The Critical Response to Chester Himes

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Charles L.P. Silet, ed.

ISBN: 0-313-29941-2

ISBN-13: 978-0-313-29941-4

DOI:

320 pages

Greenwood Press

Publication: 10/30/1999

List Price: $110.95 (UK Sterling Price: £76.95)

Availability: In Stock

Media Type: Hardcover

Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4

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Series Title: Critical Responses in Arts and Letters

Description: The work of Chester Himes is now undergoing a critical and popular reevaluation as it gradually comes back into print after years of neglect. His protest novels from the 1940s and early 1950s, his Harlem Domestic crime books, first published in France and later released in English in the United States, and his remarkable two-volume autobiography are now gaining a wider readership through their republication. Nonetheless, the critical writings on his work remain scattered and are often difficult to obtain. This collection of reviews and essays from both popular and academic sources traces the critical response to his work from 1946 to 1996 and thus sheds light on the critical reputation of one of the most distinguished but underrated African American authors.

Himes has a wide international reputation, but this reference book focuses on those essays and reviews in the English language which provide a clearer assessment of his controversial literary standing in his native country, where his reputation has been most under debate. The book includes a balanced assessment of all his work, along with an interview with Himes's brother that offers some corrective commentary on his autobiography. The volume also provides a chronology, a checklist of his writings, and a bibliography.

Table of Contents:

Series Foreword by Cameron Northouse
Introduction
The Writings of Chester Himes
Reviews
History as Nightmare by James Baldwin
No Thrills in Harlem by Kofi Akainyah
The Crazy Kill and If He Hollers Let Him Go by Sally Cragin
The Best Black American Novelist Writing Today by Shane Stevens
Rhythms of Black Experience by George E. Kent
Chester Himes-'Alien' in Exile by Loyle Hairston
A Case of Rape by Michel Fabre
The Chester Himes Mystique by Gwendoline Lewis Roget
Policier's Noirs by Fred Pfeil
Chester Himes: The Collected Stories by James Robert Payne
The Best of Himes, the Worst of Himes by Ishmael Reed
Himes and Self-hatred by James Campbell
Essays
Domestic Harlem: The Detective Fiction of Chester Himes by Raymond Nelson
Violence Real and Imagined: The Novels of Chester Himes by A. Robert Lee
Chester Himes: A Nigger by Maureen Liston
The Use of the Doppelganger or Double in Chester Himes' Lonely Crusade by Ralph Reckley
Chester Himes and the Art of Fiction by Angus Calder
Chester Himes and the Hard-Boiled Tradition by Jay R. Berry
In America's Black Heartland: The Achievement of Chester Himes by James Sallis
Postscript: A Case of Rape by Calvin Hernton
Topographies of Violence: Chester Himes' Harlem Domestic Novels by Michael Denning
Space and Civil Rights Ideology: The Example of Chester Himes's The Third Generation by Claude Julien
Toni Morrison's Variations on Chester Himes by Aribert Schroeder
The Black Man in the Literature of Labor: The Early Novels of Chester Himes by Robert Skinner
Limited Options: Strategic Maneuverings in Himes's Harlem by Wendy W. Walters
African American Anti-Semitism and Himes's Lonely Crusade by Steven J. Rosen
Slaying the Fathers: The Autobiography of Chester Himes by Gary Storhoff
An Interview
Chester Himes-The Ethics of Ambiguity: An Interview with Joseph Sandy Himes, Jr. by Gwendoline Lewis Roget
Bibliography
Index

About the Author: CHARLES L.P. SILET is Professor of English at Iowa State University. He has written widely on crime and mystery fiction and his articles, reviews, and interviews have appeared in journals both in the United States and abroad. He was a Consulting Editor for The Armchair Detective and is presently a Consulting Editor for the new Strand Magazine. His most recent book is Talking Murder: 20 Interviews with Mystery and Crime Writers.

LCC Class: 813


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