Something I Said -- Chester Himes by Dwight Hobbes
Something I Said -- Chester Himes by Dwight Hobbes
Something I Said - Chester Himes
Dwight Hobbes
Insight News archives
American literature probably will never again know a voice of the caliber and character it experienced through the novels and short fiction of Chester Himes.
Himes employed easily readable narrative, evenly paced with sure-handed craftsmanship, enlivened by compelling immediacy. He defied the great American fallacy of liberty and justice for all. Combining superlative writing ability with a steadfast refusal to accept social oppression, Himes was equaled in his fiction only by James Baldwin (Another Country, Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone) and Ann Petry (The Street) and surpassed only by John A. Williams (The Man Who Cried I Am, Clifford's Blues).
It is a telling irony that the best-selling efforts were his wildly comic accounts of black urban life, the dime-store paperback satires Cotton Comes To Harlem, Come Back Charleston Blue and A Rage In Harlem. Each made a mint when adapted to film, Cotton and Blue while Himes was still around to spend some of the money, Rage long after he died. Himes' serious work, soulful and gritty, disturbingly true to life, attained relative success despite petty and spiteful interference. In one instance, a publisher was chose to lose sales rather than respect Himes' integrity. If He Hollers Let Him Go offered America a grim, unsparing look at its protagonist, a sensitive, intelligent, capable black man who is married to a sensitive, intelligent and capable black woman and ruthlessly emasculated by a white world that will not let him provide for himself and his woman simply because he is not white. It was climbing the national charts when, echoing the story, a staff member at the publishing house was offended by Himes' candor and issued a stop-print order. As well, the supposedly progressive world of bright, shining liberals stooped to underhanded sabotage. When Lonely Crusade exposed the self-congratulatory, allegedly pro-black political far left as a conclave of crass, exploitative opportunists, the American Communist Party killed national sales of the novel. They organized across the country, buying copies and returning them until stores refused to keep carrying it. There can no clearer illustration of the politically correct showing, as it were, their true color.
Not all of Chester Himes' brilliance was undermined. There was The Primitive, bitter in its mesmerizing study of self-destruction induced by racism. Published in 1955, it resurfaced in the late 60's as part of Black Arts Movement. Thunder's Mouth Press, in the 1990's, returned If He Hollers Let Him Go, Lonely Crusade and the tragically autobiographical The Third Generation to bookshelves.
Thunder's Mouth Press (along with reissuing John A. Williams titles) also published The Collected Stories of Chester Himes. The collection contains upwards of 50 pieces of short fiction written between 19333 and 1978. Many originally appeared in such magazines as Esquire, Negro Story and Crossroad. Several (A Modern Fable, Pork Chop Paradise, The Ghost of Rufus Jones) are reminiscent of the mischievous spirit that gave avid readers countless chuckles turning the pages of Cotton Comes To Harlem and the other seven "Coffin Ed"/"Grave Digger Jones" tales in Himes' detective series. Most of the stories in the collection are starkly characteristic of Himes' writing about the agony of dealing with racism.
You write what you know best and that's what Chester Himes knew best, the anguish of racism and not only at the hands of white folk. The Third Generation begins with the favoritism and unfair expectations his color-struck mother had of him as a child. An extremely "fair" skinned woman, she internalized the adage, "If you black, get back." Himes, light-skinned but not light enough, lived under the pressure of her relentless intention, from applying lightening cream on his face as a little boy to scrutinizing his friends as an adolescent, to make him white as she possibly could, physically and socially. It was in rebellion against his mother's madness that Himes' behavior eventually led him to the wrong side of the law. He spent almost ten years in prison, sentenced by a judge who threw the book at him for unarmed burglary. Novelist-poet-playwright Dan Levin, who was a professional colleague and personal friend, comments, "Chester was terribly sensitive, terribly bitter. His toughness, his bitterness went directly into his books about the black experience. His wife, Jean, was a fine woman who kept him from going off the track and being wholly consumed by his anger."
Himes' autobiography is titled The Quality of Hurt. And, in fact, it is painful to read. The truth can be like that. The truth, nonetheless, must be faced for life to having meaning. And Chester Himes never looked away. Never, in fact, so much as flinched.
Your Guide to Furnace Cleaning Guiding the lost souls at tricky juncture Leather Footwear Industry In Shenzhen Face The Crisis Of The Positive Response - Leather, Footwear, Selling: Making The Sale Without Dropping Your Price How Do You Spell ReLeaf Pilgrim's Wisdom 1968 Chevy Camaro 2011 Conversion Factor Slashed By 30 Percent versus Current Rates Remove Av-look.com - How to Remove Av-look.com Now 1970 Chevy Camaro Why You Should Take Probiotics For Indigestion An Outline of CNA Courses Sands Found That Fear Of The Ancient Shu Yin Zhengyi Temporarily Large Community Rehabilitation -