RL's Dream by Walter Mosley

First published: 1995

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Domestic realism

Time of work: Early 1980’s

Locale: New York, New York

Principal Characters:

• Robert “RL” Johnson, a legendary blues musician
• Atwater “Soupspoon” Wise, an aging African American musician obsessed with memories of RL and determined to recover for posterity the role of the blues in African American life
• Kiki Waters, a white girl from Arkansas who befriends Soupspoon and takes care of him

The Novel

The gritty and lyrical RL’s Dream begins with a sentence that deftly evokes the agony and endurance of characters who experience the hurt that the blues expresses: “Pain moved up the old man’s hipbone like a plow breaking through hard sod.” This sentence serves as introduction to Soupspoon Wise, whose very body vibrates with the blues: “Music thrummed in his body; the rattles of death in the tortured song of his breathing.” Soupspoon is helpless—unable even to control his bowels because of his enormous pain, which is later diagnosed as a tumor pressing on his bones. Soupspoon perseveres in the face of this diagnosis, making it home only to discover that he is being evicted for failing to pay his rent.

Kiki Waters, a neighbor, intervenes, making a scene that results in her decision to take care of Soupspoon and to give him a bed to sleep in. Soupspoon wonders why this white girl is so concerned about him. Her explanation seems weak: He once offered an encouraging word to her and a friend during a down moment. The fact that this old man took an interest in two young girls profoundly impressed Kiki, however. She had run away from Arkansas, the victim of an abusive father and a docile mother, and she has apparently developed a fierce sense of justice that provokes her to defend those she deems under attack. Indeed, when she meets Soupspoon, she is recovering from being stabbed after coming to the assistance of a woman accosted by a group of teenagers.

Kiki is no saint. Indeed, she is an alcoholic prone to fits of rage. At one point, she even attacks Soupspoon, because she fears his negligence might have led to a fire in her apartment. She is also reckless, if well intentioned, forging an insurance policy at her place of work that ensures Soupspoon’s cancer treatments will be paid for.

Realizing that medical care can only delay his inevitable death, Soupspoon revives his music career, playing through his pain and organizing a series of tape-recorded interviews that commemorate the lives of blues musicians. Interspersed in this reconstruction of Soupspoon’s life are his memories of RL Johnson, his fabled mentor, who claimed to have derived his inspiration from the devil. RL’s music is transformative and redemptive. RL continued to sing the blues even in the face of beatings and other demeaning experiences that marred African American men’s lives in the deep South.

Occasionally, RL appears as the spirit presiding over Soupspoon’s declining days. Is RL dead? No one can say how he died, and therefore he lives as a kind of dream in the lives of the men and women moved by his music.

The Characters

In the novel’s narrative present, RL exists only in the memories of those he touched with his music. RL’s Dream begins with an epigraph from the book that Soupspoon is writing. Titled Backroad to the Blues and given a publication date of 1986, this fictitious book is the culmination of Soupspoon’s struggle to write his autobiography, which is also the story of the blues. The blues, Soupspoon writes, are symbolized by RL, “no real man” but a mythic figure, “Delta blue from the bottom of his soul. He was the blues; he is today.” By dreaming of RL, Soupspoon provides the geography of the blues, explaining to the young Kiki that talented musicians had to disguise their genius by imitating racist stereotypes of slack-jawed, clownish African Americans. RL refused to bow to this form of degradation, paying the physical and mental price for his independence: “Ain’t no start to his misery,” Soupspoon’s book says of RL, “An’ death could not never ease his kinda pain.”

Soupspoon has reached a moment when he feels the need to account for his life. Although music has always been his focus, he has stopped playing. Only through Kiki’s intervention is he able to surmount his misery and find work again, playing his guitar in a friend’s club and looking up his ex-wife, who has her own fond memories of RL. Soupspoon knows he does not have long to live, so he wants to make every moment count. He even surprises himself by discovering he can still make love to a much younger woman. It hurts him to play the blues, but the music is also an uplifting, indeed an ecstatic, way of dealing with his sorrow.

Kiki feels Soupspoon’s pain and provides him with the money to buy a tape recorder. Her reckless disregard for her own safety leads to more complications and danger, yet she escapes the seemingly inevitable tragic trajectory of her life, returning home to Arkansas and to an unexpected good fortune. She will never know what happens to Soupspoon, however. A fugitive from justice, she awaits her fate with seeming equanimity.

Critical Context

RL’s Dream has been favorably compared to Ralph Ellison’s classic novel Invisible Man (1952), an apt comparison, since Mosley, like his illustrious predecessor, writes a prose that is suffused with the rhythms of the blues. Like Ellison, Mosley does not blink at the harshness of the African American experience, but he finds a meaning in suffering, a definition of humanity that triumphs over degradation. Critics also praise the social realism of the novel, its depiction of New York City street life as well as what critic Gary Giddins calls the “tar-paper bucket-of-blood juke joints of the Delta.” In part, this realism is a result of Mosley’s spare yet poetic prose and his keen ear for dialogue. At the same time, there is a relentless quality to the narrative, which critics praise as a muscular prose with punch that contributes to the precise, searing, and eloquent work.

Bibliography

Giddens, Gary. “Soupspoon’s Blues.” The New York Times. August 13, 1995. Giddens, an eminent music critic and biographer, writes a perceptive account of the novel, sometimes faulting Mosley for sentimentality.

Gussow, Adam. “’Fingering the Jagged Grain’: Ellison’s Wright and the Southern Blues Violences.” Boundary 30 (2003): 137-155. Although RL’s Dream is only briefly mentioned in this article, Gussow provides historical background essential for an understanding of Mosley’s work.

Levecq, Christine. “Blues Poetics and Blues Politics in Walter Mosley’s RL’s Dream.” African American Review 38, no. 2 (Summer, 2004): 239-256. Explores Mosley’s novel in relation to the history of the blues, as well as commenting on various reviewers who have praised and criticized RL’s Dream.

Mosley, Walter. “Anger and Hope Mosley’s Formula for Success.” Interview by Greg Burchall. The Age, January 31, 1996, p. 4. Interview with Mosley about his career, growing up in South Los Angeles, and his belief in the heroism of the black struggle. Mosley discusses the literary influences on his work and the process of drafting his novels.

Wilson, Charles E., Jr. Walter Mosley: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2003. Includes a discussion of RL’s Dream, exploring the novel’s treatment of the blues.