Chester Himes

Himes, Chester (1909–1984), novelist. A prolific writer whose career spans fifty years, Chester Himes is best known for his naturalist and detective fiction. A gambler, hustler, burglar, ex-convict, and expatriate, Himes's Catholic experiences and peripatetic life provided him abundant material for fiction that portrays the near existential “absurdity” of blackness in America. Focusing on violence—physical, political, and psychic—as a ubiquitous dynamic in American culture, Himes's fiction ponders the often futile struggle to resist a relentlessly hostile environment.

Born into a struggling middle-class family in Jefferson City, Missouri, Himes's childhood, and that of his two older brothers, Edward and Joseph, was marked by the chronic tensions between his parents and the perpetual disruptions that occurred due to the family's frequent relocation. Himes describes his father, Joseph Sandy Himes, as a dark-skinned man plagued by the internalized stigma of his blackness. Conversely, Himes saw his mother, Estelle Bomar, fair-skinned, as a woman who privileged her white heritage and aspired toward genteel refinement. Exacerbating their differences, Joseph, Sr., worked and taught machinery at several industrial schools across the South, placing Estelle Bomar in contact with rural and poorly educated black communities. After Joseph, Jr.'s accidental blinding in 1923, the family moved several times in search of medical treatment, ending up in Cleveland, Ohio, where the family finally broke up. This break up, in the middle of Himes's adolescence, coupled with a debilitating back injury (for which he was forced to wear an embarrassing brace for several years), left Himes withdrawn and profoundly alienated.

Himes enrolled at Ohio State University in the fall of 1926 to study medicine, but because of his sense of anger and alienation spent his opening quarter exploring Columbus's night life and underworld. After withdrawing from school and returning to Cleveland to live with his father, Himes committed a series of crimes resulting in a 1928 conviction for armed robbery. Facing twenty years of hard labor, Himes entered prison at age nineteen and began his writing career there. His first short stories, “Crazy in the Stir” and “To What Red Hell,” portray the hardships of prison life and reveal his preoccupation with the capricious nature of black life. The arbitrariness of persecution coupled with the severely limited means of recourse available to his black protagonists would mark Himes's early naturalist fiction.

Upon parole in 1936 Himes attempted to make a living as a writer. His career divides roughly into three phases, each emphasizing different dimensions of the fundamental predicament of black selfhood in the midst of ubiquitous racism. From 1945 to 1955, the first phase of his career, he published five naturalist novels, all largely autobiographical: If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), Lonely Crusade (1947), The Third Generation (1947), Cast the First Stone (1952), and The Primitive (1955). His first two novels render a fatalistic vision of black masculinity, as the respective protagonists, Bob Jones and Lee Gordon, struggle to resist the overdetermination of their racist environments. Ralph Reckly interprets these novels as demonstrating “that the black male who does not subjugate his will to the mainstream cannot survive in America.” Cast the First Stone reconfigures a totalizing environment in terms of prison. Drawing heavily from his own experiences, Himes presents his white protagonist, Jim Monroe, in a constant state of peril as he attempts to survive interpersonal and institutional brutality. Although Monroe is white, Himes remains focused upon the tenuous proposition of autonomous selfhood.

Completing the first phase of his career, Himes reenvisions the trauma of his childhood family life in The Third Generation, and examines the complexities of interracial sexual attraction in The Primitive. The Third Generation explores the ways in which adults act out their imbibed racial self-hatred, and the ways in which they transmit their neuroses to their children. The Primitive uses a murderous interracial relationship in order to portray the overdetermination of racial stereotypes. That Jesse Robinson, a black male, can see Kriss Cummings, a white female, only as the icon of white virtue, and that Kriss can see Jesse only in terms of primitivist sexuality predetermines a profoundly destructive relationship. Here, as with most of the early fictions, the overarching cultural conceptions of race relegate Himes's characters to severely circumscribed social and psychological spaces. Invariably violence and destruction result.

Following Richard Wright's example, in 1953 Himes left the United States for France, becoming an expatriate in pursuit of wider personal freedoms and greater publishing opportunities. Both If He Hollers Let Him Go and Lonely Crusade had already garnered a substantial readership in France, initiating a trend that would outlast Himes's life. Upon the suggestion of an editor, Himes began writing detective fiction, originally to make quick money. From 1957 to 1969, the second phase of his career, he wrote perhaps his most famous novels, eight detective novels setin Harlem: For Love of Imabelle (1957), The Real Cool Killers (1959), The Crazy Kill (1959), The Big Gold Dream (1960), All Shot Up (1960), Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965), The Heat's On (1966), and Blind Man with a Pistol (1969). Featuring the duo Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, Himes adopts standard detective fiction formula, but uses it to posit black violence as a response to oppressive conditions. Jones and Johnson, like most heroes of the genre, are entrusted with the protection and maintenance of the community. But the means by which they solve crimes, right wrongs, and bring criminals to justice suggest an agency and independence wholly negated in Himes's earlier fiction. The duo uses violence according to their own sense of propriety, and mete out justice in ways often independent of conventional, legal, or judicial practices.

Attesting to the popularity of Himes's detective fiction, The Heat's On (Come Back Charleston Blue) and Cotton Comes to Harlem were made into movies, and many of the novels remain in print.

During the same period Himes wrote two novels that deviate from the trend: Pinktoes (1961) and Run Man Run (1966). Pinktoes satirizes interracial sexual attraction, presenting self-absorbed characters acting upon their sexual desires for the racial “other.” Run Man Run, though still detective fiction, does not feature the standard heroes or celebrate their abilities, but ponders the threat of unbridled police brutality. Jimmy Johnson, a poor black student, witnesses the second of two murders perpetrated by a black detective, Matt Walker. Attempting to cover up his crime, Walker stalks Johnson and eventually kills him. Although Walker's crimes are discovered by a fellow detective, Sergeant Brock, Brock protects Johnson out of a warped sense of familial and professional loyalty.

By the beginning of the 1970s, Himes embarked upon the final phase of his career. Along with a volume of collected works—Black on Black: Baby Sister and Selected Writings (1973)—and several short novels, Himes published an autobiography in two volumes: The Quality of Hurt (1972) and My Life of Absurdity (1976). Both volumes propose a life profoundly marked by cultural and institutional racism. Himes's autobiographical hero acts and reacts according to the political and psychic violence that surrounds him, only momentarily claiming for himself a tenuous sense of peace and stability. Read as a final statement responding to both his life and art, Himes's autobiography reiterates his central concern for the random, near chaotic nature of African American life in Western culture. Several critics have commented on the compelling tension between near futility and the individual's defiant responses to such daunting environments found in Himes's work. Just short of naturalism's totalization, Himes's fiction perpetually explores the efficacy of black male agency.

Bibliography

• Michel Fabre and Robert E. Skinner, eds. Conversations with Chester Himes, 1995.
• Michel Fabre and Edward Margolies, The Several Lives of Chester Himes, 1997.
• Bruce A. Glasrud and Laurie Champion, “Chester B. Himes, In Contemporary African American Novelists, ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson, 1999, pp. 203–210

Mark A. Sanders

His reputation rests largely on his detective novels, which in their own right rank with the best noir fiction, but Chester Himes (1909-1984) was hardly aman to be pigeonholed. In his lifetime he published 17 novels, more than 60 short stories, and 2 volumes of autobiography in which he detailed the pain of being an African American writer in the twentieth century.

Named for his maternal grandfather, Chester Bomar Himes was born on July 29, 1909, in Jefferson City, Missouri, the youngest son of Joseph Sandy and Estelle Bomar Himes. Himes's father was head of the mechanical department at Lincoln Institute, where he taught blacksmithing and wheelwrighting; his mother was formerly on the faculty of Georgia State College, teaching English composition and music. The Himes family led a nomadic life during Himes's early years. In 1914 they moved to Cleveland following his father's resignation from Lincoln Institute. Their stay there was brief as Himes's father accepted a position on the faculty of Alcorn College in Lorman, Mississippi. Tension between Himes's parents - attributed to his father's humble status and his mother's attempts at social climbing - soon caused a riff. Estelle Himes accepted an offer to teach in South Carolina and she took Chester and his middle brother, Joseph, Jr. However, less than a month later Estelle relocated again, this time to Augusta, Georgia. She taught music at the Haines Normal and Industrial School, which both her sons attended.

At the end of the school year the family was reunited, with the exception of the eldest son, Edward, who left home to attend Atlanta University and eventually made his way to New York. Himes's father took a position at the Branch Normal School in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, while his mother taught in local public schools. In June 1923 an accident during a chemistry demonstration on gunpowder left Joseph, Jr. blind, and Chester, who was forbidden to take part in the demonstration because of misbehavior, was despondent over his brother's injury. The family moved to St. Louis shortly thereafter, but by 1925 they were back in Cleveland.

In 1926 Himes graduated from Glenville High School in Cleveland. He planned on attending Ohio State University, and in order to earn money he worked as a busboy at the Wade Park Manor Hotel. While on the job Himes was seriously injured after he fell down an elevator shaft. The hotel was found liable and Himes was awarded a monthly disability payment. He enrolled at Ohio State but left in 1927 because of poor grades and bad health. Himes thereupon returned to Cleveland and began working as a bellhop in the Gilsey Hotel. Attracted by the seamier side of Cleveland, he began carrying a gun and hanging out at a bar and gambling club called Bunch Boy's, where he dealt blackjack. Himes soon found himself in trouble with the law. His first arrest, for passing bad checks, ended with a two-year suspended sentence, plus a five-year parole. His second arrest was far more serious: the armed robbery of an elderly couple. In December 1928 Himes was sentenced to 20 to 25 years' hard labor. He served time in the Ohio State Penitentiary from December 27, 1928. until September 21, 1934, when he was transferred to a work farm; he was paroled into his mother's custody on April 1, 1936.

In The Quality of Hurt, the first volume of his autobiography, Himes wrote, "I grew to manhood in the Ohio State Penitentiary. I was nineteen years old when I went in and twenty-six years old when I came out. I became a man dependent on no one but myself. I learned all the behavior patterns necessary for survival. … I survived, I suppose, because I knew how to gamble." Himes admitted that his explosive rage also served as a shield in prison, as did his education. It was in prison that Himes began to write, and his first stories naturally dealt with crime and criminals. "Crazy in the Stir," "To What Red Hell" (based on an infamous prison fire at the Ohio State Penitentiary), "The Visiting Hour," "Every Opportunity," "The Night's for Crying," "Strictly Business," and other stories appeared in various newspapers and magazines, including Coronet and Esquire. This early success bolstered Himes's confidence, and upon his release he began working on a prison novel, originally titled Black Sheep. On August 13, 1937, he married Jean Lucinda Johnson, whom he had lived with before his incarceration.

The Great Depression came upon the United States during Himes's prison term and, ironically, Himes was spared its harshest years. The Works Project Administration (WPA) was one of the New Deal programs designed to kick-start the economy, and in 1937 he went to work for the WPA, at first as a laborer and then a research assistant for the Cleveland Public Library. By 1938 Himes was working for the WPA's Federal Writers' Project, assigned to write a history of the state of Ohio and later a guide to Cleveland. In retrospect Himes considered this one of the happier periods in his life, both personally and professionally. Himes was even writing a column (though unsigned) for the Cleveland Daily News titled, "This Cleveland." In March 1940 he successfully petitioned Ohio Governor Harold Burton for termination of his parole and restoration of his citizenship. Himes afterward joined the Democratic Party.

In 1941, after his term in the Federal Writers' project had expired and he could not find work in Cleveland, Himes decided to head to California. Before doing so, however, he went to work as a butler on Malabar Farm, located in the countryside southwest of Cleveland. Malabar was owned by the writer Louis Bromfield, who at the time was at the height of his popularity. Bromfield, a Pulitzer Prize winner who also wrote Hollywood screenplays, read Himes's Black Sheep and promised to help get it published.

Himes spent most of World War II working in the war industry in Los Angeles and California. During this time he published stories and essays in such black-run magazines as Crisis and Opportunity. By 1944 Himes was working on another novel and was awarded a Rosewald fellowship to complete it. That year he moved to New York City. He completed the 1945 novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go, a semi-autobiographical tale of the absurd and rage-filled life of a young, educated African American man who eventually lands a job in the shipyards. After the novel's publication Himes returned to California and began working on a new novel. When he had finished it Himes moved back to New York City. His second novel, Lonely Crusade, was published in 1947. The following year Himes spent two months at the famed Yaddo Writer's Colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. It seemed his career was finally on its way. However his home life suffered and by 1950 Himes and his wife had separated for good.

In 1952 Himes was again running out of money when he managed to finally sell his prison novel, now retitled Cast the First Stone. Unfortunately this was such an over edited version of the manuscript that it amounted almost to censorship. Even Himes's choice of a new title, Yesterday Will Make You Cry, was changed. It was not until 1998 that the novel was finally published in its entirety, along with Himes's preferred title. Also in 1952 Himes met a young woman who worked as an executive at the International Institute of Education; Himes's violent and often destructive affair with Vandi Haygood eventually became the basis for his 1955 novel The Primitive (also titled The End of a Primitive.). By the time that book came out, though, Himes was no longer living in the United States. In 1953 he immigrated to France already the refuge for such prominent African American writers as Richard Wright and James Baldwin. In 1954 Himes published The Third Generation; later that year he moved to Mallorca, a Spanish island also known as Majorca.

1956 was the real turning point in Himes's career. Marcel Duhamel, who had translated If He Hollers Let Him Go into French, became the editor of Gallimard publishing house's "La Sârie Noir" and persuaded Himes to write detective fiction. Since Himes's earliest published work had dealt with crime and his subsequent novels had both noirish and absurdist touches, this was not so unusual a request. Himes decided to give it a try and what resulted was a long series featuring literature's first two African American detectives, Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones, who were patterned after characters in a story Himes had written while in prison. The series became known as the "Harlem Cycle."

The "Harlem Cycle" and many of Himes' other novels are a mixture of elements, their violence and absurdity at times seemingly at odds with each other, while at other times serving as perfect counterpoints. As Himes himself wrote in My Life of Absurdity, "It never occurred to me that I was writing absurdity. Realism and absurdity are so similar in the lives of American blacks one cannot tell the difference."

The first novel in the series, published in 1957, was titled La Reine des pommes (For Love of Imabelle). The novel, which won the Grand Prix in 1958 as the best detective novel of the year, introduces Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones. When it was finally published in the United States it was heavily re-edited, but years later was restored under the title A Rage in Harlem. By the time For Love of Imabelle was published Himes had already finished the next two books in the series, The Crazy Kill (Couchâ dans le pain) and The Real Cool Killers (Il pleut des coups durs), both published in 1959.

Himes' next novel, Dare Dare, was also published in France in 1959, but did not reach its American audiences, under the title Run Man Run, until 1966. It is unique among the "Harlem" novels in that it does not feature Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones. In 1960 Himes published two more "Harlem Cycle" novels: All Shot Up and The Big Gold Dream. The early 1960s proved to be the peak of Himes' career, though not his fame. Ever the gypsy, Himes traveled widely about Europe and back and forth to the United States. He also became more deeply involved with Lesley Packard, whom he married in 1965. In 1961 he finished another novel in the "Harlem Cycle," The Heat's On, which, like Run Man Run, wasn't published in the United States until 1966. That same year, Himes also took a break from the "Harlem Cycle" with the publication of Pinktoes.

In 1962 Himes returned to the United States to do a film documentary about Harlem for France-Soir. The next year he published Une Affair de viol, published in the United States in 1984 as A Case of Rape. Himes suffered a stroke while in Mexico later that year, prompting his return to France. In 1965 he published Cotton Comes to Harlem. The best-known novel in the "Harlem Cycle," it was made into a 1970 film directed by Ossie Davis and starring Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques. Over the next few years Himes continued his hectic pace of travel. He and his wife moved to southern France and from there went to Paris, London, Barcelona, Sweden, and Egypt. In 1968 the couple moved to Spain and the following year built a house in Moraira. In 1969 Himes published what was to be the final volume of the "Harlem Cycle," Blind Man with a Pistol.

In 1972, after publishing The Quality of Hurt, the first volume of his autobiography, Himes went to New York, where he was recognized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 1973 Black on Black was published; it is an anthology of Himes' selected shorter works. In 1974 The Heat's On was filmed as Come Back Charleston Blue, again starring Cambridge and St. Jacques. Himes published the second volume of his autobiography, My Life of Absurdity, in 1976. Seven years later Plan B was published, though Himes himself was too ill to finish it. Featuring Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones, Plan B is a novel of African American revolution begun in the early 1970s but scrapped when Himes decided to devote his energy to his autobiography. Himes died on November 12, 1984.

Books

Himes, Chester, My Life of Absurdity: The Autobiography of Chester Himes, Vol. II, Doubleday, 1976.

Himes, Chester, The Quality of Hurt: The Autobiography of Chester Himes, Vol. I, Doubleday, 1972.

Muller, Gilbert H., Chester Himes, Twayne Publishers, 1989.

Sallis, James, Chester Himes, a Life, Walker & Company, 2000.

Periodicals

Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 1, 1998.

New Yorker, June 4, 2001.

New York Times, November 14, 1984.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 20, 2000.

Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA), April 15, 2001.

Online

"Chester Himes (1909-1984)," http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/chimes.htm (November 7, 2001).

"Chester Himes Books: The Coffin and Gravedigger Mysteries," Giveadamn Chester Himes,http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/HIMES/himes-coffingravedigger.htm (November 7, 2001).

writer

Personal Information

Born Chester Himes, July 29, 1909, in Jefferson City, MO; died November 12, 1984, in Moraira, Spain; son of Joseph Sandy (a teacher) and Estelle (a teacher; maiden name, Bomar) Himes; married Jean Lucinda Johnson, August 13, 1937 (divorced); married Lesley Himes.
Education: Attended Ohio State University, 1926-28.

Career

Writer; worked as bellhop, day laborer, small-time hustler, gambler, and criminal; convicted and imprisoned for armed robbery, 1928 (released, 1935); joined Works Progress Administration (WPA) writers' project, 1935; worked in shipyards and for aircraft companies in Los Angeles and San Francisco through World War II; moved to France, 1953; made film in Harlem for French television, 1967.

Life's Work

Best known as the creator of the fictional black detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, writer Chester Himes created a memorable body of work that vividly captured as well as satirized the life of blacks in a racist society. In the Western Humanities Review, James Sallis called Himes "among America's most powerful and original novelists" and "a marvelous observer and prodigious inventor...." Virtually all of Himes's writings addressed the problems of racism in American society and their consequences in human terms. Although often graphically violent and populated with unsavory characters, his novels were also filled with both dark and light-hearted humor, and his detective stories featured sequences of ingenious suspense.

The full range of black issues in the United States were addressed in Himes's work, from Back-to-Africa and Back-to-the-South movements to the particular type of violence that blacks wield on each other in the nation's ghettos. Himes used his fiction to condemn all role players in racism, including middle-class blacks who try to be "more white" to get ahead in white society and white liberals who felt guilty for having a racial advantage. He lamented the fact that many stories about blacks were vehicles for tawdry entertainment. According to the Nation, Himes said, "That's one of the saddest parts about the black man in America--that he is being used to titillate the emotions of the white community." He went on to say that "I want these people to take me seriously. I don't care if they think I'm a barbarian, a savage, or what they think; just think I'm a serious savage."

Himes held out little hope for the black man in a society where whites refused to accept him as an equal. This sense of futility is demonstrated in shocking fashion in one of his early short stories about a black man who has his feet soaked in gasoline and set ablaze because he didn't step off the sidewalk to let a white couple go by him. Later in the story this man is chastised because he won't stand up for the playing of the national anthem, even though it is obvious he has no feet. This juxtaposition of a patriotic symbol with a senseless humiliation of a black was no accident, and it was vintage Himes.

Himes was no stranger to the type of violence that filled his novels. As a young man he was a petty criminal, hustler, and gambler. He was raised in a middle-class family in Cleveland, where his father was a college instructor until he appeared to have lost his motivation and drifted into work as a roofer in his later years. His mother, Anna Bomar Himes, was obsessive in her love and acutely aware of the color of her skin. She favored her son Chester for his light skin, and attempted to make him more "white" by brushing and oiling of his hair to straighten it. Anna Himes was particularly outraged when dark-skinned blacks inflicted her with what she considered racial slights. This attitude was transferred to her dark-skinned husband as well, whom she seemed to loathe. Himes would later draw on these undercurrents of tension in his Harlem novels, which portrayed sexist sadism and the effects of a pathological self-hatred caused by racism.

Himes attended Ohio State University for almost two years before he was asked to leave for his involvement in a fight in a local speakeasy. Leaving college, he worked at odd jobs and soon became a heavy drinker. He had numerous run-ins with the police, receiving two suspended sentences for burglary and passing bad checks. After getting caught for armed robbery of over $50,000 at the age of 19, he was sentenced to 20 years hard labor in the Ohio State Penitentiary. While incarcerated, Himes began to write numerous stories about crime and prison life. He submitted some of them to black newspapers and magazines, finding almost immediate success. His first stories were published in the Atlanta World, Pittsburgh Courier, and Abbott's Monthly. Six of his stories were also printed in Esquire, starting in 1934, with "Crazy in the Stir," which Himes signed only with his prison number.

Despite his initial writing successes, Himes had difficulty interesting a publisher in his work after he was paroled from prison in 1935. With jobs scarce during the Depression, he was forced to take a job with the WPA writers' project, a New Deal government employment program. He wrote a history of the city of Cleveland, but the work was never published. Himes joined the great migration of blacks west during World War II, and ended up working in the shipyards and at aircraft companies in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Himes continued to write actively during this period, producing novels that were heavily naturalistic and demonstrated the hopelessness of rising above an environment circumscribed by racism. Often Himes made this point by pummeling the reader with a parade of victimizers and victims who live where law and order were corrupted by the very violence they were meant to contain.

Art imitated life in Himes's novel If He Hollers Let Him Go, which was set in the type of shipyard where he worked. The protagonist of the novel clearly states Himes's opinion of the black man's status in America: "If I couldn't live in America as an equal in the minds, hearts, and souls of all white people, if I couldn't know that I had a chance to do anything any other American could, to go as high as American citizenship would carry anybody, there'd never be anything in the country for me anyway." In 1947 he published Lonely Crusade, the story of a black union organizer whose marriage falls apart and who seeks solace with a white mistress who makes his life even worse.

Himes's novels in the 1940s were not well received. The response embittered him, and he became even more distraught over his failing marriage. Writing about this low point in the first volume of his two-volume autobiography, The Quality of Hurt, Himes said, "I had convinced myself I was a failure as a writer, and poverty and loneliness and our enforced separation had convinced me I was a failure as a husband." Himes attempted to justify his artistic stance during a speech at the University of Chicago in 1948.

Addressing a primarily white audience, Himes said that any legitimate investigations of the black American psyche would have to acknowledge the rot at its core. He claimed that "If this plumbing for the truth reveals within the Negro personality homicidal mania, lust for white women, a pathetic sense of inferiority, paradoxical anti-Semitism, arrogance, Uncle Tomism, hate and fear and self-hate, this then is the effects of oppression on the human personality. These are the daily horrors, the daily realities, the daily experiences of an oppressed minority." Apparently whites were not ready to hear this type of talk, because Himes's declaration was met by hushed silence.

Depression about his personal life and doubts about his ability as a writer led Himes to excessive drinking during the late 1940s and early 1950s. He worked in menial jobs, and had an affair with an unstable white woman of the New York City literary circle. Two novels written during these years had no impact on his fading reputation. Then, like the black novelist Richard Wright in earlier years, he fled the country in 1953, for France and discovered that the French had a high regard for his work. While there, he was urged by his French publisher, Marcel Duhamel, to write detective fiction stories based in Harlem to generate some sales. Himes obliged by penning For Love of Imabelle, which was later published in the United States as A Rage in Harlem. The French critics loved it, and the work earned Himes the 1958 Grand Prix Policier.

A Rage in Harlem introduced two of Hime's most memorable characters, the hard-boiled black detective duo of Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, who would appear in a series of novels. This duo represented a breed of policeman never before seen in fiction. They embodied a new strain of survival instinct for the urban environment that allowed them to sidestep standard police procedure and use their guns and fists to cut through red tape. As Fred Pfeil wrote in the Nation, "Grave Digger and Coffin Ed are in fact not so much crime-solvers as priests of violence; the swirling, brutal action over which they preside and to which they contribute is a voodoo celebration of black America, a black mass indeed."

Frightening and intriguing at the same time, Grave Digger and Coffin Ed forage for criminals in a hostile environment of drug addicts, dealers, prostitutes, and pimps. They make their own "rules of law" as they go along, and are not averse to beating people senseless and making deals with known criminals for expediency's sake. This twosome reflected Himes's view of a racist society, by displaying the realistic sense to know that little of what they do will have much effect on anything.

As Grave Digger says in one novel, "We've got the highest crime rate on earth among the colored people in Harlem. And there ain't but three things to do about it: make the criminals pay for it--you don't want to do that; pay the people enough to live decently--you ain't going to do that; so all that's left is let 'em eat one another up." The viewpoint of this protagonist reverberates through Himes's many depictions of violence inflicted on blacks by blacks. As Sallis wrote, "And just as Himes had discovered in his mythical Harlem a correlative for the absurdity of the urban black's life, so he found a metaphor for the mindless ubiquity of violence against and within those same people."

Despite his popularity with the French, Himes found no such acceptance from American critics. They regarded the Harlem novels as "potboilers" and thought that Himes had sold out his talent by writing them. Because they were a mixed breed of writing, these novels also had a difficult time finding an audience. They failed to attract the interest of standard readers of detective fiction who demanded carefully constructed plots and resolutions. At the same time, more literate readers tended to dismiss this type of writing altogether as pulp fiction.

As time went on, the Harlem novels deviated even further from the formula of detective stories as Himes focused more on the setting than the action. His characters became more grotesque, absurdities proliferated, and crimes remained hazy or unsolved. However, Himes felt he was making an important point--that corruption in a world defined by racism is so far gone that no force can purify it. As he wrote in My Life of Absurdity, "Realism and absurdity are so similar in the lives of American blacks one can not tell the difference."

Himes achieved his greatest fame in the United States in 1965 with Pinktoes, a satire of black-white relations, and in 1970, when the popular movie Cotton Comes to Harlem, based on his novel of the same name, was released. During the late 1960s and onward Himes injected more comedy into his work, although the violence remained as well. In The Quality of Hurt, published in 1972, he willingly blamed himself for the crimes of his youth and the harm he did to his family. The memoir was a stark account of a life toughened by tragedy, recounting everything from having seen his brother blinded in an accident that he may have been able to stop to the critical rejection of his work he endured for many years.

Despite years of setbacks and rejection that could have ended his writing aspirations, Chester Himes somehow kept the words coming and eventually achieved a certain level of fame. However, he never felt at home in the United States and avoided his native land for the last twenty years of his life. Himes lived in Moraira, Spain, for the last 15 years of his life, and he died there on November 12, 1984. While many critics dismissed his writing in the past, the works of Himes have aged well and today are largely thought to be an important contribution to American literature. As Sallis wrote, "... the Harlem novels are a singular achievement. There is nothing else like them in our literature, and their author rightly deserves the same approbation given another American original, Raymond Chandler."

Awards

Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in creative writing, 1944-45; Grand Prix Policier (France), 1958.

Works

Writings

• Fiction If He Hollers Let Him Go, 1945.
• Lonely Crusade, 1947.
• Cast the First Stone, 1952.
• The Third Generation, 1954.
• The Primitive, 1955.
• Pinktoes, 1961.
• A Rage in Harlem, 1965.
• Cotton Comes to Harlem, 1965.
• Baby Sisters and Selected Writings (stories), 1973.

• The Autobiography of Chester Himes, Volume I: The Quality of Hurt, 1972; Volume II: My Life of Absurdity, 1976.

Further Reading

Books

• Lundquist, James, Chester Himes, Ungar, 1976.
• Milliken, Stephen F., Chester Himes, University of Missouri Press, 1976.
• Wilson, M. L., Chester Himes, Chelsea House, 1988.

• Armchair Detective, Vol. 15, 1982, pp. 38-43.
• Nation, November 15, 1986, pp. 523-25.
• New York Review of Books, January 16, 1992, p. 8.
• New York Times, November 14, 1984, p. A26.
• New York Times Book Review, January 18, 1987, p. 34; October 31, 1993, p. 40.
• Sociocriticism, 1986-1987, pp. 143-57.
• Western Humanities Review, Autumn 1983, pp. 191-206.

— Ed Decker

Chester Bomar Himes
detail from cover of Chester Himes' biography My Life of Absurdity
Born	July 29, 1909(1909-07-29) Jefferson City, Missouri
Died	November 13, 1984 (aged 75) Moraira, Spain
Pen name	Chester Himes
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	United States
Writing period	1934 - 1980
Genres	Hardboiled crime fiction, detective fiction

Chester Bomar Himes (July 29, 1909 – November 12, 1984) was a famous African American writer. His works include If He Hollers Let Him Go and a series of Harlem Detective novels. In 1958 he won France's Grand Prix de Littérature Policière; two of his novels were made into feature films: Cotton Comes to Harlem directed by Ossie Davis in 1970 and A Rage in Harlem starring Gregory Hines and Danny Glover in 1991.

Contents 1 Life 1.1 Early life 1.2 Prison and literary beginnings 1.3 First books 1.4 Emigration to France 1.5 Later life and death 2 Critical reception and biography 3 Works 3.1 Novels and stories 3.2 Autobiographies 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

Life

Early life

Chester Himes was born in Jefferson City, Missouri on July 29, 1909. He grew up in a middle-class home in Missouri and in Ohio. Chester's parents were Joseph Sandy Himes and Estelle Bomar Himes; his father was a peripatetic black college professor of industrial trades and his mother was a teacher at Scotia Seminary prior to marriage^[1]; the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. His parents' marriage was unhappy and eventually ended in divorce.^[2]

Prison and literary beginnings

Himes attended East High School in Cleveland. While he was a freshman at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, he was expelled for playing a prank. In late 1928 he was arrested and sentenced to jail and hard labor for 20 to 25 years for armed robbery and sent to Ohio Penitentiary. In prison, he wrote short stories and had them published in national magazines. Himes stated that writing in prison and being published was a way to earn respect from guards and fellow inmates, as well as avoid violence.

His first stories appeared in 1931 in The Bronzeman and, starting in 1934, in Esquire. His story To What Red Hell (published in Esquire in 1934) as well as to his novel Cast the First Stone - only much later republished unabridged as Yesterday Will Make You Cry (1998) dealt with the catastrophic 1930 prison fire Himes witnessed at Ohio Penitentiary in 1930.

In 1934 Himes was transferred to London Prison Farm and in April 1936 he was released on parole into his mother's custody. Following his release he worked at part time jobs and at the same time continued to write. During this period he came in touch with Langston Hughes who facilitated Himes's contacts with the world of literature and publishing.

In 1936 Himes married Jean Johnson.

First books

In the 1940s Himes spent time in Los Angeles, working as a screenwriter but also producing two novels, If He Hollers Let Him Go and The Lonely Crusade that charted the experiences of the wave of black in-migrants, drawn by the city's defense industries, and their dealings with the established black community, fellow workers, unions and management. He also provided an analysis of the Zoot Suit Riots for the Crisis, the magazine of the NAACP.

Mike Davis in City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles, describes the prevalence of racism in Hollywood in the 40s and 50s, cites Himes' brief career as a screenwriter for Warner Brothers, terminated when Jack Warner heard about him and said "I don't want no gotdamned niggers on this lot." (Davies, City of Quartz, pg 43, Verso 2006). Himes later wrote in his autobiography:

Up to the age of thirty-one I had been hurt emotionally, spiritually and physically as much as thirty-one years can bear. I had lived in the South, I had fallen down an elevator shaft, I had been kicked out of college, I had served seven and one half years in prison, I had survived the humiliating last five years of Depression in Cleveland; and still I was entire, complete, functional; my mind was sharp, my reflexes were good, and I was not bitter. But under the mental corrosion of race prejudice in Los Angeles I became bitter and saturated with hate.

Emigration to France

By the 1950s Himes had decided to settle in France permanently, a country he liked in part due to his critical popularity there. In Paris, Himes was the contemporary of the political cartoonist, Oliver Harrington, and fellow writers, Richard Wright and James Baldwin.

Later life and death

In 1969, fleeing oppression, Himes moved to Moraira, Spain, where he died in 1984 from Parkinson's Disease.

Critical reception and biography

Some regard Chester Himes as the literary equal of Dashiell Hammett^{[citation needed]} and Raymond Chandler^{[citation needed]}. Ishmael Reed says "[Himes] taught me the difference between a black detective and Sherlock Holmes" and it would be more than 30 years until another Black mystery writer, Walter Mosley and his Easy Rawlins and Mouse series, had even a similar effect. ^[3] Himes was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans. [1]

The first biographical treatment of Himes's life is "The Several Lives of Chester Himes," by long-time Himes scholars Edward Margolies and Michel Fabre, published in 1997 by University Press of Mississippi. Later, novelist and Himes scholar James Sallis published a more deeply detailed biography of Himes called Chester Himes: A Life (2000).

A detailed examination of Himes's writing and what has been written about him in both America and Europe can be found in "Chester Himes: An Annotated Primary and Secondary Bibliography" compiled by Michel Fabre, Robert E. Skinner, and Lester Sullivan (Greenwood Press, 1992).

Works

A recent edition of If He Hollers Let Him Go

Himes's novels encompassed many genres including the crime novel/mystery and political polemics, exploring racism in the United States.

Chester Himes wrote about African Americans in general, especially in two books that are concerned with labor relations and African American workplace issues. If He Hollers Let Him Go — which contains many autobiographical elements — is about a black shipyard worker in Los Angeles during World War II struggling against racism as well as his own violent reactions to racism. Lonely Crusade is a longer work that examines some of the same issues. Cast the First Stone is based on Himes's experiences in prison. It was Himes's first novel but was not published until about 10 years after it was written. One reason may have been Himes' unusually candid treatment — for that time — of a homosexual relationship.

Himes also wrote a series of Harlem Detective novels featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, New York City police detectives in Harlem. The novels feature a mordant emotional timbre and a fatalistic approach to street situations. Funeral homes are often part of the story, and funeral director H. Exodus Clay is a recurring character in these books.

The titles of the series include A Rage in Harlem, The Real Cool Killers, The Crazy Kill, All Shot Up, The Big Gold Dream, The Heat's On, Cotton Comes to Harlem, and Blind Man With A Pistol; all written in the period 1957-1969.

Cotton Comes to Harlem was made into a movie in 1970, which was set in that time period, rather than the earlier period of the original book. A sequel, Come Back, Charleston Blue was released in 1972. And For Love of Imabelle was made into a film under the title A Rage in Harlem in 1991.

Novels and stories

1. If He Hollers Let Him Go, 1945
2. Lonely Crusade, 1947
3. Cast the First Stone, 1952
4. The Third Generation, 1954
5. The End of a Primitive, 1955
6. For Love of Imabelle, alternate titles The Five-Cornered Square, A Rage in Harlem, 1957
7. The Real Cool Killers, 1959
8. The Crazy Kill, 1959
9. The Big Gold Dream, 1960
10. All Shot Up, 1960
11. Run Man Run, 1960
12. Pinktoes, 1961
13. The Heat's on, 1966
14. Cotton Comes to Harlem, 1965
15. Blind Man with a Pistol, 1969
16. Black on Black, 1973
17. A Case of Rape, 1980
18. The Collected Stories of Chester Himes, 1990
19. Plan B, 1993
20. Yesterday Will Make You Cry, 1998

Autobiographies

1. The Quality of Hurt (1973)
2. My Life of Absurdity (1976)

A useful companion to the two volumes of autobiography is "Conversations with Chester Himes", edited by Michel Fabre and Robert E. Skinner, published by University Press of Mississippi in 1995.

See also

• African American literature

References

1. ^ Polito, Robert (March 18, 2001). "Hard-Boiled: In his crime novels, Chester Himes found an outlet for the pain of his turbulent life.". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/18/reviews/010318.18politot.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. Retrieved 2008-08-13. 
2. ^ Pegasos. "Chester Himes". http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/chimes.htm Accessed online 8 Dec 2007)
3. ^ Ishmael Reed by Spring

• Lipsitz, George. Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994.
• Margolies, Edward, and Michel Fabre. The Several Lives of Chester Himes. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997.
• Franklin, H. Bruce. “Self-Mutilations.” Rev. of Yesterday Will Make You Cry, by Chester Himes. Nation 16 Feb. 1998: 28-31.
• Sallis, James. “Chester Himes: A Life”. Edinburgh: Payback Press, 2000. New York: Walker & Co, 2001.

External links

• Biography
• Overview and Review of Himes's Work
• (French) Audiobook (mp3) : Face in the moon, short story translated in french
• [2]
• Some thoughts on Chester Himes on the 100th anniversary of his birth

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