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Post by Calenture on Aug 5, 2008 13:11:23 GMT
Blind Man With a Pistol (1969)A white man has his trousers stolen after visiting a black prostitute This is not an unusual event in Harlem; but then he has his throat cut, and is found bleeding to death after pursuing the black man carrying his trousers through the streets - which is less usual, even here. A ruined building is home for prostitutes who front as nuns. The Church of the Black Jesus, led by Jesus Baby, is planning a protest march. So is a Black Power group, The Real Cool Black Muslims. And an anti-segregationist gay group are going to walk naked through the streets. It's not really surprising when a riot breaks out. Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones are Himes' walking, gun-toting human cameras, following the action, if never really on top of it. The last Chester Himes novel. Totally bewildering in retrospect, and not quite as funny as earlier Himes novels, but pretty good all the same. They've tried filming these books, but whether the films matched up, I don't know.
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Post by David A. Riley on Aug 5, 2008 13:16:38 GMT
I used to love these books years ago, when I last read them. I'd forgotten all about them, in fact, which is a shame. You've given me the urge to revisit them in fact, though how difficult that will be these days, I don't know.
They certainly had a unique, quirky humour m. I used to like how one of the detectives - perhaps both, I can't remember - had a tendency to use tracer bullets when involved in a gun fight.
David
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Post by Calenture on Aug 5, 2008 14:24:31 GMT
You've given me the urge to revisit them in fact, though how difficult that will be these days, I don't know. When I've seen these books recently, David, they've usually been presented as oversized paperbacks, probably aimed at students. (And good for them!) The sort of lurid covers which grace my battered couple of Panther paperbacks haven't been in evidence. I'm trying to find my write-ups for those. I agree. These books are definitely funny!  |
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Post by benedictjjones on Aug 5, 2008 16:13:31 GMT
chester himes was and is a massive iNFLUENCE ON ME.
AS WELL AS THESE THICKER COLLECTED VOLUMES 'a rage in harlem' and 'cotton comes to harlem' were rereleased alone.
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Post by pulphack on Aug 6, 2008 7:50:42 GMT
Himes is an incredible writer, but i bet he would have been really pissed off that these are the books everyone remembers, as he set great store by his earlier, artier novels like 'pinktoes' and 'if he hollers'. james sallis' biography of him (also from rebel, like the antho volumes) is a depressing but fascinating account of his life.
from being feted as a great writer but selling bugger all, then being reduced to being a janitor (nothing wrong with that, but for himes a huge comedown from his expectations), he washed up in france where they had/have (in his view) a better atttitude to literary greats (of which he considered himself one). but he was still skint, and when a parisian publisher approached him to write some roman policiers based on his NYC experience, himes had little option but to draw on emnories of twenty years before, which may account for their dislocated and dream-like feel: he's writing in the fifties and sixties of a prewar harlem, but allegedly set concurrent with writing.
his method was also responsible for the freewheel feel: they had to be about 240 pages (i forget the exact number, but it was pages rather than words), so he would put 240 sheets next to the typewriter and start, winding it up when he saw there was little paper left.
if you compare this method next to the similar one practised by lionel fanthorpe, and then the resultant books, it tells you a lot about how talent will out... (though i actually like the rev's stuff)
hence himes' freewheel plots, and those wonderful bits where nothing seems to happen plotwise but there's loads of fascinating character and period detail. the bits where he gets bored can be spotted by the way in which he suddenly detours into the lives of minor characters. which is not how you're supposed to do it according to editors and lit profs, but is what makes an individual writer so fascinating.
please do find the panther stuff, maybe some scans, rog. i have panther editions, and the covers are great (but i don't have a scanner). i remember puzzling over the cover of cotton comes to harlem for years after seeing it as a kid, and it was only twenty years later when i read the book that it made sense!
the recent(ish) a rage in harlem movie (with denzel washington) is ok but not essential. the earlier ones, with godfrey cambridge, are bloody awful - i mean really bad - and this coming from someone who watched adventures of a taxi draiver AND plumbers mate last night and liked them...
but the books are essential us crime pulp - more, just essential books, full stop.
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Post by benedictjjones on Aug 6, 2008 9:24:26 GMT
^the sallis biography is great and well worth a read.
i think i've got 'the end of the primitive' somewhere as well.
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Post by Calenture on Aug 6, 2008 19:41:42 GMT
please do find the panther stuff, maybe some scans, rog... i remember puzzling over the cover of cotton comes to harlem for years after seeing it as a kid, and it was only twenty years later when i read the book that it made sense! These are the only two I have, Andy. I think the first book I posted on here was a library book and I found the scan on the net. Thanks for the word to the wise about the films. A pre-war Harlem setting was something I don't remember from reading these (way back). I suppose quite a lot of the hard boiled stuff I've read dates back that far. I see I kept writing that plot wasn't Himes' strong point in these books. However I defined plot then, I know I couldn't put these books down. The Heat's On First published 1966; this Panther edition 1969 When a giant albino negro named Pinky raises a false fire alarm at the Riverside Church, every police patrol car and fire brigade within a radius of several miles converges in a melee which culminates in a hunchbacked drug-pusher named Jake being beaten to death and Pinky himself being pursued halfway across town by the combined forces of law and order. Pinky believes that his stepmother and the African are plotting to murder old Gus, his father. If they haven't done so already. Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson decide to look into things. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Sister Heavenly is conducting a highly lucrative line in faith healing, with a little old time religion, Voodoo and drug-taking thrown in for good measure (everyone in Himes’ book, with the exception of the two detectives, is cultivating a drug habit). Downstairs in the same house, resentful and ever watchful, Uncle Saint waits his chance to level one or two old scores with Sister Heavenly. Like most thrillers of the hard-boiled school, there isn’t much plot to worry about – you just sit back and surrender to the ride. The story revolves around the tricks and double-crosses pulled by one character or another in his attempts to find old Gus and get his hands on whatever it is that he's carrying, before any of the others. Gravedigger and Coffin Ed are wholly interchangeable as characters and would be indistinguishable but for the old acid scars on Coffin Ed’s face; but this isn’t important since the detectives' real purpose is to serve as a device through which Himes can frame the rotten and colourful underbelly of Harlem street life. The book works because the reader senses that Himes loves his characters and believes in them. Sister Heavenly and Uncle Saint are especially wonderful. Fast, brutal and occasionally hilarious dirty fun. All Shot Up First published 1960; this Panther edition 1969 Winter in Harlem and a tyre thief witnesses a nun run down by a gold Cadillac. The nun gets up, but moments later is run down again by two black men and a white man wearing police uniforms and driving a black sedan. That same night the gold Cadillac is stolen and two men are shot down outside a night club catering to transvestites when a violent robbery of 50,000 dollars is staged against one of its patrons. Just for a change this one is free of the usual drug-trafficking storyline. Robbery and murder head the bill against a background of transvestism and petty crime. Plot is not Himes' strong suit, and his two black detectives, Coffin Ed Jones and Grave Digger Johnson are near-indistinguishable ciphers, always just one step behind the action. But the action isn't lacking. Fast, compelling narrative is what Himes excels at; and a splendid rogues gallery of crooks makes up for any character deficiencies in his two detectives. There are some excellent set-pieces, including a high-speed chase through the snowbound streets and a spectacular decapitation. Definitely one for a dull afternoon. |
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Post by benedictjjones on Aug 7, 2008 9:27:42 GMT
^i've read the 'heat is on' - had a blue and black collage style cover but not the other. i love the really pulpy covers some of them had as any pulp cover i've seen.
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Post by pulphack on Aug 7, 2008 9:34:51 GMT
ah, this is the trouble with himes, rog - it's a pre-war setting because that's when he lived there, but it's never actually specified in the text, so you assume it's contemporary to writing. a kind of meta-temporal setting (so could we call it sf and really piss off dem?)... maybe that's why it seems dream-like and hyper-real at times.
cotton comes to harlem had a naked guy (waist up) with a gun and a paperbag over his head, the bag decorated with lipstick and a babe draped over him. it's only when you reach the part in the book where maybelle uses her feminine wiles to strip then trap the officer supposedly guarding her, leaving him with the paperbag as his only defence, that it makes sense...
ben - the end of the primitive is a really well written book, but a revision of an earlier text, and very bitter in the extreme. approach only when feeling good, or -trust me - it'll really make you feel lousy about humanity!
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Post by benedictjjones on Aug 7, 2008 10:17:19 GMT
^that scene in 'cotton comes to harlem' is one of my favourite himes moments!
pulp have you read the lonely crusade? that sounded even grimmer than end of the primitive.
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Post by benedictjjones on Apr 9, 2009 12:56:54 GMT
mean to say that in the inside of the sallis biography (hardback) there are loads of pictures of the pulp covers from himes' books.
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Post by stuyoung on Sept 1, 2010 21:03:17 GMT
Just picked up the Alison & Busby edition of The Real Cool Killers. It'll be the first Himes that I've read.
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Post by marksamuels on Sept 1, 2010 21:48:43 GMT
Just picked up the Alison & Busby edition of The Real Cool Killers. It'll be the first Himes that I've read. Stu Can I loan this from you once you've read it? It sounds cool. Mark S. |
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Post by marksamuels on Sept 1, 2010 21:50:19 GMT
real cool even  Mark S.
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Post by stuyoung on Sept 2, 2010 10:43:38 GMT
Mark, remind me to bring it along to the next Penderel's do. Btw, did you still want to borrow those EC comic which I completely forgot to bring along last time?
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