Chester B. Himes

March 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.

May 15, 2017
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.

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January 1, 2017

Writer and Johns Hopkins professor Jackson isn't the first to write a biography about crime novelist Chester Himes, but he aims to pen the definitive one, with exclusive interviews and full archival access at his disposal.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2017
Himes' life, eventful enough for several writers, is both blessing and curse to a biographer: Is it possible to have too much material? Fortunately, Jackson is more than up to the task, producing a cradle-to-grave account as meticulously detailed as it is psychologically insightful. Born in 1909 and sentenced to hard time after committing armed robbery at the age of 19, Himes honed his craft in prison and went on to tackle race relations in raw and unflinching books such as If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945) and Lonely Crusade (1947). Disagreements with publishers and disgust at American racism led to self-imposed exile in France; a chance effort writing crime fiction for publisher Gallimard's Serie Noire line led to desperately needed financial stability and, indirectly, to late-life lionization by a younger generation energized by Malcolm X (whom Himes admired). For all his literary gifts and uncompromising, often prescient vision, Himes was complicated and not always sympathetic: alcoholic, insecure, and sexist, he could be petty and even violent with the women he pursued. Jackson treats it all evenhandedly, offering a perceptive portrait of a complex man and bringing richly to life his volatile relationships with other prominent black writers of the era: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and many more. While two other Himes biographies exist (most notably James Sallis' fine Chester Himes, 2001), Jackson succeeds in his bid to offer a definitive life treatment.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)