I had mixed reactions to Chester Himes'
A Rage in Harlem. It made it onto the unread shelf when something I was reading claimed it was an outstanding example of something—race in American cities, detective novels, cruelty. I don't remember what. Really doesn't matter.
Anyway, my varied responses began when I looked at the cover. The front bills
Rage as "the famous, savage novel about a certain neighborhood in the U. S. A." and gives its original title as
For Love of Imabelle. (Imabelle, a central character, is attractive—and trouble—to many men.) The title change and the phrase "savage novel" made me suspicious. As in: oh, there goes Hollywood, changing a title to make a book seem more violent than it was. That suspicion lessened towards the end of the book when it seemed a racial "war" would give truth to "vicious." That event, however, never happened, and when the book did end, I felt cheated.
A blurb on the back cover starts with "
A Rage in Harlem is a novel about Harlem as even James Baldwin has never approached it." Whoa! Hold on there. You're comparing Chester Himes, a writer I never heard of, to James Baldwin, a major twentieth-century literary figure? Surely you jest.
Then the same blurb ends with a French writer claiming, "The most extraordinary novel I have read in a long time. … I give you all the Hemmingway, Dos Passos, Steinbeck for this Chester Himes." See here, those are pretty outlandish claims. They are also, however, claims that burbled in my mind the whole time I was reading. Then, this morning, I finished reading the book and googled this Himes fellow. Hmmm. Maybe he is a major—albeit mostly ignored—literary figure. I even have a grasp on why he has been ignored. Baldwin wrote about Harlem families with a problem or two; Hines' characters are much lower on the totem pole. Although they are colorful and well-developed, they are violent and clearly the victims of a racist America. I can see why American critics and academicians would not promote Hines' books. I do, however, plan to read more.
Things I noticed:
1) Had a real contrast to
Twilight going on with
Rage. In
Twilight I had a problem with the author's obvious writing by the rules, which, IMHO, made her writing stilted and forced. Not so with Mr. Himes. Remember one rule which says that separating the subject of a sentence and its verb is a bad thing? Take a look at the following: "A medium–sized, brown-skinned man, dressed in a camel's-hair coat, brown beaver hat, hard-finished brown-and-white striped suit, brown suede shoes, brown silk tie decorated with hand-painted yellow horses, wearing a diamond ring on his left ring-finger and a gold signet-ring on his right hand, carrying gloves in his left hand, swinging his right hand free, pushed open the street door and came into the bar fast." (page 69) I don't think I'd ever before seen a sentence with that many words separating the subject and verb. And I think it works. The contrast with
Twilight? I sense Himes is comfortable with language in ways Stephanie Meyers can only dream of being, which, for me at least, makes him much easier to read.
2) In my study of description and how it works, I have to give Himes credit: he writes action scenes more vividly than any writer I've encountered—at least that I remember. Example:
Everyboy (sic) ducked again. Jackson and Jodie butted heads accidentally. By dodging, Slim came between Coffin Ed and Hank just as Hank threw the acid and Coffin Ed shot. Some of the acid splashed on Slim's ear and neck; the rest splashed into Coffin Ed's face. Coffin Ed's shot went wild and shattered the desk-lamp.
Slim jumped back so violently he slammed against the wall.
Hank dropped behind the desk a fraction of a second before Coffin Ed, blinded with the acid and a white-hot rage, emptied his pistol, spraying the top of the desk and the wall behind it with .38 slugs./One of the bullets hit a hidden light-switch and plunged the room into darkness. (page 85)
Yeah. Awhile back an agent rejected a novel I wrote, saying it had too much dialogue. It was a mystery and she was right. It needed descriptions of actions. Needed? Perhaps needs. Maybe a rewrite is in order.
3) Occasionally in
Rage I ran across a sentence that seemed to say something meaningful with only a few carefully arranged words. Goldy is a male character whose con involves dressing as a nun. "'And I took the book out of the angel's hand and ate it up,' he quoted enigmatically. He knew the best way to fool a white cop in Harlem was to quote foolishly from the Bible." (page 94)
4) And: "It was the code of Harlem for one brother to help another lie to white cops." (page 100)
5) Then, occasionally, I'd come across a paragraph that drew a perfect—and haunting—picture.
Goldy's scream mingled with the scream of the locomotive as the train thundered past overhead, shaking the entire tenement city. Shaking the sleeping black people in their lice-ridden beds. Shaking the ancient bones and the aching muscles and the t.b. lungs and the uneasy foetuses of the unwed girls. Shaking plaster from the ceilings, mortar from between the bricks of the building walls. Shaking the rats behind the walls, the cockroaches crawling over kitchen sinks and leftover food; shaking the sleeping flies hibernating in lumps like bees behind the casings of the windows. Shaking the fat, blood-filled bedbugs crawling over black skin. Shaking the fleas, making them hop. Shaking the sleeping dogs in their filthy pallets, the sleeping cats, the clogged toilets, loosening the filth. (pages 127-128)
Wow! It's all in the details and rhythm. Remember that, Martha.
Yep. I'll be reading more of Mr. Himes' work.
