The Several Lives of Chester Himes

by Margolies, Edward; Fabre, Michel

• ISBN13: 9780878059089
• ISBN10: 0878059083
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-05-01
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Mississippi

Summary

The Writings of Chester Himes are colored by a fascinating blend of hatred and tenderness, of hard-boiled realism and generous idealism. His life was complex, his relationships complicated. How did this gifted son of a respectable southern black family become a juvenile delinquent? How did he acquire self-esteem and a new sense of identity by writing short stories while in the Ohio state penitentiary? Drawn from his letters, notebooks, memoirs, and fiction, this straightforward account of Himes's varied, episodic life attempts to trace the origins of his significant literary gift. It details the socioeconomic, familial, and cultural background that fed his ambivalent views on race in America. His Deep South childhood, his adolescence in the Midwest, his young manhood in prison, his years as a menial laborer, his struggle as an author in California and New York City, and finally his glory days as an expatriate and celebrity in France and Spain are plumbed deeply for their effects upon his creativeurges and his works. In his native country Himes is recalled more as the author of successful detective novels such as Cotton Comes to Harlem than as a practitioner of the art of fiction. In France and Spain, his adopted countries, he is regarded as a literary master. This critical biography is the bittersweet story of a troubled man who found salvation in writing.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix	(4)
Acknowledgments	xiii
I GENEALOGY	3	(5)
II THE SOUTH	8	(9)
III ADOLESCENCE	17	(6)
IV OHIO STATE	23	(8)
V THE PRISON YEARS	31	(8)
VI FREE AT LAST	39	(12)
VII ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES	51	(27)
VIII INTERIM	78	(12)
IX CELEBRITY	90	(22)
X THREE WOMEN	112	(19)
XI LESLEY	131	(14)
XII SPAIN	145	(19)
XIII WHAT DID I DO?	164	(13)
Notes	177	(18)
Chronological List of the Works of Chester Himes	195	(4)
Index	199