Pulp Fiction discussion

Our February 2025 Group Read Topic is Multicultural Noir. Our group selected If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes as our read for the month.

Himes was born in Jefferson City, MO in 1909, later moving to Arkansas. As an adolescent, Himes' younger brother was injured severely when gunpowder exploded in his face. Rushed to the hospital, the boy was refused treatment under Jim Crow laws of the time. The unfairness of the incident stuck with Himes throughout his life. As he later recalled:

We pulled into the emergency entrance of a white people's hospital. White clad doctors and attendants appeared. I remember sitting in the back seat with Joe watching the pantomime being enacted in the car's bright lights. A white man was refusing; my father was pleading. Dejectedly my father turned away; he was crying like a baby. My mother was fumbling in her handbag for a handkerchief; I hoped it was for a pistol.

After moving to Cleveland, OH Himes was expelled from The Ohio State University for pulling a prank, then was arrested for using a fake ID and passing a bad check. Out on bail, Himes broke into a home in a wealthy neighborhood and committed armed robbery. He was arrested the next day and sentenced to 20 years in prison. During his time in prison he began writing short stories and having them published in magazines. After he was released, he made the acquaintance of Langston Hughes who helped Himes get into publishing.

If He Hollers is Himes' first published novel, written while he was working in Hollywood as a screenwriter and published in 1945 near the end of WWII. A movie version was released in 1968 which is said to be markedly different from the novel.

Himes died of Parkinson's Disease in 1984 in Moraira, Spain.

Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester...

NPR - https://www.npr.org/2017/07/26/539487...

Britannica - https://www.britannica.com/biography/...



Here's a picture of Himes, wondering whose cat this is.

That's a great introduction, RJ.
Chester Himes's been on my radar for ages and I'm looking forward to this.

Incidentally and by chance, another group is reading If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin, another Black male writer. We'll have a double feature with hypotheticals in the titles!

Huge Himes fan here. Read over half The Harlem Cycle, but not the above, yet. Will try to snaffle a copy and keep abreast of things here.

Looking forward to this. I like Himes.

After I finish my current book, I’m on this. My library system has a copy!

I've just finished a book and this will be next. Hopefully I'll be able to start reading this evening.

I’m sidelined again, still, In the hospital. Grrrrr

Lawrence wrote: "I’m sidelined again, still, In the hospital. Grrrrr"
Man, hope you're alright. Praying.

Yes, hope you get better soon.

I was going to leave a comment here when I saw the thread bumped up.
My first approach to the book wasn't, let's say, smooth. I'm not really used to this style of prose, which coupled with the relentless racism and abuse experienced by the protagonist made it sometimes actually difficult to pick up. So I set it aside for a few days and read something else. As it happened, I was just around the corner from a point near the half of the book (ch. XI-XII) which felt like a turning point. I've also re-read the opening chapters and both style and content make better sense now. I'm now eager to continue...

I'm not sure about the etiquette concerning spoilers here, so I'll just be cautious.
(view spoiler)[The long dialogue between Bob and Alice and the end of the second day, which marks the middle point of the novel both time-wise and length-wise, seem to function as a sort of end of part I, resolving or at least tying up the events so far.
Ch. XII actually begins as a replay ch. I, with Bob dreaming and then picking up his colleagues on the way to the shipyard.
(hide spoiler)]

This is my first book with the group.
I'm not familiar with much pulp, crime, noir, or hard-boiled fiction. How would you veterans judge the prose of this novel?

Hey, a.g.e. I’ll be starting this one tonight. I’ve read a number of his Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones novels. Two hard nosed detectives in 1960s Harlem. The prose is rough and of the street in those and race is definitely a character in the novels. I’ll chime in on this one after I start.

Himes is best known, I think, for his Harlem Detectives novels, which contain perhaps an element of humour.

In the introduction to my edition of If He Hollers, Graham Hodges calls them "potboilers" in contrast with his "more serious" work, such as this.

Personally I'm just glad that there's more to read!

I’ve started this one. I’m about 40 pages in. There is a reason why Himes is remembered and reprinted. He gives you the anger but melds it into storytelling beautifully. The internal thoughts of the storyteller here are Chester’s. I don’t doubt that for a second. I think his prose is wonderfully done and his dialogue is factual. He is angry and he is also a good storyteller.

I have no doubt about the authenticity; nor, for that matter, about the protagonist being an occasional mouthpiece for the author (e.g. when he mentions southern California being more soul-crushing than Cleveland, OH, where both Himes and his character grew up).

What I was referring to is a sort of unpolished, I'd say unliterary quality of the prose. Not necessarily a negative trait, just a style I'm not used to.

Have fun with it and also take it seriously mate. Hope you enjoy the reading experience.

I wasn't able to join up with "If he hollers..." I'm almost done with my carryovers "The Thin Man" and Thompson's "Generation of Swine", but aside from a.g.e, is it high up in star ratings for most of you?

I've been sitting this one out also, because I'm going through a back to basics period in my pulp choices. After Travis McGee no. 5, I read High Sierra by Burnett: loved it as much as the original movie version with Humphrey Bogart.

Himes was a talented writer - to me this comes across as extreme realism, including his dialogue.

Bob's experience with racism made him unable to "settle" for the status quo, to "move on with life despite the inequity of it all" - the philosophy that Alice preaches to him. On page 153 of my version there's a great monologue in which Bob admits life events that have truly blessed him, and that he would indeed be lucky if that were the whole story. But since he'll never been seen as just "a regular Joe", and will always have the Black qualifier, he's not buying any of it, which of course leads to major trouble.

I found it odd that Alice, a social worker, never acknowledges to Bob that Black men might deal with extra difficulties not faced by Black women. And despite her experiences as a social worker, she unfortunately remains naive in important areas, telling him "a person just can't charge you with a crime you haven't committed".

He certainly was a talented writer. I just finished this one. I mean, if this was written today as historical fiction I wouldn’t pay it that much attention. But being published in 1945 by a black man who was in prison for armed robbery (or some such thing) gives it an important layer. This was different than the other novels by Himes that I’ve read (it focused mainly on a single character encountering the world) and I enjoyed it a lot. One part of the first half got me thinking of The Killer Inside Me and I actually had to check the published date. Killer Inside me was 1952. Seven years later.

I finished this book about a week ago. It was a difficult read. I can't imagine living under the blatant racism/bigotry that Bob had to contend with.

As to Brian's point regarding Alice, she does live under a naive bubble. I think to a degree she is sheltered, seeing life from a family that is respected for the most part (her father a doctor), and having a decent job as a social worker. For her it's more cut and dried regarding how she thinks Bob should deal with his boss/the woman wanting to cut him down/every white person around. Bob has his pride too which complicates things when trying to deal with the bigotry issues.

I enjoy this kind of writing. There are no punches pulled. I had a conversation with another goodreader and I told him, while I don't relish the subjects covered in something like this, I am fascinated by it. I want to see what some of the worst things us humans have to offer. I don't want my head in the sand. I want to know what we are capale of though I am often terribly surprised by it. The deoths we can sink to, it's astounding.

Good poll RJ, glad it came out on top.