452“Whoever a person”: Ibid, pp. 8, 9.
452I AM DREADFULLY SORRY: CH, telegram to Mrs. Carl Van Vechten, December 23, 1964, CVVP, box He–Hols, folder “Himes, Chester B. 1962–1964.”
452declaring him an “undesirable”: Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Ballantine, 1965), 434.
453“the more I keep thinking”: Ibid., 438.
15. A MOOR IN SPAIN
455Putnam would publish: Lewis Nichols, “In and Out of Books: Collaboration,” New York Times Book Review, April 4, 1965, 8; Publishing agreement, G.P. Putnam, Stein and Day, and Maurice Girodias, June 15, 1965, CHP-T, box 19, folder 2.
455“All that most middle-class Negroes”: Pinktoes, advertisement, New York Times Book Review, July 11, 1965, 11.
455described his writing process: Melvin Van Peebles, interview with author, February 2010.
455“My novel moves”: MLA, 295.
455“like a cross”: Ibid., 297.
455“You should marry”: Ibid., 301.
456“a humorous catalog”: René Micha, “Les Paroissiens de Chester Himes,” Les Temps Modernes, February 1965, 1517.
456left a manuscript: Lesley Packard Himes, interview with author, May 2009.
457“Chester needed a fucking nurse”: Van Peebles interview.
457“I hated to give up”: MLA, 301.
457“extraordinary series”: Anthony Boucher, “Criminals at Large” (review of Cotton Comes to Harlem by CH), New York Times Book Review, February 7, 1965, 43.
457“More important in this book”: Jory Sherman, “Crime and Social Comment” (review of Cotton Comes to Harlem by CH), Los Angeles Times, February 14, 1965, B16.
458“losses into a modest profit”: William Targ to CH, November 28, 1967, CHP-T, box 2, folder 4.
458“quick, sharp, sexy”: MLA, 302.
458“faster than any car”: Ibid., 303.
458write a graphic novel adaptation: CH, “La Reine des pommes,” adapted and realized by Melvin Van Peebles, drawings by George Wolinski, Hara Kiri, June 1966, 9–53.
459“I don’t write for money”: MLA, 310.
459“In its wild funhouse-mirror way”: Anthony Boucher, “Criminals at Large” (review of The Heat’s On by CH), New York Times, January 16, 1966, 18.
459“I have a feeling”: Anthony Boucher, “Criminals at Large” (review of The Crazy Kill by CH), New York Times Book Review, December 6, 1959, 42.
460“perverse blend”: Anthony Boucher, “Criminals at Large” (review of The Real Cool Killers by CH), New York Times Book Review, September 6, 1959, 13.
460“turbulent, nightmarish”: Anthony Boucher, “Criminals at Large” (review of The Big Gold Dream by CH), New York Times Book Review, March 6, 1960, 43.
460“underrated and underpublicized”: Andrew Sarris, “Good Intentions,” New York Times Book Review, April 24, 1966, 20.
460“the wildest of camps”: Boucher, “Criminals at Large” (review of Cotton Comes to Harlem), February 7, 1965, 43.
460One of the people reading: A. H. Weiler, “Success Spangled Simon,” New York Times, December 4, 1966, 14.
460a biography of Ian Fleming: “Movie Call Sheet: Role for Shelley Winters,” Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1966, D25.
460“I’m convinced they”: Weiler, “Success Spangled Simon,” 14.
461“sumptuous feast”: MLA, 315.
461“American Negro”: Anonymous [Patricia Highsmith], “Balefull of Laughs: Review of Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes,” Times Literary Supplement, January 20, 1966, 37.
462“beginning to enjoy”: MLA, 319.
462“about my mother”: Don L. Lee, Think Black! (Chicago: Nuace Printers, 1967), 21.
462“people say bad things”: CVV to JAW, August 2, 1962, DCDJ, 1.
463“nothing jelled”: MLA, 327.
463“As I’m sure you know”: Samuel Goldwyn Jr. to CH, December 12, 1966, CHP-T, box 3, folder 20.
464“That was my entire life”: MLA, 337.
464“It has always been my opinion”: CH, “Reading on Your Own,” New York Times Book Review, June 4, 1967, 4.
465“Believing that this cultured”: Ibid.
465“superb” comment: Erik Wensberg to CH, May 19, 1967, CHP-T, box 6, folder 13.
465“expense is no matter”: MLA, 339.
466Chester expressed his fury: Constance Pearlstein to James Sallis, December 10, 1998, LPH, box 1, folder 16.
467LeRoi Jones was arrested: “LeRoi Jones Seized in Newark After Being Hurt,” New York Times, July 15, 1967, 11.
467“Shoot the niggers”: Martin Arnold, “Negroes Battle with Guardsmen,” New York Times, July 15, 1967, 11.
467“never seen until they lie bloody”: CH, “On the Use of Force,” p. 1, CHP-T, box 23, folder “ ‘On the Use of Force’ Photocopy Typescript.”
467“Police brutality toward”: Ibid., p. 7.
468“Every race riot”: Ibid., p. 9.
468“thoughts on writing, writers”: Targ to CH, November 28, 1967.
469“not [as] a detective story”: CH to Marcel Duhamel, April 20, 1968, CHP-T, box 1, folder 11.
469“not up to the standard”: Targ to CH, November 28, 1967.
469“let the book stand”: James Landis to CH, June 28, 1968, CHP-T, box 2, folder 18.
469“Shooting people”: “Ship of Rebels,” Newsweek, April 6, 1970, 15.
469a “most unhappy” Goldwyn: Goldwyn to CH, October 24, 1967, CHP-T, box 3, folder 20.
469“loose construction of a movie”: Goldwyn to CH, November 13, 1967, ibid.
470“with all the screenwriters”: Rosalyn Targ to CH, December 12, 1967, CHP-T, box 1, folder 12.
470“the only milestone”: CH to JAW, June 13, 1969, DCDJ, 83.
471“a nervous, wretched man”: JAW, “Chester Himes Is Getting On,” New York Herald Tribune, October 11, 1964, 21.
471“More than you could”: JAW to CH, December 12, 1968, DCDJ, 52.
471“seeming indifference”: CH to JAW, December 28, 1968, ibid., 54.
471“It’s all right, man”: MLA, 347.
471“A friend of mine”: CH, “Preface,” Blind Man with a Pistol (1969; repr., New York: Vintage, 1989), 5.
472Chester angrily shouted: Richard Gibson to Michel Fabre, May 26, 1988, MF, box 6, folder 18.
472“Deutsche Haus”: Donna Rothraud Meindorfer, interview with author, May 2009.
473estimates were 200,000: Julius Ruiz, “Seventy Years On: Historians and Repressions After the Spanish Civil War,” Journal of Contemporary History (July 2009): 451.
473“Moraira was as racist”: MLA, 369.
473“Spain is not a place”: Rosalyn Targ to CH, December 12, 1967.
473“divorced the United States”: MLA, 355.
473“Comic Suspense Film”: “Comic Suspense Film of Negro Detectives to be Made in Harlem,” Philadelphia Tribune, April 6, 1968, 19.
474“Perhaps that was one”: Goldwyn to Himes, April 24, 1968, CHP-T, box 3, folder 20.
474“offensive”: HF, 87.
474“the Jews had a right”: Ibid.
475“I am trying to show”: HF, 195.
475“ ‘It’s the uprising, nigger!’ ”: CH, Plan B (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1993), 8.
476“ ‘You can’t kill, Black, man’ ”: Ibid., 202.
476“The main thing”: CH to JAW, December 18, 1968, DCDJ, 56.
477“Motherfucking right”: CH to JAW, “Foreword,” Blind Man with a Pistol, 5.
477“Reading Blind Man”: Richard Rhodes, “Blind Man with a Pistol,” New York Times Book Review, February 23, 1969, 32.
477Mystery Writers of America: Allen J. Hubin, “Criminals at Large,” New York Times Book Review, May 10, 1970.
477“I got my standard”: Phil Lomax to CH, August 8, 1969, CHP-T, box 4, folder 17.
478“the highlight of the issue”: Julius Lester, “The First Magazine of Black Writing: Amistad 1,” New York Times Book Review, May 3, 1970, 36.
478“almost sixty now” and “not well”: MLA, 364.
478“the thing that cooled our relationship”: DCDJ-MMH, p. 14.
479“take being black”: Ralph Ellison, dust jacket, Hue and Cry by James A. McPherson (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969).
479“the white press”: HF, 14, 15.
479“the younger writers”: JAW to CH, July 14, 1969, DCDJ, 93.
480“far from being”: James Baldwin, “The Price May Be Too High,” New York Times, February 2, 1969, D9.
480“the best black American”: Shane Stevens, “ ‘The Best Black American Novelist Writing Today,’ ” Chicago Tribune, April 27, 1969, L4.
480“to speak up if he”: Rosalyn Targ to CH, July 30, 1969, CHP-T, box 1, folder 12.
480“White folks won’t know”: JAW to CH, July 14, 1969, 93.
480“I can imagine”: CH to JAW, July 19, 1969, DCDJ, 95.
481“looked like an imbecile child”: CH to JAW, November 2, 1969, ibid., 107.
481“physically difficult”: CH to Joseph Himes, May 9, 1970, TSH, 181, folder “Correspondence Chester Himes.”
481“Nice to hear from”: Ken McCormick to CH, August 18, 1969, CHP-T, box 1, folder 8.
481he offered $10,000: Rosalyn Targ to CH, April 13, 1970, CHP-T, box 1, folder 12; Chester Himes, contract for My Life of Absurdity, Doubleday, July 16, 1975, CHP-T, box 14, folder 1. CH received a $5000 advance on April 29, 1971.
481“I’m not very happy”: CH to JAW, July 27, 1970, DCDJ, 133.
482“nigger-lover”: JAW to CH, June 30, 1969, ibid., 89.
482“got a lot of things cracking”: JAW to CH, April 15, 1970, ibid., 123.
482“Look, I have talked”: MMH-DCDJ, 214.
482“impressive as an overall”: William Targ to CH, April 7, 1970, CHP-T, box 2, folder 4.
482“colorful, exciting life-style and wit”: Vincent Canby, “Ossie Davis’ Cotton Comes to Harlem,” New York Times, June 11, 1970, 50.
482Cotton broke the opening-day box-office records: “Theaters to Remain Open 24 Hours Daily for Cotton Comes to Harlem,” Philadelphia Tribune, July 18, 1970, 21; Eithne Quinn, “ ‘Tryin’ to Get Over’: Super Fly, Black Politics, and Post Civil Rights Film Enterprise,” Cinema Journal 49, no. 2 (Winter 2010): 86–87.
482“the best way”: Gene Siskel, “Trying Too Hard,” Chicago Tribune, May 28, 1970, C17.
483“Chester Himes has been writing”: Carole Lyles, “A Movie About Blacks Without Social Comment,” New York Amsterdam News, June 13, 1970, 20.
483“a sense of liberation”: Canby, “Ossie Davis’ Cotton Comes to Harlem,” 50.
483“cut the gut and heart”: Lindsay Paterson, “In Harlem, a James Bond with Soul,” New York Times, June 15, 1969, D15.
483“tapped [his] literary vault”: JAW to CH, May 13, 1970, DCDJ, 127.
483parent company M-G-M: Jon Hartman, “The Trope of Blaxploitation in Critical Responses to Sweetback,” Film History 6, no. 3 (Autumn 1994): 391.
483the sound economic value: They were assessed by the industry in the following rank: Shaft ($7 million), Cotton ($5.1 million), and Sweetback ($4.1 million). See Lawrence Cohn, “All-Time Film Rental Champs,” Variety, May 10, 1993, C76–106, 108; Quinn, “ ‘Tryin’ to Get Over.’ ”
483the NAACP generated the term: Quinn, “ ‘Tryin’ to Get Over,’ ” 87.
483“blaxploitation”: Junius Griffin quoted in “NAACP Takes Militant Stand on Black Exploitation Films,” Hollywood Reporter, August 10, 1972.
484“big hit”: Helen Jackson to CH, September 30, 1970, CHP-T, box 4, folder 13.
484“general American attitude”: CH to William Targ, January 3, 1971, CHP-T, box 6, folder 1.
485“As you know”: Jackson to CH, May 14, 1971, CHP-T, box 4, folder 13.
485“Major authors are not”: Jackson to CH, June 10, 1971, ibid.
485“For those who wonder”: Maya Angelou to Helen Jackson, December 27, 1971, CHP-T, box 6, folder 1.
486“influenced by your work and personality”: Lindsey Barrett to CH, n.d., CHP-T, box 3, folder 3.
486“a very lasting and important”: Clarence Major to CH, December 31, 1971, CHP-T, box 4, folder 19.
486“son-of-a-bitchery”: Arnold Gingrich, “A Writer Writes,” Chicago Tribune, March 26, 1972, I-12.
487“direct, straightforward, honest”: Nathan Irvin Huggins, “The Helpless Victim” (review of The Quality of Hurt by Chester Himes), New York Times Book Review, March 12, 1972, 5.
487“I feel that it is”: Julius Lester to CH, n.d. [Spring 1972], CHP-T, box 4, folder 17.
487“Because this book tells”: Julius Lester, “Letter to the Editor: The Quality of Hurt,” New York Times Book Review, April 30, 1972, 39.
487“raw” and “penetrating”: Michael J. Bandler, “Travails of a Black Author” (review of The Quality of Hurt by Chester Himes), Los Angeles Times, July 14, 1972, F6.
487the “truthful” portrait: Myra D. Bain, “Himes Tells a Special Tale: Rev. of The Quality of Hurt by Chester Himes,” New York Amsterdam News, March 25, 1972, D7.
487“an angry, alienated black”: Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, “Another Quality Not Strain’d” (review of The Quality of Hurt by Chester Himes), New York Times, March 8, 1972, 41.
488seven hundred guests: “Chester Himes Book Party,” Black World, March 1972, 92.
488“all of us really enjoyed”: Ishmael Reed to CH, May 11, 1972, CHP-T, box 5, folder 13; see also Steve Cannon to CH, May 9, 1972, CHP-T, box 3, folder 5.
488Chester had stabbed: Keith Gilyard, interview with author, January 2013.
489“who are proponents”: JAW to CH, January 12, 1972, DCDJ, 152.
489STOPRY [sic] INCOMPLETE: Skip Gates, telegram to CH, August 20, 1973, CHP-T, box 3, folder 14.
489“I think fame”: Nikki Giovanni to CH, November 13, 1973, CHP-T, box 3, folder 18.
16. AFRO-AMERICAN PEOPLE’S NOVELIST
490“I still suffer”: CH to Director General, American Hospital, Madrid, January 9, 1973, CHP-T, box 18, folder 1.
490“admittedly chauvinistic”: CH, Black on Black: Baby Sister and Selected Writings (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973), 7.
491“no jive or rage”: “Black on Black,” Chicago Tribune, February 11, 1973, F3.
491“substantially improved sight”: Joseph Himes Jr. to CH, May 28, 1973, CHP-T, box 4, folder 5.
491“I can see”: Joseph Himes Jr. to CH, May 27, 1974, ibid.
491attained veracity: CH to Marcel Duhamel, February 25, 1974, CHP-T, box 3, folder 8.
492“the best of my writing”: CH to Sandy Richardson, May 2, 1974, CHP-T 180, box 1, folder 9.
492in July 1974 Chester went: CH to Ishmael Reed, July 23, 1974, CHP-T, box 5, folder 13.
492“My health has improved”: CH to Michel Fabre, January 13, 1975, MF, box 41, folder 4.
492“The Harlem detective stories”: CH to Richardson, May 2, 1974.
493“I have great hopes”: CH to Fabre, January 13, 1975.
493“Gravedigger [sic] and Coffin Ed”: Ishmael Reed to CH, January 24, 1974, CHP-T, box 5, folder 13.
493“punk shit”: Robert Adams, interview with author, April 2003. This assertion is lent validity by a short aside Willa Thompson once made in 1955, suggesting that when they lived together in 1954 she had suspected CH of having had a liaison with a boy—see WT to CH (“Darling: I have your special here”), n.d. [c. June 1955], CHP-T, box 5, folder 6. Thompson wrote, “You never mentioned that you saw this strange boy who gave you the book in London around that time. You never mentioned the girl whose name is on the French edition of If He Hollers. . . .”
493“my mind is getting”: CH to Rosalyn Targ, March 1, 1976, CHP-T, box 8, folder 10.
493“My health has deteriorated”: CH to Rosalyn Targ, November 11, 1976, ibid.
494“My sins are catching”: CH to Jean Himes, February 25, 1976, CHP-T, box 4, folder 11.
494“I will probably be dead”: CH to Duhamel, May 11, 1976, CHP-T, box 3, folder 8.
494“How does it feel”: Reed to CH, October 22, 1976, CHP-T, box 5, folder 13.
494“I hope that I haven’t: CH to Joseph Himes Jr., November 25, 1976, CHP-T, box 4, folder 7.
494“taken together, the two volumes”: Don Bredes, “The Purgative Thoughts of Chester Himes,” Los Angeles Times, March 20, 1977, U7.
495“knuckleheaded” editor: Al Young to CH, May 7, 1972, CHP-T, box 6, folder 18.
495“a singularly poignant autobiography”: Al Young, “Rev. My Life of Absurdity: The Autobiography of Chester Himes, Volume II by Chester Himes,” New York Times Book Review, February 13, 1977, 7. Online.
495“I got you beat”: MLA, 30.
495“I should not have”: CH to Rosalyn Targ, February 12, 1977, CHP-T, box 1, folder 12.
496“I’ve made a lot”: Walter Coleman to CH, October 18, 1972, CHP-T, box 7, folder 5.
496“sex doesn’t delight me anymore”: CH to Rosalyn Targ, September 22, 1977, CHP-T, box 1, folder 12.
496divorced on May 2: “Le Chambre Matrimoniale, Section 13 du Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, I6 II8/77 No. 7703417, Divorce, Sieur Himes contre Dame Plater-Johnson; No. 2734 Divorce de Himes, Chester Bomar et Plater-Johnson, Jean L., 30 Novembre 1978, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Nantes,” CHP-T, box 20, folder 8.
496“his moral being is not so great”: Lesley Packard to Joseph Himes Jr., March 3, 1978, CHP-T, box 4, folder 7.
497“things are a mess here”: Joseph Himes Jr. to CH, October 12, 1980, CHP-T, box 4, folder 5.
497the consultant backed out: George Rolfe to CH, September 26, 1980, CHP-T, box 20, folder 4.
497he tumbled onto the ground: Lesley Himes, interview with author, May 2009.
497“his memory is terrible”: Packard to J. Himes Jr., March 3, 1978.
497the American Book Award: Gundar Strads to CH, March 29, 1982, CHP-T, box 5, folder 13.
497“It saddened me enormously”: Rosalyn Targ to Lesley Himes, January 27, 1984, CHP-T, box 2, folder 13.
498hurtful and bitter remarks: Helen Chapparal to Lesley Himes, LPH, box 1, folder 5.
498chiseling knives: MLA, p. 254.
498“When Chester was Chester”: JAW to Lesley Himes, November 28, 1984, DCDJ, 162.
Acknowledgments
I began this project in 2002 after a long conversation with my friend and teacher Horace Porter. The next year I was fortunate to spend the afternoon with Michel Fabre at his home in Mt. Royal and to be the recipient of much of his generosity in the form of copies of the materials he had collected when he coauthored a biography of Chester Himes in 1997. I have endeavored to write the “big book” that Michel and I thought Chester Himes deserved.
Chester B. Himes Page 63
