Bennet is interested in doing penance for a number of things – his power, his wealth, and the privilege that he carries as a white man from a good family. Bennet uses a lock formerly used on slave ships to lock himself into Blakely's basement the lock forces Blakely to reflect on the fact that none of his relatives were ever enslaved – something that separates him from most other black men in America. The racial allusions in the book are clear. Eventually, he agrees, and Bennet moves in. Blakely doesn't like the idea of Bennet living with him, prison or no prison, but he needs the cash. Bennet informs Blakely that he is interested, essentially, in creating his own prison – he wants to punish himself for the harm he has done to humanity, and he sees Blakely's basement as the perfect location for his self-imposed sentence. This puts him in a strange position when Anniston Bennet, a WASPy white man approaches him, asking if he can give him $50,000 to rent the rooms in his basement.Īt first, Blakely is worried at the thought of a relatively eccentric stranger, who obviously has a large amount of money, renting his basement apartment. While he is ignoring all of his problems – or, drinking and gambling them away – the bills continue to stack up.

Instead of working, Blakely begins to mosey through the world, playing frequent card games with his friends Ricky and Clarence, drinking, and having affairs with a plethora of women. Despite his financial troubles, he doesn't seem particularly interested in getting a job to solve his money problems. Recently fired from his job when the novel begins, he struggles to pay the property taxes and for the upkeep on the family home. Now thirty-three years old, Blakely, the sole inheritor of the house, lives there by himself, generally ambling through life without much motivation or drive to make something of his time on Earth. Charles Blakely is descended from a family of free blacks who built an enormous home, which has been passed down now for seven generations. The novel itself, however, is more concerned with the lives of Blakely and Bennet, their motivations, and the way they navigate the influence of their ancestry. The premise of the novel is relatively simple: Bennet asks Blakely if he can rent the basement of his family home for a few months, for the cost of $50,000. In this novel, Mosley strays away from his conventions to explore ideas of power, race and racism, inheritance, and punishment through the characters of Charles Blakely and Anniston Bennet.

The Man in My Basement is a philosophical novel and work of literary fiction by Walter Mosley, who is more commonly known for his mystery novels.

Walter mosley's the man in my basement