Evita
recently asked on this blog the following question: "How authentic is
Chester Himes’ Harlem? I understand that he never actually lived there, however
there is an abundant description of addresses, bars / clubs (real or
fictitious); the fashions and hairstyles, songs and dances sound particularly
accurate. Harlem seems to be at that time a unique microcosm in the United
States. Could it be inspired by another city, or memories, or is it an entirely
fictitious neighborhood that one reads in its novels?"
The question
calls for a balanced answer. Yes, Himes is very familiar with Harlem and his
physical and social geography. Other places and characters also inspire him,
however, mainly those of Cleveland, the city where he spent his youth and ended
pimping and gambling. Above all, in his crime novels, Harlem is a mixture of
realism and invention, which makes possible the improbable: a city separated
from the white world where two black policemen make the law. The last two
novels of the Harlem domestic novels (Blind Man
with the Pistol, Plan B) will
destroy this construction and will give another image of Harlem, dominated and crisscrossed
by whites.
Himes is
not a Harlemite. He was born in the South and spent his teens in Cleveland. He
discovers Harlem in July 1940, at the age of 31. He stays there for several
days and sleeps one night in the famous Theresa Hotel, at the crossroads of
125th Street and 7th Avenue. After the war years spent in California, he moves
to New York with Jean, his wife. He lives in Harlem between September 1944 and
November 1945 and between January and June 1947 and eventually, occasionally,
between the spring of 1952 and his departure for France, on April 3, 1953.
Between these stays, he resides most often in Brooklyn, in the Bronx and in the
New England properties where he and Jean work as caretakers. In 1972, Himes
recalls his happiness when walking the streets of Harlem: "I was going
down south [...] beyond Fat Man's bar on the 155th, Eddie's chicken restaurant
and Lucky night club, and all the hairdressers, restaurants and beauty parlors
that served the lottery barons, the numbers racketeers and the black bourgeoisie who lived on 140th St and the neighboring
streets. I would take 145th St to Brother 'Lightfoot' Michaux's Harlem Temple,
then headed south again, into the neon jungle of 7th Avenue, Harlem's main
street (which I've always considered the land of dreams), past the Renaissance
dance hall, Small's Paradise Inn and Dickie-Wells Restaurant & Bar."[1]
For the
most part, however, his discovery of Harlem is subsequent to his exile in
France (1953). In 1955, from the end of January to mid-December, Himes spends 10
months in New York. He lives in Greenwich Village but cruises Harlem and
becomes impregnated with the city: "It was at that moment that I really
made my acquaintance with Harlem: its geography, the way of life of its
inhabitants, its mobsters, its vices, its slang, its absurdities. I acquired
all this knowledge unintentionally. Perhaps it saved my life later because
it allowed me to write the novels that appeared in the Série Noire at
Gallimard Editions in France."[2] It is interesting to note that Himes
then doesn’t have any detective novel in mind. The crucial meeting with Marcel
Duhamel, the director of the Série Noire, will only take place in 1957.
1 Edward
Margolies and Michel Fabre, The Several Lives of Chester Himes, p. 53-54.
2 Chester
Himes, Regrets sans repentir, Paris, Gallimard, 1979, p. 224.