Chester B. Himes: A Biography

by Lawrence P. Jackson

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393063899
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/25/2017
Pages:	624
Sales rank:	807,165
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Lawrence P. Jackson is Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and History at Johns Hopkins University. Author of Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius, The Indignant Generation, and My Father’s Name, he has been published in n+1 and Harper’s. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Table of Contents

Prologue xi

Chapter 1 Old School Negro: 1909-1914 1

Chapter 2 The Southern Crosses the Yellow Dog: 1914-1925 27

Chapter 3 Banquets and Cocaine Balls: 1925-1928 48

Chapter 4 Gray City of Exiled Men: 1928-1936 77

Chapter 5 White Folks and the Days: 1936-1941 109

Chapter 6 Ruin of the Golden Dream: 1941-1944 142

Chapter 7 Trying to Win a Home: 1944-1945 180

Chapter 8 Monkey An' the Lion: 1946-1948 212

Chapter 9 Inflicting a Wound Upon Himself: 1948-1952 247

Chapter 10 Cadillacs to Cotton Sacks: 1952-1954 274

Chapter 11 Othello: 1954-1955 315

Chapter 12 A Pistol in his Hand, Again: 1955-1959 350

Chapter 13 Five Cornered Square: 1959-1962 399

Chapter 14 Cotton Comes to Harlem: 1963-1965 430

Chapter 15 A Moor in Spain: 1965-1972 454

Chapter 16 Afro-American People's Novelist: 1972-1984 490

Notes 499

Acknowledgments 577

Index 581

Editorial Reviews

Many of the details of Himes's life appear in other books, but Jackson's research is unimpeachable. The biography is based on a kaleidoscopic mix of archival materials, close readings of Himes's published writing and personal letters and conversations with people who knew him. Himes had a mercurial personality and led a thrilling life that might tempt a biographer to conjure a book in the spirit of its subject, but Jackson avoids this pitfall. The book is neatly written and accessible, without cheap tricks to build suspense or sway readers' opinions…All told, Chester B. Himes is a bracing journey through the life of an uncompromising writer…

The New York Times Book Review - Michael P. Jeffries

03/13/2017
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. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"Fascinating…Jackson [is] a fluid writer."

Harper's Magazine - Thomas Chatterton Williams

"Jackson’s book—big, intelligent and unflinching—is what literary biography looks like when it’s done right."

San Francisco Chronicle - Kevin Canfield

"A riveting, one-of-a-kind tale of a writer who saw the subject of race from odd, revealing angles."

Wall Street Journal - Clifford Thompson

"Comprehensive."

Esquire - Alex Belth

"Chester B. Himes is a bracing journey through the life of an uncompromising writer."

New York Times Book Review - Michael P. Jeffries

"Dr. Jackson has presented a much needed view of an important Harlem writer. I had the pleasure of knowing Chester and most of the folk he knew. He was fun. He was good looking. And he was a wonderful story teller. Chester struggled, as most writers do, with being himself. But when he opened the special door to ‘Chester,’ we all could peep inside to a special genius. He was old and I quite young when we met. He had a flashlight to let me see the way down what could have been a dark road. Chester Himes is to writing what Miles Davis is to the trumpet, what John Coltrane is to the saxophone, what lips are to love. I am so glad this research has been completed. Chester deserves this sun to cast his shadow over the library that is the hope of black Americans."

Nikki Giovanni

"Makes a convincing case for a writer who's always been something of a tough sell…Jackson memorably characterizes Himes' great gifts as a writer."

NPR - Maureen Corrigan

★ 08/01/2017
There are already two serviceable biographies of American novelist Chester B. Himes (1909–84): Edward Margolies and Michel Fabre's The Several Lives of Chester Himes, and James Sallis's Chester Himes: A Life. This new volume by Jackson (Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and History, Johns Hopkins Univ.; My Father's Name), however, is likely to be the definitive take. Himes is best known for his detective series set in Harlem, NY, including Cotton Comes to Harlem, featuring NYPD detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones. Jackson's portrait of Himes's hardscrabble life is riveting, if disturbing at times. From the eight years Himes spent in prison on charges of armed robbery through his fame as an author and complicated relationships with well-known personalities Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Malcolm X, Jackson meticulously documents the writer's early years, especially his troubled relationship with his mother, which would extend to his relationships with women. Himes led a peripatetic life, constantly on the move throughout the United States and Europe. Keeping track of where he is at any given moment, which woman he is living with, and what novel he is working on (often listed under different titles at various stages of development) can be dizzying, yet Jackson is a steady guide. VERDICT Recommended for all literature collections.—L.J. Parascandola, Long Island Univ., Brooklyn

Library Journal

2017-04-30
Jackson (English and History/Johns Hopkins Univ.; My Father's Name: A Black Virginia Family After the Civil War, 2012, etc.) takes a confusing, twisted tale of a writer and lays it out in a readable, straightforward biography.Chester B. Himes (1909-1984) was the child of teachers, and his mother home-schooled her children as they moved among Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri. She impressed upon her children, especially fair-skinned Chester, that they all had fine white blood. With middle-class black pretensions his lifelong scapegoat, Himes rebelled against his mother's racist attitude to the darker of her own race. After a chemistry experiment blinded his brother, he lost his best companion and competition. In 1926, Himes fell down an elevator shaft, breaking his back, an accident that produced a small income from worker's compensation. With acceptance to Ohio State, his anger at racism manifested itself, and his time was spent gambling, drinking, and taking drugs. Back in Cleveland, he was arrested for robbery and sentenced to 20 years in prison. There, he taught himself short story writing and wrote with his rare perspective on black life from American society's margins. His prison stories were published widely, but he was still learning. Paroled in 1936, he married and moved to Los Angeles, polishing his ability to reproduce speech and identify black divisiveness. Fighting with publishers and paranoid about royalties that never came, he took his book advance and moved to France. While publishers in Paris were even tighter with royalties, Himes found life easier, cheaper, and less racist. Still, as Jackson clearly demonstrates, he couldn't sell his books in the 1940s because of his politics nor in the '50s because of their sexual content. Eventually, he developed his most profitable work in the Harlem detective stories about Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. He was able to discover his answer to racism in humor mingled with violence. A tumultuous life rendered in never-dull, enlightening fashion.

Kirkus Reviews