Himes, Chester (Vol. 7) - Himes, Chester 1909–
Himes, Chester 1909–
Himes, a Black American author of successfully violent, humorous short stories and novels, lives in Spain. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 25-28.)
Although [Chester Himes has published over a dozen books]—a number of these have been popular thrillers—it is still the first, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), that warrants attention. It is set in a southern California shipyard in wartime (war projects, because of the need for workers, were one of the first large-scale instances in America of unsegregated hiring); the hero is race-mad almost to the point of hysteria, packed with dry high explosive, waiting for the match. (p. 142)
Himes' subsequent novels play cruder variations on the race-war theme. In Lonely Crusade (1947) he mixed in heavy doses of a communism that made the novel more attractive to European than American tastes. The Third Generation (1954) is the sordid, late-naturalist...
[The entire page is 1344 words long]
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