Writing Absurdity
Adam Shatz: Chester Himes, 26 April 2018
Chester B. Himes: A Biography
by Lawrence P. Jackson.
Norton, 606 pp., £25, July 2017,978 0 393 06389 9 Show More
by Lawrence P. Jackson.
Norton, 606 pp., £25, July 2017,
“... as a major writer, the poète maudit of black America. Like his mentor Faulkner (and later Cormac McCarthy), Himes appealed to a Parisian readership convinced of the essential savagery of American life. ‘What the great body of Americans most disliked’ about his work, Himes believed, ‘was the fact that I came too close to the truth.’ He wasn’t wrong ... ”