Pleasure Cruiser

Walter Mosley is best known for his Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins novels. But over the last few years he’s also penned science-fiction novels (including The Wave), a young adult novel (47), and collections of short stories (such as Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned) that can only marginally be described as mysteries. Now, he’s breaking into a whole new genre: erotica.

Tracy Quan today evaluates Mosley’s “sexistential novel,” Killing Johnny Fry, in January Magazine. Of that book, which finds narrator Cordell Carmel responding to his lover’s infidelity, she writes:

It starts when he spies his longtime girlfriend, Joelle, having rough sex with Johnny on the living room floor. She doesn’t know Cordell is watching, and he doesn’t let on, but he feels emasculated. The trauma of betrayal transforms this middle-aged New Yorker into a depraved (though kindhearted) beast with a relentless erection. He begins having sex in new positions and unusual locations, with neighbors, colleagues, his unfaithful girlfriend and strangers. He’s not exactly liberated, but he’s going places--to body parts that once were off-limits and to recently discovered parts of Brooklyn, exploring the usual taboos that are pornographic staples. Some of his escapades include wrestlers, designer drugs, and a sex clown.

You don't have to be an authority on raunch, kink or (s)existentialism to appreciate what’s happening to Cordell. But it might help to be a Woody Allen fan, a lover of stories about New Yorkers, their manners and the ironies of infidelity.

You can read the whole review here.