A Reading Break

I decided to give Infinite Jest a rest. I went to the library to look for something lighter. I'd heard an interview with Walter Mosley on NPR and although I new the writer and his basic genre, I'd never read one of his books. The Jeffersonville Public Library is a marvel, at least to me. Their new books are ones I actually want to read. But I was looking for a classic Mosley book and found several in the stacks. I checked out A Fortunate Son, a tale about two brothers who are separated at age 6 and reunited in their early 20's.

Eric is the blessed athletic blond boy whom Thomas comes to live with as a sickly infant. His mother brings him to the posh house, having attracted the attention of Eric's father, a doctor at the hospital where Thomas spends his first six months in a bubble. Love and good doctoring save Thomas's life. He becomes friends with Eric, his polar opposite, and they live together until Thomas's mother dies and his biological father shows up to claim his son.

Thomas goes from wanting for nothing to nothing to want. His home life is a diasaster. Yet his spirit allows him to cope with anything thrown his way. And it's all thrown at him: dropping out of school, abandonment by his dad and other relatives, living wherever he can, and eventually becoming a runner for a drug dealer. He gets arrested, thrown in jail and wanders the streets of L.A., walking away from a youth facility he is transferred to. Along the way he is raped, beaten, starved. Whatever bad, ugly thing you can think of happens to Thomas. But Thomas keeps on keeping on.

Mosley writes about poverty and racial injustice so matter-of-factly that it seems like a normal condition. The difference here is that the character who endures the nightmare is such a gentle soul who holds no grudges and never becomes like his tormentors.

Eric's life is perfect except that Eric is void of feeling. He goes through the motions of the lush life but doesn't participate. It's as though when Thomas walked out the door, he took Eric with him, leaving only his perfect body behind.

Through numerous twists of fate, which keep the reader slack-jawed, the boys reunite. Clearly, Thomas is the fortunate son, a true survivor. He took all the good things the world had to offer him and was able to endure misery after misery. He gets his brother back, and presumably a life devoid of horror. Eric on the other hand, who was handed life on a platter, is unchanged. He's happy to be reunited with Thomas, but will never have his lust for life.