Chester Himes
Chester Himes | |
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Harlem Detective series of novels | |
Notable awards | Grand Prix de Littérature Policière |
Spouse | Jean Lucinda Johnson (m. 1937–div. 1978) Lesley Packard (m. 1978) |
Chester Bomar Himes (July 29, 1909 – November 12, 1984) was an American writer. His works, some of which have been filmed, include
Life
Early life
Chester Himes was born in
I loved my brother. I had never been separated from him and that moment was shocking, shattering, and terrifying....We pulled into the emergency entrance of a white people's hospital. White clad doctors and attendants appeared. I remember sitting in the back seat with Joe watching the pantomime being enacted in the car's bright lights. A white man was refusing; my father was pleading. Dejectedly my father turned away; he was crying like a baby. My mother was fumbling in her handbag for a handkerchief; I hoped it was for a pistol.
The family later settled in Cleveland, Ohio. His parents' marriage was unhappy and eventually ended in divorce.[3]
Prison and literary beginnings
In 1925, Himes's family left Pine Bluff and relocated to Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended
His first stories appeared in 1931 in The Bronzeman and, starting in 1934, in Esquire magazine. 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 prison fire Himes witnessed at Ohio Penitentiary in 1930.
In 1934, Himes was transferred to London Prison Farm and in April 1936 was released on parole into his mother's custody. Following his release he worked at part-time jobs while continuing to write. During this period he came into contact with Langston Hughes, who facilitated Himes's entree into the world of literature and publishing.
In 1937, Himes married Jean Johnson.[5]
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 (1945) and Lonely Crusade (1947), which charted the experiences of the great migration, 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.
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.
Back on the East Coast Himes received a scholarship at the Yaddo artists' community, where he stayed and worked in May and June 1948, in a room just across from where Patricia Highsmith resided.[7]
Emigration to France
Himes separated from his wife Jean in 1952, and the following year he began a period of travels by boarding a ship to France.
It was in Paris in the late 1950s that Chester met his second wife, Lesley Himes (née Packard), when she went to interview him. She was a journalist at the Herald Tribune, where she wrote a fashion column, "Monica". He described her as "Irish-English with blue-gray eyes and very good looking"; he also saw her courage and resilience, Chester said to Lesley: "You're the only true color-blind person I've ever met in my life."[9] After he suffered a stroke, in 1959, Lesley quit her job and nursed him back to health. She cared for him for the rest of his life, and worked with him as his informal editor, proofreader, confidante and, as the director Melvin Van Peebles dubbed her, "his watchdog". After a long engagement, they were married in 1978,[9] as Chester Himes was still legally married to his first wife, Jean, and only able to gain a divorce that year.[10]
Lesley and Chester faced adversities as a
Later life and death
In 1969, Himes moved to Moraira, Spain, where he died in 1984 from Parkinson's disease, at the age of 75. He is buried at Benissa cemetery.
Critical reception and biography
Some regard Chester Himes as the literary equal of
In 1996, his widow Lesley Himes went to New York to work with Ed Margolies on the first biographical treatment of Himes's life, entitled The Several Lives of Chester Himes, by long-time Himes scholars
A detailed examination of Himes's writing and writings about him can be found in Chester Himes: An Annotated Primary and Secondary Bibliography compiled by Michel Fabre, Robert E. Skinner, and Lester Sullivan (
External videos | |
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Presentation by Lawrence Jackson on Chester B. Himes: A Biography, September 1, 2018, C-SPAN |
In 2017, Lawrence P. Jackson published a significant, 600+ page biography of Himes titled Chester B. Himes: A Biography.[15] Reviewing the biography for Johns Hopkins Magazine, Bret McCabe noted it makes the case that while "[Himes's] debut, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), is as admired today as it was in its time[...] its follow-up, Lonely Crusade (1947), is overlooked and underappreciated, and positions it as a key text in reckoning both Himes's subsequent career and later works."[16]
Works
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 (1952) is based on Himes's experiences in prison. It was Himes's first novel but was not published until about ten years after it was written. One reason may have been Himes's unusually candid treatment – for that time – of a homosexual relationship. Originally written in the third person, it was rewritten in the first person in a more "hard-boiled" style. Yesterday Will Make You Cry (1993), published after Himes's death, restored the original manuscript. The restored 1998 edition includes a 1997 introduction by filmmaker and writer Melvin Van Peebles.[17]
Himes also wrote a series of
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 between 1957 and 1969. The final entry in the series was to be Plan B, published posthumously in 1983.
In May 2011, and again in 2020
Novels and stories
- Black on Black: Baby Sister and selected writings. London: Michael Joseph. 1942.
- If He Hollers Let Him Go. NY: Doubleday. 1945.
- Lonely Crusade. NY: Knopf. 1947.
- Cast the First Stone. NY: Coward-McCann. 1952.
- The Third Generation. NY: New American Library. 1954.
- The Primitive. NY: New American Library. 1955. See The End of a Primitive, 1990.
- For Love of Imabelle. Greenwich, CN: Fawcett. 1957. Alternate titles: A Rage in Harlem (1985 Vintage Books, New York), The Five-cornered square.
- The Real Cool Killers. NY: Avon Nook. 1959.
- The Crazy Kill. NY: Avon. 1959.
- The Big Gold Dream. NY: Avon Publications. 1960.
- All Shot Up. London: Panther. 1960.
- Pinktoes. Paris: Olympia Press. 1961.
- A Case of Rape. Paris: Editions Les yeux ouverts. 1963.
- Cotton Comes to Harlem. NJ: Chatham Book. 1964.
- The Heat's On. NY: Putnam. 1966.
- Run Man Run. NY: G.P. Putnam. 1966.
- Blind Man with a Pistol. NY: W. Morrow. 1969.
- Plan B. Paris: Lieu Commun (French). 1983.
- The End of a Primitive. London: Allison & Busby. 1990. From CIP data: Restores the work in the form the author intended, and includes his introduction, not previously published.
- The Collected Stories of Chester Himes. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press. 1990. Calvin Hernton.
- Yesterday Will Make You Cry. NY: W.W. Norton. 1997. Complete and unexpurgated text of Himes's first autobiographical novel, originally published as Cast the First Stone (1953).
Autobiography
- The Quality of Hurt: The Autobiography of Chester Himes, Volume 1. Garden City NY: Doubleday. 1971.
- My Life of Absurdity: The Autobiography of Chester Himes, Volume 2. 1972.
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.
Films based on novels
Four Chester Himes novels were made into feature films: If He Hollers, Let Him Go! (1968) [uncredited], directed by Charles Martin;
Personal life
Himes was Catholic, but professed to be "not a good one".[27] At the time of his death in Moraira, he was married to Lesley Himes (née Packard), his partner, confidant, and informal editor, since 1959.[28]
See also
References
- ^ Als, Hilton (May 28, 2001). "In Black and White: Chester Himes takes a walk on the noir side". The New Yorker.
- ^ Polito, Robert (March 18, 2001). "Hard-Boiled: In his crime novels, Chester Himes found an outlet for the pain of his turbulent life". The New York Times. Retrieved August 13, 2008.
- ^ Liukkonen, Petri. "Chester Himes". Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Finland: Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on February 8, 2007.
- ^ "Alpha Phi Alpha". Archived from the original on March 11, 2007. Retrieved January 28, 2013.
Chester Himes, Kappa, (Ohio State University), Author
- ^ Lawrence P. Jackson, "A Little Hysterical: The Young Lives of Chester and Jean", Los Angeles Review of Books, August 8, 2015.
- ^ Davis, Mike. City of Quartz (1990). Verso, 2006, p. 43.
- ^ James Sallis: Chester Himes. A Life. Walker & Company, New York, 2000, p.150
- African American Literature Book Club. Retrieved August 18, 2020.
- ^ a b c Priozek, Sarah (July 7, 2010). "Lesley Himes obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
- ^ James Sallis: Chester Himes. A Life. Walker & Company, New York, 2000, p. 169.
- ^ Edward Margolies, "Which Way Did He Go? The Private Eye in Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, and Ross MacDonald"[dead link] (Holmes & Meier, 1982)[ISBN missing]
- ^ Early, Gerard (May 7, 1989). "Still Subverting the Culture". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 25, 2015. Retrieved February 10, 2024.
- from the original on February 2, 2024. Retrieved February 10, 2024.
- ^ Busby, Margaret, "Do the Harlem shuffle", The Guardian, 21 October 2000.
- ^ Corrigan, Maureen (July 26, 2017). "New Chester Himes Biography Reveals A Life As Wild As Any Detective Story". Fresh Air. NPR.org. Retrieved November 19, 2018.
- ^ McCabe, Bret. "The lonely crusader". Johns Hopkins Magazine (Fall 2017). Retrieved February 5, 2024.
- ISBN 978-0-393-31829-6.
- CrimeReads. Retrieved April 9, 2022.
- ^ "Chester Himes". JeffreyKeeten. February 15, 2013. Retrieved April 9, 2022.
- ^ Gonzales, Michael (May 29, 2018). "'Rhode Island Red': A Novel by Charlotte Carter". The Blacklist. Retrieved April 9, 2022.
- ^ "If He Hollers, Let Him Go! (1968)", IMDb.
- ^ "Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970)", IMDb.
- ^ "Come Back Charleston Blue (1972)", IMDb.
- ^ "A Rage in Harlem (1991)", IMDb.
- ^ "Three and a Half Thoughts (2006) | The Assassin of Saint Nicholas Avenue (original title)", IMDb.
- ^ "'Cosmic Slop' - HBO's Bizarre, Thought-Provoking Film That Seems to Have Been Forgotten", Shadow and Act, April 20, 2017.
- OCLC 32591255.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 22, 2023.
Further reading
- Fabre, Michel; Skinner, Robert E., eds. (1995). Conversations with Chester Himes. LCCN 95004762.
- Franklin, H. Bruce (February 16, 1998). "Self-Mutilations". The Nation: 28–31. Review of Yesterday Will Make You Cry, by Chester Himes.
- Freese, Peter (1992). The Ethnic Detective : Chester Himes, Harry Kemelman, Tony Hillerman. Essen: Verlag Die Blaue Eule. LCCN 93159770.
- Himes, Chester; ISBN 978-0814333556.
- Jackson, Lawrence P. (2017). Chester B. Hines: A biography. NY: W.W. Norton. ISBN 978-0393063899.
- LCCN 93036425.
- Lundquist, James (1976). Chester Himes. New York: Ungar. LCCN 75042864.
- Margolies, Edward, and Michel Fabre. The Several Lives of Chester Himes. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997.
- Milliken, Stephen F. (1976). Chester Himes: A Critical Appraisal. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. ISBN 9780826201904.
- LCCN 00063328.
- Skinner, Robert E. (1989). Two Guns from Harlem: The Detective Fiction of Chester Himes. Popular Press. ISBN 9780879724542.
- Wilson, M(atthew) L(awrence) (1988). Chester Himes. senior consulting editor, LCCN 87030961.
External links
- Essay on Chester Himes in France
- Biography
- Overview and Review of Himes's Work
- (in French) Audiobook (mp3) : Face in the moon, short story translated in French
- Works by Chester Himes at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Petri Liukkonen. "Chester Himes". Books and Writers.
- Tadzio Koelb, "Some Thoughts on Chester Himes on the 100th Anniversary of His Birth", The Third Estate, July 27, 2009.
- "Theme Issue: Chester Himes and His Legacy", Clues: A Journal of Detection, Vol. 28, No. 1, Spring 2010. McFarland Publishers, ISSN 0742-4248 (Print), 1940-3046 (Online)
- FBI file on Chester Himes
- Chester Himes Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
- Christopher Harter, "Lesley Himes papers, 1934–2008", Amistad Research Center.
- Sarah Pirozek, "Lesley Himes Obituary", The Guardian, July 7, 2010.
- William Horberg, "The Last Chester Himes Movie?", November 6, 2008.