the reader to escape into a provocative journey of self-perceptive reality and truth. Not a five star book in my opinion, but a good body of work indeed. *3 1/2 stars*
June 9, 2018
After a slow start, John Woman turns into one of the finest Mosley books in years. Cornelius Jones is his father's caretaker, student, and stand-in, yet remains a mama's boy at heart. Loss, inattention, and tragedy experienced by Cornelius would destroy a lesser person, but armed with his father's stories, history, and books, young CC morphs into the professor John Woman, armed with a perspective on history, both global and personal, uniquely built, and a danger to Those Who Write History.
John Woman boils down to several essay-length monographs from Mosley on the nature of history, its fallacies, and new ways to see the world that is and was, and are worth separating from the novel and studying on their own.
A fantastic read, and among his best. (advance copy provided by NetGalley for unbiased reaction)
John Woman boils down to several essay-length monographs from Mosley on the nature of history, its fallacies, and new ways to see the world that is and was, and are worth separating from the novel and studying on their own.
A fantastic read, and among his best. (advance copy provided by NetGalley for unbiased reaction)
May 4, 2022
Excellent! I know that I am partial to Mr. Mosley,but he continues to keep me in love with his writing and him. Especially during this period of time, reading this book is exactly what I needed - to question history, my beliefs and my existence. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who wants an education while being entertained .
Walter Mosley will always be my favorite author of all time. He is a genius. I look forward to his books!
Walter Mosley will always be my favorite author of all time. He is a genius. I look forward to his books!
September 16, 2018
GNab Walter Mosley kept me up nights with this extraordinary novel. We meet our protagonist Cornelius C. Jones before his sixteenth birthday. A hard working responsible young man, he is the breadwinner for his small family, a full time student, and the caregiver for his dying father, Herman Jones. And we follow him - CC to some as mostly just his father addresses him as Cornelius - through several transitions and into his 30's. Smart - almost too smart - he has developed and eventually teaches a theory concerning history, a subject he often mulled over with his father. History, he believes, is ever changing, and subject to the interpretation of the author or speaker, meaning history is not a constant, and the person who controls history can control their fate. And only the winner of any conflict will write history from only his view point, so you cannot trust any other persons' version of the past or the future. Only the present is yours to command. Maybe.
As always, Walter Mosley writes an intricate story with enough of the contrary to keep you on your toes. His characters are deep and complex. There is not one person in this novel who isn't full and flush with life. Seeing history through the eyes of Mosley is a very compelling view.
I received a free electronic copy of this novel from Netgalley, Walter Mosley, and Atlantic Monthly Press in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me.
pub date Sept 14, 2018
Grove Atlantic, Atlantic Monthly Press
As always, Walter Mosley writes an intricate story with enough of the contrary to keep you on your toes. His characters are deep and complex. There is not one person in this novel who isn't full and flush with life. Seeing history through the eyes of Mosley is a very compelling view.
I received a free electronic copy of this novel from Netgalley, Walter Mosley, and Atlantic Monthly Press in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me.
pub date Sept 14, 2018
Grove Atlantic, Atlantic Monthly Press
December 10, 2018
Buddhist influence is unmistakable. Using history as the vehicle for self exploration, Mosley challenges us to look into ourselves and see what makes us possible. “History in all its parts created you.” Who is the main character, John Woman? Mosley tells us, “He had been reinterpreted until there was no truth possible.” And while guilty of a murder as an adolescent, “he was the crime but not necessarily a criminal.” The world according to Mosley is created by forces unknown and undeniable. We fail to understand our world even as we create it. “How you interpret your environment is more distinctive that a fingerprint. The matter that your body comprises makes you matchless, impermanent and irreplaceable.” Our purpose is questioning the validity of what we believe to be true, to break from the cage of certainty. We are “each of us the embodiment of truth without any conscious knowledge of that truth.” “Any truth in your life is in your actions, not your convictions.”
Thought provoking and an engaging story.
Thought provoking and an engaging story.
September 22, 2018
History (Herstory as well)
This is not a mystery story. An author uses words to create a framework for the story. The reader uses the framework and its companion descriptions to imagine a history and present for the characters involved. As in the movie “Rashomon” the story can changes as different views are revealed.
A person could be considered a good person, maybe even a great person until it is uncovered that they are a serial killer, a sexual predator, a drug addict, an embezzler..... Suddenly not only our view of the present but also the past has become different.
This book wrestles with the concept of history as it tells a kaleidoscope of a story about a boy who reads but not only reads but thinks about what he has read and the changes he experiences. It is not a genre mystery to be gobbled up in the mad dash to find out “who done it” but an examination of life.
This is not a mystery story. An author uses words to create a framework for the story. The reader uses the framework and its companion descriptions to imagine a history and present for the characters involved. As in the movie “Rashomon” the story can changes as different views are revealed.
A person could be considered a good person, maybe even a great person until it is uncovered that they are a serial killer, a sexual predator, a drug addict, an embezzler..... Suddenly not only our view of the present but also the past has become different.
This book wrestles with the concept of history as it tells a kaleidoscope of a story about a boy who reads but not only reads but thinks about what he has read and the changes he experiences. It is not a genre mystery to be gobbled up in the mad dash to find out “who done it” but an examination of life.
November 12, 2018
Maybe 3.5 stars. I got to see Walter Mosley do a reading to promote this book and he told the audience that an editor had said it was “too intellectual.” I can see why the editor said that but it didn’t ruin the story for me. Mosley also said that it took him 20 years to finish this book so it was obviously a labor of love for him. It wasn’t my favorite Mosley book but it was okay. Apparently there is a new Leonid McGill coming out as well as a new Easy Rawlins and I’m excited about those.
Seeing Walter Mosley in person was a dream come true for me as he is one of my very favorite authors—I arrived at the bookstore so early they hadn’t even put the chairs out yet. I was first in the signing line! It was a great night.
Seeing Walter Mosley in person was a dream come true for me as he is one of my very favorite authors—I arrived at the bookstore so early they hadn’t even put the chairs out yet. I was first in the signing line! It was a great night.
May 23, 2018
Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to preview this book. It's about a man who becomes a professor of deconstructionist history. A somewhat strange story, but interesting. Recommended.
November 26, 2018
Mosley's posthumous tribute to his father is poignant, and I do appreciate his desire to break away from Easy Rawlins and the Mystery genre, but the history stuff cluttered up the story.
March 1, 2020
Cornelius Jones was born to a white Italian mother and an uneducated black man from Mississippi. His mother was an excellent cook and his father was the most intelligent person he knew. When his mother abandoned him and his father fell ill, Cornelius took it upon himself to take care of the family. When he loses his father, there is no one left, so he must take care of himself. He reinvents himself as John Woman and becomes an admired University professor. Though his life comes with trials and tribulations, he finds a way to make it through.
I have read several Walter Mosley books and none have ever been like this one. You never knew what was going to happen next and what surprises Professor John Woman had up his sleeves. From prostitutes to circumstantial evidence his life is definitely not boring, but is it fulfilling?
Professor John Woman is not your typical professor. He likes for his students to think outside of the box and question everything. And while his students adore him, his colleagues are ready to get rid of him, and the board of directors is ready to extend his contract. But maybe it's time to move on, maybe his past is catching up with him.
John Woman is a character you have to get to know and make your own assumptions about.
I have read several Walter Mosley books and none have ever been like this one. You never knew what was going to happen next and what surprises Professor John Woman had up his sleeves. From prostitutes to circumstantial evidence his life is definitely not boring, but is it fulfilling?
Professor John Woman is not your typical professor. He likes for his students to think outside of the box and question everything. And while his students adore him, his colleagues are ready to get rid of him, and the board of directors is ready to extend his contract. But maybe it's time to move on, maybe his past is catching up with him.
John Woman is a character you have to get to know and make your own assumptions about.
December 25, 2018
Its not often I rate a book 5 stars, nor do I take it lightly. An avid reader like most on this site, I stumbled across this book at the library while browsing "New Fiction". Unfamiliar with Walter Mosley, I read the liner notes and was captured. In ways its difficult to put into words how extraordinary this author is with respect to what he's accomplished. Its not everyday we read a story about a child raised by a brilliant father who's self taught, reading included and then track the child as he grows, changes identities and becomes a professor under an assumed name. The more the story unfolds, the more profound it is, as is the author's mastery of the English language, his insights unlike any. John Woman, the embodiment of alternative thought touches on points that cause us to think, which is his purpose and I believe, the purpose of this story. A master of plot points, characters of depth, and unexpected twists, this is a masterpiece. I put this book at #1 on my list, and for those who seek the unique, you may as well. Bravo Walter Mosley, bravo!
May 29, 2018
As an adolescent, abandoned by his mother, Cornelius Jones learns about life and the ways in which life is influenced by history from his autodidact father. In his teens, Cornelius attended school and then ran the projector at a local theatre each evening when his father became too ill to work. As an adult, Cornelius changes his name to to John Woman and becomes a renowned History Professor. Brilliant and inspired by the influences of history, John comes to the attention of others with their own agenda. John's life's mission is to determine what path he must follow.
With references to ancient European history, Native American spiritualism, and the consequences of slavery, Mosley's latest book brings to mind The Golden Bough and The Wasteland and seems autobiographical in its leanings. Much more than a good story, John Woman offers the reader insights and stirs up questions regarding the role of history in today's culture.
With references to ancient European history, Native American spiritualism, and the consequences of slavery, Mosley's latest book brings to mind The Golden Bough and The Wasteland and seems autobiographical in its leanings. Much more than a good story, John Woman offers the reader insights and stirs up questions regarding the role of history in today's culture.
September 23, 2018
This is a GreatRead! Like with most Mosley’s stories the Underlay might go over your head if you are too intuned to the Overplay. You might find yourself not particularly caring for the story Mosley present us with in John Woman, But if you are a true Mosley fan you will know to be patient and take it All In. Typical Mosley to insert the social behaviors, the Good, the Bad, & the Ugly into a story that otherwise may seem dull & flat. John Woman’s character is utilized as a teaching tool for us to look within ourselves for answers that we may seek from others, to understand what is going on with ppl wanting to dominate and dictate other ppl lives, and the different layers & levels of love. I Only recommend this read to those that are looking for something a little more than entertainment. I believe Mosley is always trying to enlighten more so than entertaining.
December 14, 2019
When you pick up one of Walter Mosley's standalone books, you just never know for sure what you are going to wind up with. In this case, the character, after a tragic and violent incident in his youth, takes on a new name (the title of the book) and is able to pursue an education his father would have been proud of - becoming a history professor and landing at a university in the southwestern United States that is funded by a mysterious organization. John's brand of history is not in the mainstream and we are witness to a number of philosophical lectures on history's inevitability, human nature and much more. Not a fast-paced book, sometimes hard to take, but still interesting.
September 14, 2018
John Woman is an unexpected gift from Walter Mosley. Mosley has created an expertly told and superbly written tale that follows the young boy Cornelius Jones as he transform himself into a man named John Woman. Along the way, Cornelius takes care of his dying father and watches his mother desert them both as she runs away with a mobster. That’s when the transformation begins.
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