Chester B. Himes

by Lawrence P. Jackson

  340“I would like to go somewhere”: WT to CH (“Darling I have your Wednesday letter”), n.d. Thursday [c. May 1955], CHP-T, box 6, folder 4.

  341“a liar”: Ibid.

  341finagling a reprint contract: Charles Byrnes to CH, March 16, 1955, CHP-T, box 1, folder 2.

  341You have not received”: William Koshland to CH, March 16, 1955, AAK.

  341“General Himes”: Harry Buchman to William Koshland, March 29, 1955, AAK; William Koshland, memorandum to Mrs. Knopf, February 4, 1963, AAK.

  341“that you finally have some money”: WT to CH (“Darling: I said I’d write”), n.d. Thursday [c. late April 1955], CHP-T, box 6, folder 4.

  341$100 at the end of May: Byrnes to CH, May 31, 1955, CHP-T, box 1, folder 2.

  341a bill for $806: CH to Charles Byrnes, May 25, 1955, ibid.

  341“simply will not register”: Walter Freeman to CH, May 3, 1955, CHP-T, box 1, folder 24.

  342beseeched NAL’s Walter Freeman: CH to Walter Freeman, May 9, 1955, ibid.; Freeman to CH, May 11, 1955, ibid.

  342“If you will accept my apology”: CH to Lurton Blassingame, n.d. [c. May 1955], CHP-T, box 3, folder 3.

  343his room of “horror”: WT to CH (“Chester: I’ll only have time”), n.d. Friday afternoon [May 1955], CHP-T, box 6, folder 4.

  343“We should have stayed busted up”: WT to CH (“Thanks for sending the stuff”), n.d. Friday [c. late June 1955], ibid.

  343“Don’t get a divorce”: WT to CH (“I have received your long letter”), n.d. Saturday [May 1955], ibid.

  343“If we’re through”: WT to CH (“Chester: You asked me”), n.d. Tuesday night [c. April 1955], ibid.

  343“I would not like”: Ibid.

  343“Oh shit, I do so want”: MLA, 17.

  344Vandi Haygood was dead: “Mrs. Haygood Dies in NYC: Aided Many Young, Struggling Writers,” Afro-American, July 30, 1955, 21.

  344landing The Third Generation: Annie Brierre to CH, n.d. [c. 1954–1955], CHP-T, box 3, folder 3; CH to Targ, July 19, 1955, CHP-T, box 2, folder 20.

  344“and the next morning”: MLA, 24.

  345he told Blassingame his theories: Lurton Blassingame to CH, August 30, 1955, CHP-T, box 3, folder 3.

  345“I can’t make a commitment”: Arnold Gingrich to CH, December 17, 1956, AG, box 12, folder “H #2.”

  345“I have found it a pleasure”: Freeman to CH, May 3, 1955.

  345“practically every change”: Freeman to CH, September 12, 1955, CHP-T, box 3, folder 14.

  346Emmett Till: “Nation Horrified by Murder of Kidnapped Chicago Youth,” Jet, September 15, 1955, 6–9.

  346“I am innately sad”: CH to CVV, September 27, 1955, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1952–1955.”

  346“The only jobs in New York”: MLA, 27.

  346“hell is hell”: CH to Duhamel, July 19, 1955.

  347“I was storing up”: MLA, 29.

  347“One thing I learned”: WT to CH, August 23, 1955, CHP-T, box 6, folder 5.

  347“way out”: WT to CH, September 2, 1955, ibid.

  347the judgment summarily passed: F. G. Short and Sons, Plaintiff, against Chester Himes, Defendant, Index No. 33154/55, CHP-T, box 20, folder 4.

  348“current earnings have not covered”: Frank Vogel to CH, September 29, 1955, CHP-T, box 1, folder 5.

  348“I felt I had to get out”: CH to CVV, December 20, 1955, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1952–1955.”

  348“cheap, tenement-like effect”: Freeman to CH, November 9, 1955, CHP-T, box 3, folder 17.

  349“just to stay alive”: CH to JAW, July 9, 1969, DCDJ, 92.

  349he would kill someone: Constance Webb Pearlstein to Lesley Himes, September 19, 1995, LPH, box 1, folder 15.

  12. A PISTOL IN HIS HAND, AGAIN

  350On December 22, 1955: Chester Himes, no. 39540, U.S. Passport, issued March 1953, CHP-T, box 12. CH writes in MLA that he arrived on December 26, but his passport was stamped on the twenty-second.

  350“I got America”: MLA, 36.

  350“diminished me”: CH to Charles Orengo, January 12, 1956, CHP-T, box 1, folder 20.

  350“fantastically dull bitter-enders”: CH to Walter Freeman, January 4, 1956, CHP-T, box 1, folder 7.

  351on January 24: Contrat d’Édition: La traduction francaise de The third generation, Monsieur Chester Himes et la Librairie Plon, January 24, 1956, CHP-T, box 19, folder 2.

  351“What does one”: CH, “Chester Himes,” La Fin d’un primitif, trans. Yves Malartic (Paris: Gallimard, 1956), 9.

  351bespoke “dignity”: CH to CVV, April 26, 1956, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1956–1961.”

  352ordinary to stumble across: Lesley Packard Himes, interview with author, May 2009.

  352“sold my rights”: CH to Oliver Swan, January 21, 1956, CHP-T, box 5, folder 15.

  352Willa had the right: Affidavit “Know All Persons by These Present,” March 15, 1956, CHP-T, box 19, folder 1.

  353“with soft beautiful features”: MLA, 107.

  353theatrically declared: Ibid., 38.

  353considered The Primitive “excellent”: Richard Gibson to Michel Fabre, May 26, 1988, MF, box 6, folder 18.

  353as would Henry Miller: Walter Freeman to CH, April 20, 1956, CHP-T, box 3, folder 17.

  353“Take it easy greasy”: Walter Coleman to CH, October 18, 1973, CHP-T, box 3, folder 5.

  354French papers: “La Resistance des Noirs: Devient chaque jour de plus en plus puissante,” Le Monde, February 28, 1956, 1.

  354On February 21: J. P. Chabrol, “Le Quartier Latin a l’heure antifasciste,” L’Humanité, February 24, 1956, 7F.

  354“Hollywood type mob scene”: CH to Freeman, March 5, 1956, CHP-T, box 3, folder 17.

  355their world of “refreshing” Paris: David Remnick, “George Plimpton’s Good Life,” Washington Post, November 4, 1984, H2.

  355“He could never finish deriding”: Gibson to Fabre, May 26, 1988.

  355“I was the only black”: MLA, 124.

  356Attorney General Tom Clark: Mel Tarpley, “Is Ollie Harrington, Battling Cartoonist, Returning?,” New York Amsterdam News, June 29, 1991, 30; Wil Haygood, “Expatriate Artist Looks Homeward: Oliver Harrington, Who Fled U.S. in McCarthy Era, Is Wistful but Devoted ‘My Life to My Beliefs,’ ” Boston Globe, March 20, 1988, 83.

  356“unique individuals”: MLA, 36.

  357“great charm”: Ibid., 57.

  357“In front of that vast white audience”: Ibid., 37.

  357“ ‘Everybody’s ain’t that big’ ”: CH, Pinktoes (1961; repr., New York: Dell, 1966), 81.

  357“Mamie’s one ambition”: Ibid., 35.

  357“finding it difficult”: CH to CVV, April 26, 1956.

  358first met a teenage Silberman: HF, 12.

  358“wonderful subject”: James Silberman to CH, May 6, 1956, CHP-T, box 1, folder 7.

  358“the most notorious”: MLA, 72.

  358“straight narrative”: CH to CVV, August 28, 1956, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1956–1961.”

  358“White Americans are reading”: CH to CVV, April 26, 1956.

  358“a very flexible version”: CH to James Silberman, May 9, 1956, CHP-T, box 1, folder 7.

  359“German women”: MLA, 78.

  360worked hard hours in solitude: CH to Walter Freeman, December 12, 1956. CHP-T, box 3, folder 17.

  361“there’s no point”: WT to CH (“Dear Chester: Thanks for your letter”), n.d. [June 1956], CHP-T, box 6, folder 5.

  361several drunken evenings: Gibson to Fabre, May 26, 1988.

  362“dedicated to the cults”: Richard Gibson, “Curzio Malaparte: The Vision of Defeat,” Merlin (December 1954): 307.

  362“So you’re the boy”: Richard Gibson, “A No to Nothing,” Kenyon Review (Spring 1951): 252–55; Richard Gibson, “Richard Wright’s ‘Island of Hallucination’ and the ‘Gibson Affair,’ ” Modern Fiction Studies (Winter 1995): 907.

  362argued about back rent: Gibson,
“Richard Wright’s,” 910.

  362“tell the truth”: Gibson to Fabre, November 18, 1987, MF, box 6, folder 8.

  362he sided with Harrington after the fight: MLA, 34, 73; Lesley Himes interview; Gibson to Fabre, May 26, 1988.

  363French police: Bernard Dadié, An African in Paris, trans. Karen C. Hatch (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 146–47.

  363“I’ve got my life”: CH to CVV, April 26, 1956.

  363“Why don’t you marry”: CH to Jean Himes, July 30, 1956, CHP-T, box 5, folder 8.

  363reversing himself on earlier: WT to CH, June 19, 1956, CHP-T, box 6, folder 5.

  363“If it appears in print”: CH to Mr. Bledsoe, December 8, 1956, CHP-T, box 3, folder 3.

  363“I hate him”: Edward Darling to WT, April 17, 1958, Beacon Press Records, box 123, folder “Thompson, Willa/Garden Without Flowers,” Andover-Harvard Library, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. For a full exploration of the literary relationship between Himes and Thompson see Guy Conn, “The Racio-Sexual Psychology of Inter-Racial Relationships: Recovering Chester Himes’ Garden Without Flowers,” PhD diss., Emory University, forthcoming.

  364“Chet thinks”: MLA, 76.

  364“a front room”: CH to CVV, October 8, 1956, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1956–1961”; Paul Zweig, “Departures,” in Americans in Paris: A Literary Anthology, ed. Adam Gopnick (New York: Library of America, 2004), 513.

  364Regine “had troubles”: Regine Fischer to CH, December 6, 1956, CHP-T, box 3, folder 15.

  364“Living on the goodwill”: CH to CVV, August 28, 1956.

  365“This results in extravagance”: “Noir et blanc,” L’Express, August 24, 1956, 16.

  365Chester escorted Ellison: MLA, 35.

  365“as tortured as ever”: Ralph Ellison to Horace Cayton, n.d. [c. April 1957], RE, box 41, folder Horace Cayton.

  365literary critic Alfred Kazin: Ralph Ellison to Saul Bellow, August 15, 1956, Saul Bellow Papers, box 2, folder 8, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago.

  366“I wonder vaguely”: CH to Jean Himes, October 11, 1956, CHP-T, box 5, folder 8.

  366he owed about $500: CH to Freeman, September 23, 1956, CHP-T, box 3, folder 17.

  366“I didn’t take any active”: CH to CVV, October 6, 1956, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1956–1961.”

  367“grave” and taciturn: Davidson Nicol, “Alioune Diop and the African Renaissance,” African Affairs (January 1979): 7.

  367Wright, a conference organizer: Michel Fabre, The World of Richard Wright (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1985), 199.

  367the dole of the Central Intelligence Agency: Lawrence P. Jackson, The Indignant Generation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010), 462–63.

  367“socialism for Africa”: W. E. B. Du Bois, “To the Congres des Ecrivains et Artistes Noirs,” Le 1er Congrès International des Écrivains et Artistes Noirs: Présence Africaine, numéro spécial (June–November 1956), p. 383. See Guirdex Masse, “A Black Diasporic Encounter: The First International Congress of Black Writers and Artists and the Politics of Race and Culture,” PhD diss., Emory University, 2014.

  367“communicate only slightly”: Ellison to Cayton, n.d. [c. April 1957].

  368“not one quality literary work”: Mongo Beti, “Romancing Africa,” in Cruel City, trans. Pim Higginson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), xi, xiv.

  368which he had cited: Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Markmann (1952; repr., New York: Grove Press, 1967), 140.

  368A copy of the French edition: Frantz Fanon, Ecrits sur l’aliénation et la liberté, ed. Jean Khalfa and Robert Young (Paris: Editions la Découverte, 2015), 608.

  369“dilettante Uncle Tom”: CH, A Case of Rape (1980; repr., New York: Carroll and Graf, 1994), 47.

  369“As a yardstick”: Ibid., 33–34.

  370“more or less a type”: Ibid., 94.

  370“I will try to be”: Regine Fischer to CH, September 25, 1956, CHP-T, box 3, folder 15.

  370“I don’t know”: CH to Victor Weybright, October 12, 1956, CHP-T, box 1, folder 24.

  370“I don’t think Mamie Mason”: Silberman to CH, October 2, 1956, CHP-T, box 1, folder 7.

  371“brilliant social satire”: Victor Weybright to CH, October 11, 1956, CHP-T, box 1, folder 24.

  371“Please do not consider”: CH to Freeman, September 23, 1956.

  371He raced to court Gallimard: CH to P. D. Mascolo, October 14, 1956, CHP-T, box 1, folder 11.

  371“I wish I could”: CH to Freeman, September 23, 1956.

  372“I like the idea”: CH to Marcel Duhamel, October 16, 1956, CHP-T, box 1, folder 11.

  372“follow your suggestions”: Ibid.; CH to CVV, November 18, 1956, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1956–1961.”

  372“the greatest writer”: MLA, 102.

  372“the idea of death”: Jonathan P. Eburne, “The Transatlantic Mysteries of Paris: Chester Himes, Surrealism, and the Serie Noir,” PMLA 120, no. 3 (2005): 810; Marcel Duhamel, “Préface,” Panorama du film noir américain, ed. Raymonde Borde and Emil Chaumenton (Paris: Minuit, 1955), vii–x.

  372“We don’t give a damn”: MLA, 102.

  373“intolerable situation”: CH to Charles Byrnes, November 2, 1956, CHP-T, box 1, folder 2.

  373“a condemnation”: CH to Freeman, December 10, 1956, CHP-T, box 3, folder 14.

  373U.S. embassy had him interrogated: MLA, 123.

  373“of the cult devoted”: CH, A Case of Rape, 36.

  373“spellbound, silently”: Walter Coleman to CH, October 18, 1973, CHP-T, box 3, folder 5.

  374“I am pretty nearly beat”: CH to Freeman, December 12, 1956.

  375“I am not intelligent”: R. Fischer to CH, December 6, 1956.

  375“I am the only person”: CH to Otto Fischer, December 16, 1956, CHP-T, box 6, folder 15.

  376“I see no possibility”: Arthur Fields to CH, December 18, 1956, CHP-T, box 1, folder 5.

  376“You can’t have a policier”: MLA, 105.

  376“tall, loose-jointed, sloppily dressed”: CH, A Rage in Harlem (1957; repr., New York: Vintage, 1991), 44.

  376“It was said in Harlem”: Ibid., 49.

  377“[Papa] LaBas and [Black] Herman”: Ishmael Reed to CH, July 27, 1972, CHP-T, box 5, folder 13.

  377“a wild, incredible story”: MLA, 109.

  377“the voracious churning”: CH, A Rage in Harlem, 93.

  378“Goldy’s scream mingled”: Ibid., 105.

  379“cheap, shabby and racist”: Lawrence Jordan to CH, January 22, 1976, CHP-T, box 1, folder 9.

  379“just makes me feel”: Fischer to CH, January 10, 1957, CHP-T, box 3, folder 15.

  379“Darling I am not coming”: Fischer to CH, December 15, 1956, ibid.

  379She would sign letters: Regine Himes to “Chere Madame,” n.d. [from Vence Villa Lavadou], CHP-T, box 3, folder 16; CH to CVV, December 19, 1957, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1956–1961.”

  379“a blind insensate fury”: MLA, 118.

  379“dirty nigger”: Fischer to CH, n.d. [c. March–April 1957], CHP-T, box 3, folder 15.

  379“No human being”: Ibid.

  380“I couldn’t stop slapping”: CH, “The Way It Was,” typescript with handwritten revisions, p. 42, CHP-T 180, box 6.

  380“I’ve cut down”: CH to CVV, April 23, 1957, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1956–1961.”

  380“Now that you’ve broke”: MLA, 121.

  381“cesspool of buffoonery”: Ibid., 126.

  382“frenzied boudoir adventures”: “The Primitives,” Duke, June 1957, 63.

  382“suffocated” by the wealth: MLA, 165.

  383“its insight, its violence”: Feux Croisés: Ames et Terres Étrangères, May 21, 1957, Théatre de l’Alliance Français, CHP-T, box 23, folder 253.

  383“free of thinking about”: MLA, 144.

  383African mem
ories or racial mixture: J. Claude Deven, “Chester Himes: Les Noirs d’Amérique à la troisième génération,” Tribune de Lausaune, May 26, 1957, clipping in CHP-T, box 34, folder 3.

  384“I had a German girl”: MLA, 144.

  385“desire to succeed”: Ibid., 155.

  385“could write like”: Ibid.

  385Ollie had been condemning: Gibson, “Richard Wright’s,” 911–12.

  385“Any American who thinks”: Ollie Harrington, letter to the editor, Life, October 21, 1957, 10.

  385Gibson claimed: Richard Gibson, letter to Michel Fabre, November 10, 1987, MF, box 6, folder 18.

  386“I am sorry about what”: Horace Cayton, interview notes with St. Clair Drake, September 1968, MF, box 46, folder 56.

  386“disrupt, disorganize, and neutralize”: Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 442–45.

  386Chester strongly suspected Gibson: MLA, 34, 73; Lesley Himes interview; Gibson to Fabre, May 26, 1988.

  387“I’ve spent too much”: CH, “Richard Wright hadn’t much to say to me,” typescript fragment, MF, box 8, folder 16.

  388burning a bowl: CH to CVV, December 17, 1957, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1956–1961.”

  388“lift scenes straight”: MLA, 169.

  388“I had accomplished nothing”: Ibid., 177.

  388being a grubber: CH to CVV, December 19, 1957.

  390“I give you all”: Anthony Boucher, “Criminals at Large,” New York Times Book Review, September 9, 1959, 13.

  390replacing John Steinbeck: MLA, 181.

  390“out of the American black’s secret mind”: Ibid.

  391“the superignorant sentimentality”: Dawn Powell to Joseph Gousha, n.d. [c. December 1950], “Three Letters,” in Gopnick, Americans in Paris, 459.

  391“the most extraordinary”: Igor Maslowski, “Ma Selection du mois: La Reine des pommes,” Mystère, June 1958, 117.

  392“caused a sensation”: MLA, 185.

  392“Congratulations, I hear”: Lesley Himes interview.

  392“Beautiful and chic”: MLA, 186.

  392believed that she was racist: Carlos Moore, interview with author, May 2010.

  393“In America you have”: “Amid the Alien Corn,” Time, November 17, 1958, 30.

  393“a person in Vence”: MLA, 181.