Cotó a Harlem

With the creation of his big city black detectives, Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, Chester Himes achieved something singular and grand. Hard boiled genre fiction was nothing new in the 1950’s, but populating a landscape with sharply detailed black characters was new and still reads fresh today half a century later. The detectives work for a police department mostly at odds with the community they serve and serve a community distrustful of the department that they work for. Often this puts them in a vice, but also it frees them to make up their own rules. Adhering to a clear vision of right and wrong, like most hard boiled detectives, their means can swerve wildly from what would seem acceptable. Their creativity in the face of constant adversity propels the novel. The richly created world of Pimps, Madams, hustlers, grifters and work-a-day going to church every Sunday folk gives the novel a pulse and lively step. Himes achieved his stated goal of doing for Harlem what Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles. I almost felt like I knew where all the alleys were in Harlem by the end of the book. The heist at the center of the novel is a solid mystery that snakes through every corner of Harlem and squeezes out a fresh look at race relations on several social levels. The voices and language of COTTON COMES TO HARLEM still rings in my ears—always colorful but never overdone. ( )

So, while I was reading Mosley, Easy Rawlins and a friend of his get into a discussion as to who is the greatest African American novelist, Chester Himes or Ralph Ellison. One or the other of them opts for Himes because he wrote more books and also because he wasn't afraid to show all society's shit. Whatever, I figured I should check out Chester Himes. I think he might be the African American equivalent of Raymond Chandler, i.e. a writer of hard-boiled detective fiction, albeit from an African-American perspective.

In this book, I've been introduced to Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. Apparently, this is the 7th book about Grave Digger and Coffin Ed, but the first I've read. Anyway, they are two New York Detectives who mostly work the Harlem beat. The only cops the people of Harlem would ever trust would be black cops. This book involves fraudsters, both black and white, robbing from each other. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed find a way to ensure justice for the defrauded poor people, in a way that doesn't involve white courts, which would likely punish the criminals without ensure reparations. Something like that. Whatever, it was rather an interesting, if rough, story and I'll likely take another fly or two at Himes. He'll teach me about a whole different world that the one in which I've lived for the last many decades.

Interesting that as I read this book, and the one by Walter Mosley that prompted me to read this book, the blow up in Ferguson, MO was going down. It seems that the African American community still can't trust white cops to protect them and provide justice to their communities. ( )

I wonder if the Unknown Comic from the Gong Show ever read this book? Because this takes that act in a whole different direction.

As an aside: although I had heard of Marcus Garvey, I didn't know why I would have (you know, you hear a name in passing with no explanation as to what they're famous for). Nice to have that filled in. ( )

Himes wrote some of the coolest novels in the genre, and Cotton Comes to Harlem is one of his best. It's a non-stop roller coaster ride of sex, violence and manic black humor that literally left me breathless at times; it's that good. In between the action Himes sneaks in a few telling comments on race relations and race politics, but this is by no means a cultural polemic posing as a thriller: it's the real deal baby. Check out A Rage in Harlem as well (the second best of his Harlem novels) then pick up anything else he's written. ( )

Himes wrote some of the coolest novels in the genre, and Cotton Comes to Harlem is one of his best. It's a non-stop roller coaster ride of sex, violence and manic black humor that literally left me breathless at times; it's that good. In between the action Himes sneaks in a few telling comments on race relations and race politics, but this is by no means a cultural polemic posing as a thriller: it's the real deal baby. Check out A Rage in Harlem as well (the second best of his Harlem novels) then pick up anything else he's written. ( )