Chester B. Himes
A Biography
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- $43.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical Work
Finalist for the PEN America/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography
The definitive biography of the groundbreaking African American author who had an extraordinary legacy on black writers globally.
Chester B. Himes has been called “one of the towering figures of the black literary tradition” (Henry Louis Gates Jr.), “the best writer of mayhem yarns since Raymond Chandler” (San Francisco Chronicle), and “a quirky American genius” (Walter Mosely). He was the twentieth century’s most prolific black writer, captured the spirit of his times expertly, and left a distinctive mark on American literature. Yet today he stands largely forgotten.
In this definitive biography of Chester B. Himes (1909–1984), Lawrence P. Jackson uses exclusive interviews and unrestricted access to Himes’s full archives to portray a controversial American writer whose novels unflinchingly confront sex, racism, and black identity. Himes brutally rendered racial politics in the best-selling novel If He Hollers Let Him Go, but he became famous for his Harlem detective series, including Cotton Comes to Harlem. A serious literary tastemaker in his day, Himes had friendships—sometimes uneasy—with such luminaries as Ralph Ellison, Carl Van Vechten, and Richard Wright.
Jackson’s scholarship and astute commentary illuminates Himes’s improbable life—his middle-class origins, his eight years in prison, his painful odyssey as a black World War II–era artist, and his escape to Europe for success. More than ten years in the writing, Jackson’s biography restores the legacy of a fascinating maverick caught between his aspirations for commercial success and his disturbing, vivid portraits of the United States.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Jackson's thorough biography of author Chester Himes (1909 1984), the times come alive more than the subject, who shines through mostly in his own words rather than in Jackson's interpretation. Himes was the third child and third son born to his Missouri professor parents. Their tumultuous marriage had a destabilizing effect on Himes, who, though quite smart, ended his formal education after an embarrassing encounter with a prostitute and committed a series of crimes that landed him in prison. There, Himes started writing short fiction, echoing O. Henry, who became famous after serving a sentence in the same prison. Jackson tackles the milestones of Himes's career: the publications of his first stories in the 1930s; the publication of and response to the provocative 1945 novel If He Hollers Let Him Go; his interactions with literary figures such as James Baldwin, Jo Sinclair, and Richard Wright; and his complicated relationships with his various publishers. One of the most illuminating sections concerns Himes's response to the WWII internment of Japanese-Americans, which he strongly opposed. The biography is exhaustive, covering both Himes's life and the times he lived in, but unfortunately it flattens both.
