A Rage in Harlem

Harlem In Noir

Chester Himes' 1957 novel, "Rage in Harlem" offers a tough, unsentimental, and visceral look at the people, streets, and places of Harlem in the 1950s. His description of Harlem is detailed and intimate on a street-by-street, place-by-place basis. Himes can describe a place precisely and closely, but he can also compound image on image in long, heavily enjambed sentences, which reminded me of Walt Whitman. The story takes place in Harlem's tenements, streets, alleys, bars, brothels, train stations, hotels, gambling houses, and businesses. Himes knows them all. He writes of Harlem in lengthy paragraphs and in short one-liners. Here is an example of the former:

"Looking eastward from the towers of Riverside Church, perched among the university buildings on the high banks of the Hudson River, in a valley far below, waves of gray rooftops distort the perspective like the surface of a sea. Below the surface, in the murky waters of fetid tenements, a city of black people who are convulsed in desperate living, like the voracious churning of millions of hungry cannibal fish. Blind mouths eating their own guts. Stick in a hand and draw back a nub. That is Harlem."

And here is an example of the latter, as Himes describes the environs and people in Harlem's 125th Street train station:

"Whores buzzed about the area like green flies over stewing chitterlings."

Trains play a large role in the portrayal of Harlem. They are used, for example, below, in a climactic scene in which a main character, a scoundrel named Goldy, who makes his living impersonating a nun on Harlem's streets, is murdered brutally.

"Goldy's scream mingled with the scream of the locomotive as the train thundered past overhead, shaking the entire tenement city. Shaking the sleeping black people in their lice-ridden beds. Shaking the ancient bones and the aching muscles and the t.b. lungs and the uneasy foetuses of unwed girls. Shaking plaster from the ceilings, mortar from between the bricks of the building walls. Shaking the rats between the walls, the cockroaches crawling over kitchen sinks and leftover food; shaking the sleeping flies hibernating in lumps like bees behind the casings of the windows. Shaking the fat, blood-filled bedbugs, crawling over black skin. Shaking the fleas, making them hop. Shaking the sleeping dogs in their filthy pallets, the sleeping cats, the clogged toilets, loosening the filth."

Harlem is the primary character of this novel, even though the book offers a tangled noir story of crime, scams, and killings together with many sharply described people. The major character, Jackson, 29, has come to Harlem from the South and is hardworking, religious, naive and gullible. Jackson works at a funeral parlor and is caught in scams by his femme fatale ladyfriend, Immabelle, and forced to engage in a series of robberies and crimes. Jackson is unswervingly loyal to and trusting of Immabelle. Jackson's twin brother, an addict named Goldy, impersonates a nun in the Sisters of Mercy and sells tickets to heaven on the streets. Jackson, Imabelle, and Goldy become involved in counterfeiting and goldmine scams. The African American detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones also become involved. There is a great deal of acerbic humor as well as violence as the story proceeds. The dead bodies pile up, as in Elizabethan tragedy.

Besides the descriptions of places and people, "Rage in Harlem" includes several scenes of fights and rumbles, including a long passage set in a deserted, forbidding Harlem street formerly in a building formerly used by the Father Divine movement. The scenes of action in the book, for me, tended to become chaotic in places and to slow the book down. Unusually enough, the plot components are more background for the descriptions of Harlem than the latter are backdrops for a noir story.

Himes' book offers the feel of understanding Harlem from the inside. Yet, when Himes (1909 -- 1984) wrote this work, he was living in exile in France. For many years, Himes was more appreciated in France than in his native United States. Himes' novel was used as the basis for a movie starring Robin Givens as Immabelle. The book will fascinate readers interested in the African American experience, Harlem, or noir literature.

Robin Friedman