While reading Mike Davis’ City of Quartz, I came across a reference to Chester Himes:“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 the 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 had become bitter and saturated with hate.” (from The Quality of Hurt)After that, I had to read this man. Fortunately a friend of mine possesses three of his novels (see my To-Read shelf for the others) and lent them to me.This first one I’ve read is a short (152 pages), intense melodrama about a white woman and a black man, neither of whom are in control of their lives, and their encounter truly ends “in a nightmare of drink and debauchery,” as the blurb says.While there’s certainly nothing admirable about either character, Himes writes with enormous energy and readers will find themselves feeling and sympathizing with both.I look forward to eventually getting to the other two novels on my shelf and picking up more Himes in the future.
Do You like book The End Of A Primitive: A Novel (1997)?
Kriss Cummings is a divorced, whiskey-soaked white woman nearing middle age. She has slept with somewhere in the region of two hundred men, and her wardrobe contains a high number of red dresses as she "couldn't get along in the world without feeling daring".Jessie Robinson is a gin-soaked black man, a published writer on the "black problem in America", separated from his wife and on the skids, prone to surreal and twisted soliloquys which he sometimes vocalises involuntarily.Their paths have crossed before and do so again over a manic weekend, with tragic consequences.I was pretty surprised by the directness and savage bitterness in this hard-hearted tale of race and sex in 1950s New York. You will be hard pushed to find feelings of racial condescension and antipathy expressed as freely and scathingly as this in a modern novel let alone one from the middle of the last century. Kriss, Jessie and their shared acquaintances are supposed to be at the forefront of integration too, but you wouldn't credit it by the harsh nature of their thoughts and behaviour towards each other.On this evidence Himes is to Kerouac and the rest of the Beats what Chuck Berry is to Elvis.
—Perry Whitford
