Chester Himes – Chris Barsanti

Raised in Missouri, Chester Himes (born today in 1909) began his writing career in an unlikely place. While attending Ohio State University, he started walking on the wild side. He was sent to prison for robbery at the age of 19. Buying a typewriter in part with his gambling winnings, he began writing stories from his jail cell that were published in the black press and Esquire, under the pen name 59623 (his prisoner number).

After moving to France, Himes began publishing the raucous Harlem-set noir novels that made him famous, particularly Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965). One day in Paris in 1953, Himes was at a café with Richard Wright and James Baldwin. The two rivals were sparring over petty literary slights, real and imagined. “I confess,” the street-wise Himes wrote in his autobiography, The Quality of Hurt (1972), “at this point they lost me.”

The great Chester Himes was born in Jefferson City, Missouri in 1909 and died in Spain in 1984. In between he went to prison for armed robbery, worked for the WPA, lived as an expatriate writer in Paris, and published some of the century’s best American crime fiction (Cotton Comes to Harlem, in particular).

Since his metier was hard to classify, ranging from black crime fiction to memoir and beyond, Himes’ work has been subject to less critical scrutiny than other posthumously praised writers. One of the few critics to turn their eye to Himes was Stephen F. Milliken, who noted that Himes didn’t need much help, and didn’t want it:

Chester Himes has always been above all else a man who does not take advice. His work is totally innocent of the smooth, professional polish of the writer who has been told … that you simply cannot do everything at once … His work is ferociously idiosyncratic.

When in doubt, be like Himes. Listen to your voice. Follow advice if it helps you get there. But if not, go your own way.

Chris Barsanti

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Literary Birthday: Chester Himes

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