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Chester Himes's The End of a Primitive: Exile, Exhaustion, Dissolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2010

OLIVER BELAS
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Abstract

The focus of this article is The End of a Primitive, the novel that marks Chester Himes's transition from a writer of protest to one of crime fiction. Drawing on archival research carried out in the United States, I advance two arguments. Firstly, the story told in the autobiographical Primitive is, in part, that behind Himes's leaving America for Paris in 1953. The novel, I argue, inaugurates a writing of exile that is continued in Himes's crime fiction, a writing through which, because of his literal and figurative distance from America, Himes came to feel more strongly his sense of national – that is, American – identity. Secondly, in Primitive Himes presents the reader with a formal breakdown of sorts, one that “clears the way” for the crime fiction (which, my archival research shows, Himes had begun writing before Primitive was finished). This breakdown – of the protest novel conceived in generic terms – also predicts the trajectory of Himes's hard-boiled crime novels. By signalling the generic exhaustion of protest fiction through the failure of “good” form, Primitive, as the end point of Himes's more generic protest writing, also anticipates the movement of the crime stories towards formal or generic dissolution, an indication, I suggest, of Himes's late belief that literature was in general an ineffective catalyst of social–political change.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , May 2010 , pp. 377 - 390
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 See, for example, Woody Haut, Pulp Culture: Hardboiled Fiction and the Cold War (London: Serpent's Tail, 1995), 20; Maureen Liston, “Chester Himes: ‘A Nigger’,” in Charles L. P. Silet, ed., The Critical Response to Chester Himes (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 84.

2 Ishmael Reed, “Chester Himes: Writer,” in idem, Shrovetide in Old New Orleans (New York: Doubleday, 1978), 97, 96; Robert Lee, “Violence Real and Imagined,” in Silet, 65–66.

3 Sean McCann, Gumshoe America: Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 252; Paula L. Woods, ed., Spooks, Spies, and Private Eyes: Black Mystery, Crime, and Suspense Thrillers (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1996); H. Bruce Franklin, Prison Literature in America: The Victim as Criminal and Artist, exp. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 208. For further indications of Himes's significance see Michael Denning, “Topographies of Violence: Chester Himes' Harlem Domestic Novels,” in Silet, 155–68; Lee Horsley, The Noir Thriller (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 174–82; idem, Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 205–15; Andrew Pepper, The Contemporary American Crime Novel: Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Class (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 110–39; idem, “Black Crime Fiction,” in Martin Priestman, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 209–26; James Sallis, Difficult Lives: Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Chester Himes (Brooklyn: Gryphon Books, 1993); idem, Chester Himes: A Life (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2000), xi.

4 Himes, The Quality of Hurt: The Autobiography of Chester Himes, Volume I (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1972), idem, My Life of Absurdity: The Autobiography of Chester Himes, Volume II (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1976).

5 Himes, The End of a Primitive (London: Allison and Busby, 1997; first published 1956). References are given parenthetically in the text.

6 Sallis, Chester Himes, xi; Michel Fabre, “Interview with Chester Himes,” in Michel Fabre and Robert E. Skinner, eds., Conversations with Chester Himes (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995), 88; Himes, Absurdity, 29, 36.

7 10 June 1947, Yale.

8 19 Feb. 1953, Yale, RW 99.1393.

9 12 May 1953, Yale.

10 11 July 1953, Emory, 2, Himes Fabre (HF).

11 To Malartic, 9 Sept. 1954, Emory, 2, HF.

12 8 Oct. 1956, Yale.

13 To the Malartics, 22 July 1957, Emory, 2, HF.

14 To Carl Van Vechten, 23 Oct., Yale.

15 Emory, 17, Conversations Interviews.

16 To Malartics, 20 Dec., Emory, 2, E/M Himes To/From.

17 28 Aug. 1974, Emory, 2, HF.

18 To Fabre, 30 July 1982, Emory, 17, Leslie-Fabre Himes.

19 18 Feb. 1947, Yale.

20 Himes, Quality, 136.

21 Ibid., 3–4.

22 Himes, Absurdity, 126, 1.

23 N.d., Emory, 8,3.

24 To Yves Malartic, 27 Nov. 1957, Emory, 2, HF. Plon published The Third Generation in French; Himes initially placed his satire Pinktoes with Plon.

25 Naremore, James, “American Film Noir: The History of an Idea,” Film Quarterly 49, 2 (1995–96), 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Naremore, 15, 20, 18. See Jean-Paul Sartre, What Is Literature?, trans. Bernard Frechtman (London: Methuen, 1978), 57–59; Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove, 1967), 139–40.

27 Eburne, Jonathan, “The Transatlantic Mysteries of Paris: Chester Himes, Surrealism, and the Série Noire,” PMLA 120, 3 (2005), 806–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Himes, Absurdity, 102.

29 29 Nov. 1954, Yale.

30 16 Dec. 1954, Yale. In its basic outline, this story resembles what would become A Case of Rape (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1994).

31 To Van Vechten, 8 Oct. 1956, Yale.

32 Himes, Absurdity, 101–2. See also Edward Margolies and Michel Fabre, The Several Lives of Chester Himes (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997), 97–98.

33 Margolies and Fabre, 36. See also Himes, Yesterday Will Make You Cry (New York: Norton, 1999), 42.

34 Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go (London: Serpent's Tail, 1999; first published 1945), 190, idem, Lonely Crusade (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1997; first published 1947), 292, idem, Quality, 72, emphasis added.

35 Himes, Absurdity, 17–25.

36 Himes, Quality, 136, 137.

37 Himes, Absurdity, 36.

38 Himes, Black on Black: Baby Sister and Selected Writings (London: Michael Joseph, 1975), 7. Willi Hochkeppel, “Conversation with Chester Himes, the American Crime Writer,” in Fabre and Skinner, Conversations, 27.

39 Richard Wright, “How ‘Bigger’ was Born,” in idem, Native Son (London: Vintage, 2000; first published 1940), 15.

40 Ibid., 8; see Richard Wright, “Blueprint for Negro Writing,” in Angelyn Mitchell, ed., Within the Circle: An Anthology of African American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 97–106.

41 16 Dec. 1954, Yale.

42 Himes to Van Vechten, 7 July 1954, Yale.

43 Emory, 2, E/M Himes To/From, 29 July 1954.

44 Himes, Absurdity, 24–25; Margolies and Fabre, The Several Lives of Chester Himes, 87–89.

45 Himes, Absurdity, 25–26.

46 Pepper, The Contemporary American Crime Novel, 110.

47 James Baldwin, “Everybody's Protest Novel,” in idem, Notes of a Native Son (London: Pluto, 1985), 19.

48 Himes, Emory, 2, HF, [1970?].

49 Ernest Mandel, Delightful Murder: A Social History of the Crime Story (London: Pluto, 1984), 44, original emphasis; Raymond Chandler, “The Simple Art of Murder,” in Howard Haycraft, ed., The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Carroll and Graff, 1983; first published 1946), 234; Gilles Deleuze, “The Philosophy of Crime Novels,” in idem, Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953–1974, ed. David Laponjade, trans. Michael Taormina (Paris: Semiotext(e) Foreign Agent Series, 2004), 83.

50 Himes, A Rage in Harlem (Edinburgh: Canongate, n.d.; first published 1957), 135, 152.

51 Chris Wiegand, “No Mystery” (interview), guardian.co.uk, 8 Aug. 2008, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/07/crime, accessed 8 June 2009.

52 16 Sept. 1939, Schomburg, 3.18.

53 Fabre, “Interview,” in Fabre and Skinner, Conversations, 86, 89.

54 Himes, Blind Man with a Pistol (London: Panther, 1971), 136, idem, Plan B, ed. Michel Fabre and Robert E. Skinner (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993).

55 John A. Williams, “My Man Himes: An Interview with Chester Himes,” in Fabre and Skinner, Conversations, 47–48. See Absurdity, 102–3, 126; Fabre, “Interview with Chester Himes,” in Fabre and Skinner, Conversations, 84.

56 To Van Vechten, 12 May 1953, Yale.

57 Himes, Absurdity, 26.

58 Himes, quoted in Michael Mok, “Chester Himes,” in Fabre and Skinner, Conversations, 105.

59 Ibid., 23.

60 Himes, Absurdity, 25, 26.

61 Himes, Quality, 103.

62 James Baldwin, “A Question of Identity,” in idem, Notes of a Native Son, 137.

63 N.d., Emory, 17, Conversations Interviews; compare to Jean Miotte, “Conversation with Chester Himes,” in Fabre and Skinner, Conversations, 121–22.

64 Richard Wright, Black Boy (American Hunger): A Record of Childhood and Youth (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 272.

65 Himes, quoted in Michel Fabre, From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France, 1840–1980 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 221.