The Big Sleep (1939) – Raymond Chandler

Devil in a Blue Dress was a very fine book and I am looking forward to working my way through the other Easy Rawlins novels. The full series of Easy Rawlins books is

• Devil in a Blue Dress
• A Red Death
• White Butterfly
• Black Betty
• A Little Yellow Dog
• Gone Fishin'
• Bad Boy Brawly Brown
• Six Easy Pieces
• Little Scarlet
• Cinnamon Kiss
• Blonde Faith

(You'll notice that the titles follow a very simple pattern of including a colour. Those that don't follow that pattern, Gone Fishin' and Six Easy Pieces, actually sit outside the series somewhat. Gone Fishin' is a novel about Easy's youth and Six Easy Pieces is a collection of short stories rather than a novel.

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The Read On list for Mosley is

READ ON  Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, Joe R Lansdale

which is quite interesting. Raymond Chandler and Chester Himes are big names in hardboiled fiction and African-American literature, respectively, one a genre and the other a body of literature, so in combining the two, Walter Mosley has created a fork in the trail.

(Joe R Lansdale incidentally is a bit of an absurbist as a novelist. One of his best known works – made into a movie a few years back – features an elderly Elvis battling an Egyptian mummy in a nursing home. However, he has written a series of novels about a crime-fighting duo Hap and Leonard, with Leonard being a gay black man, which often deals with the issue of racism, which surely has many parallels with Easy Rawlins' adventures.)

I have already read Chester Himes, and in fact I have visited all the writers of African-American literature that make a network around Walter Mosley. So it is now time to make a radical change of direction, into hardboiled detective fiction with Raymond Chandler.


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There is a lot to read in Chandler's Must Read list:

MUST READ  The Big Sleep, The Letters of Raymond Chandler, The Life of Raymond Chandler by Frank MacShane, The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler by Tom Hiney

The two biographies and the book of correspondence suggests that Chandler's life is as interesting as his writing. However, it is his novels that I am interested in reading, so my choices are The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye, both of which sound like metaphors for death. Going out and looking for these books, I found a collected works that includes

• The Big Sleep
• The High Window
• The Lady in the Lake
• The Long Goodbye
• Playback
• Farewell My Lovely

Imagining that I would like to read all of these eventually, I started at the beginning with The Big Sleep.

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In The Big Sleep, LA detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a millionaire to investigate some petty blackmailing involving his wayward daughter, but the story very quickly spirals into vice, murder, missing persons, hidden motives, madness, kidnapping, and so a little story about extortion becomes … well, I don't know if I really understand what really happened. The story is very convoluted and the main antagonist changes every couple of chapters. It is all a bit of a roller coaster; you do eventually get back to where you started, but the path there is exhilarating.

The story is very clever, but there is much more to the novel than just a clever story. I was expecting it to be a pulp story, and while it is racy and violent, the writing is magnificent. Poetic even. That is the only thing that surprised me about the book, however. While I knew nothing about the story before I read it, it felt utterly familiar. I felt I knew the characters, the setting, the themes. It was all full of clichés – though that shouldn't be held against Raymond Chandler as you get the feeling he is the originator of all those clichés.

Devil in a Blue Dress (1990) – Walter Mosley

The trail after Chester Himes leads off in two different directions:

READ ON Walter Mosley, James Sallis, Richard Wright

One of those directions – the Richard Wright direction, which happens to be backwards on my trail – follows the path of the protest novel, namely If He Hollers Let Him Go. The other path is that of Himes' Coffin and Grave Digger crime stories and continues through Walter Mosley.

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Walter Mosley is best known for his Easy Rawlins crime novels (though he has gained a bit of notoriety recently for a foray into erotica). And indeed, that is the extent of Cult Fiction's recommendation:

MUST READ All the Easy Rawlins novels

Well, while I might read all of the Easy Rawlins novels one day, just one for the time being should be enough. The first in the series is Devil in a Blue Dress.

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Devil in a Blue Dress is a hardboiled crime novel in the fashion of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammet. And it hits all the buttons. The plot is based around a search for a femme fatale; a more clichéd plot you couldn't imagine. The book also features a client with a hidden objective, imminent violence, friends that turn out to be enemies, dangerous allies, a wealthy magnate in love with a woman below his station and an awful lot of action at nighttime, with a plot that hurtles along. As a hardboiled crime story it sticks to formula almost fanatically. The one notable distinction it has over the vast majority of other hardboiled novels is that the protagonist, Ezekial "Easy" Rawlins, is a struggling black man from Watts, LA.

And it really is quite a clever twist. With a black hero, the detective novel genre makes so much more sense. It is part of the cliché that the supporting characters look down on and try to bully the detective; an essential part of the plot is that the antagonists underestimate the detective. When this is done to Philip Marlowe, the supporting characters are acting out their arrogance. However, when Easy is treated as if he doesn't count, the characters are merely acting out the racism of the times (Devil in a Blue Dress is set in '40s USA). What the novel does then is claim hardboiled detective fiction as a black genre.

If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945) – Chester Himes

Moving on then.

READ ON James Baldwin, Donald Goines, Chester Himes, Richard Price

Of those four authors, three could be eliminated. I had already read Donald Goines and the trail wouldn't make sense if I allowed myself to get into a loop. Neither James Baldwin nor Richard Price are considered cult authors by Cult Fiction. I'm surprised James Baldwin didn't make it into the book; he is a big name and Go Tell It on the Mountain is a hugely significant work of literature. Being black and gay he would certainly seem to qualify as a cult author. Calcutt and Shephard, the authors of Cult Fiction, define cult fiction as "literature from the margins and extremes", which includes the literature of ethnic minorities and of homosexuals (as well as that of drug users, hustlers, alcoholics, punks, political radicals, bohemians, the insane and any other group from the social margins). However, perhaps James Baldwin is too big. Maybe his following is too mainstream to be called cult. Richard Price could also make claim to be a cult author, seeing as his favourite subjects include gangs and drug-dealers.

So, the only available option was Chester Himes, another big name in African American literature. The options for books were:

MUST READ If He Hollers Let Him Go, A Rage in Harlem

There is plenty of Chester Himes in the library, so I was able to choose either of the two options. If He Hollers Let Him Go was Himes' first novel, so this seemed a good choice.

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If He Hollers Let Him Go is the story of Bob Jones, a black man in L.A. during the time of WWII working as a leaderman in a shipyard. Despite being smart and capable, Jones has reached the glass ceiling, he has no prospects of being promoted to the rank of supervisor – in fact, he has found that the glass ceiling is itself deceptive as he commands considerably less respect than white leadermen. When he tries to assert his seniority over a white woman worker, she refuses and calls him a nigger, but when he curses her back ("Screw you, then, you cracker bitch"), he is demoted.

The rest of the book follows the next few days after this event and further examines the state of racism in the U.S. in the 40s. Jones is well aware of the simmering racial hatred in L.A. In fact, he is terrified of it and haunted by it in his dreams. Bob's wealthy girlfriend, Alice, however, has had less experience of racism and advocates making do with the way things are, finding a place within an admittedly unjust society rather than fighting against it. Her views are then somewhat shaken by her experiences with Bob, as together they are refused service in a restaurant and are hassled by the police. However, Bob's perspective shifts as well and he decides that his best course is to make peace and settle down with Alice.

Bob returns to work with the intention of apologising to his co-worker. However, when he accidentally comes across her alone and refuses her perfunctory seduction, she accuses him of rape, leading to him being beaten by a mob and arrested. Alice abandons him in his hour of need, suggesting that he throw himself on the mercy of the court. The charges are dropped, but only on the condition that Bob enlists in the army and joins the war.

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If He Hollers Let Him Go depicts a nation at war with itself (while it is itself literally at war). Racism has risen to a level where society will wilfully do violence to its own people. A backdrop of the novel is the forced internment of Japanese American citizens (the Zoot Suit Riots, where zoot suit wearing Mexican Americans were the target of violence by white servicemen, were also part of the background of the era of the novel), and Bob palpably feels the mistrust and hostility between races as an imminent threat of violence. It was almost inevitable that he would suffer some tragedy or misfortune. His superiors at the shipyard seemed to be waiting for him to make an error so they could punish him, while he was assaulted by obstacles and provocations seemingly intended to make him lash out. In this way, the story of Bob Jones is similar to the story of Bigger Thomas – they were both caught up in events they had little control over.

If He Hollers is largely inspired by Chester Himes own experience of racism: Himes said of L.A. "Los Angeles hurt me racially as much as any city I have ever known – much more than any city I remember from the South. It was the lying hypocrisy that hurt me. Black people were treated much the same as they were in an industrial city of the South. They were Jim-Crowed in housing, in employment, in public accommodations, such as hotels and restaurants... The difference was that the white people of Los Angeles seemed to be saying, 'Nigger, ain't we good to you?'" However, it is easy to see that it is also a commentary on Native Son. In fact, Bigger Thomas is directly referenced:

'Native Son turned my stomach,'Arline said. 'It just proved what the white Southerner has always said about us; that our men are rapists and murderers.'

'Well I agree that the selection of Bigger Thomas to prove the point of Negro oppression was an unfortunate choice,' Leighton said.

'What do you think, Mr. Jones?' Cleo asked.

I said, 'Well, you couldn't pick a better person than Bigger Thomas to prove the point. But after you prove it, then what? Most white people I know are quite proud of having made negroes into Bigger Thomases.'

There was another silence and everybody looks at me. 'Take me for instance,' I went on. 'I've got a job as leaderman at a shipyard. I'm supposed to have a certain amount of authority over the ordinary workers. But I'm scared to ask a white woman to do a job. All she's got to do is say I insulted her and I'm fired.'

The difference between the books is that Native Son postulates that the racist U.S. society will turn black men into brutes, where If He Hollers suggests that society will cause violence even to good black men.

It is a bleak view, but one that Chester Himes strongly held. In the end, it was disgust with racism that chased Himes out of America to France. It seems he feared turning out like Bigger Thomas or Bob Jones. In his memoir he admitted "I had always believed that to defend my life of my honor I would kill a white man without a second thought. But when I discovered that this applied to white women too, I was profoundly shaken."

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I have to say that I was a bit disappointed in having chosen to read If He Hollers as part of my series and finding that it was so reminiscent of Native Son. Not disappointed in the book, which was very good, but disappointed in my choice of which book to read. While If He Hollers is a highly regarded book and an important protest novel, Himes is in fact better known for his pulpy crime novels featuring Coffin Ed Jones and Gravedigger Jones, regarded by some as being key characters in the history of literature. Although not ostensibly protest novels, Himes' crime novels, such as A Rage in Harlem, are perhaps even more insightful regarding the black experience in America.

The Farm (1967) – Clarence Cooper Jr

Not surprisingly, given their similar backgrounds, Iceberg Slim appears in Goines' "Read On" list:

READ ON Clarence Cooper, Chester Himes, Iceberg Slim

Cutting Iceberg from the equation, I had two to choose from and I ended up with Clarence Cooper Jr. (The "Jr" is very important. Without it you are talking about a U.S. judge, rather than "the black William Burroughs".)

The "Must Read" list for Clarence Cooper Jr is

MUST READ The Farm, The Scene, Weed

which sound like they might be a trilogy. Only The Farm was available from the library, making the choice of what to read straightforward.

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The farm of the title turns out to be a narcotics rehabilitation penitentiary, the Lexington Narcotics Farm. The book tells the story of the inmate John and his efforts to get along inside, finding work as an office boy and pursuing a romance with a woman Sonja in the women's wing, but also finding some sort of awakening of self-realisation within himself. This could easily be the story of Iceberg Slim or Donald Goines, or most significantly, of Cooper himself, who was in and out of prison with a heroin addiction.

It is a fantastically written book, with a brave inventiveness in the use of language. The story of John is also very good and very worthy. However, I must admit that it simply washed over me. Perhaps I don't care enough about recovering junkies or perhaps I've become inured to the topics of drug abuse and lost potential at this point in my trail.

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So what was I missing? The cover of the copy of the book I read claimed that The Farm deserved all the literary prizes and grants going. Cult Fiction mentions that The Farm is experimental in style, as I picked up, and The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction claims that it is influenced by Dante's Inferno...damn, I didn't get that – I should really read these biographies more closely before attempting the book.

The Farm was Cooper's last big attempt at success. His first book The Scene had received acclaim amongst other authors, but failed to ignite a literary career. His later novels received only cheap paperback releases. His failure was apparently largely due to his problems with heroin and prison, which made it difficult for him to get a good publishing deal. However, clearly he would have achieved the success he deserved if he had been better received by the public. His daring literary style wasn't appreciated and the pessimism of his stories wasn't what people wanted to read. After The Farm flopped despite his greatest efforts, he gave up writing and succumbed to his destructive lifestyle, dying alone and impoverished in a New York YMCA.

I feel kinda crappy after learning all this. I'm not at all responsible for Cooper's failure to achieve his deserved acclaim (I was seven when he died), but I did dismiss the novel for similar reasons to his contemporary audience. I feel prospectively culpable in a strange sort of way. I should go back and read the The Farm again and try to appreciate it better. And so should all of you.

Daddy Cool (1974) – Donald Goines

Moving on from Richard Wright and Bigger Thomas, my options were

READ ON James Baldwin, Albert Camus, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Chester Himes, Donald Goines

A detour from the literature of the oppressed to the literature of philosophy seemed enticing, but I am pleased that Donald Goines came up as my next read rather than Camus. I feel that there is still much to explore in the literature of Black America.

Donald Goines got his start in writing in a similar way to Iceberg Slim. After a spell in prison, he decided to turn his life around by putting pen to paper. In fact, Goines was inspired by Iceberg and his autobiographical style. Goines started writing novels in 1972, and by 1974 when he was killed in a drug deal gone bad he had written 14 books, with two more published posthumously. Choosing a book from these wasn't straight forward, however – the must read section in Cult Fiction said

MUST READ Donald Goines wrote fiction the way other people package meat. There is little point in picking any of his titles as outstanding, since they are all formulaic. Equally however, they are all outstanding in that they are street-real and avoid the romanticism of many of the films and books about black life in America.

So without any recommendations to go on, I picked Daddy Cool from Goines' bio because it had the coolest name (even amongst titles such as Whoreson and Dopefiend).

Again, the library had no copies of Goines and I could find nothing in any of the town's second hand book stores. So I turned to Amazon. It was easily available there as a cheap paperback, cheaper than the postage in fact.

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I don't quite know what Cult Fiction meant when they claimed Donald Goines' stuff is "street-real". Daddy Cool is melodrama, with the merest nod towards realism. It is trash – but great trash. It cracks along and has a great voice.

Check it out:

Desperately the woman tried to turn and flee. She saw death bearing down on her in the form of a tall light-skinned black man. Before she could turn around, Daddy Cool made one of his swift underhand throws. The knife seemed to twist in the air twice before it came to rest between the large breasts of the woman. She groaned, then slumped over.

Realization finally came to the middle-aged black man. His eyes grew as large as picture windows when he saw the knife appear in the assassin's hand. He put his hands in front of himself and backed up.

"Wait a minute, mister, please!"

He began to scream as he saw the man draw back his arm to throw. His scream was cut off as the well-aimed knife struck him in the heart.

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Daddy Cool is a suave hit man, deadly with a throwing knife. He lives a content, comfortable family life on his takings – until his daughter shacks up with a pimp. Then he has to track her down and get her back. In great pulp fashion, the search for his daughter involves street hustling, beatings and murder. The story builds as the bodies piles up, but none of it quite prepared me for the dramatic ending when, on the last page of the book, pulp turned to Shakespearean tragedy.

Native Son (1940) – Richard Wright

The stature of Iceberg Slim as an author is shown by the company he keeps in his "Read On" list:

READ ON Donald Goines, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Richard Wright

There are some big names in black-American literature in that list. Richard Wright particularly, but I'm sure I recognise Chester Himes and Walter Mosley as well.

Rolling a die decided that I would read Richard Wright – and there would be no question which book I would have to read: Native Son, the story of Bigger Thomas.

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What a book. What a great book.

Very briefly, it is the story of a poor young black man, Bigger Thomas, and his brutal but un-malicious murder of a rich white woman. Naturally enough, Bigger Thomas represents Black America or every black American. The story in turn represents the reaction of black Americans under oppression.

At first glance, the character of Bigger Thomas does not paint a flattering portrait of Black America. Bigger is brutal and very stupid. However, the point that Richard Wright makes is that Bigger Thomas is inevitable. He is a consequence of the social injustice he lives under.

Wright doesn't seem to be very sympathetic towards Bigger. The novel certainly doesn't read like an apology for his actions. However, it is clearly society that is to blame. Others come under criticism as well, notably the hypocritical guilty white liberals who profit from segregation and the well-meaning but out-of-touch communists. Again however, their failings are a consequence of the racist divide in society – a divide that has to be closed, not bridged.

Pimp (1967) – Iceberg Slim

The "Read On" list for Pasolini is

READ ON Celine, Graham Greene, Iceberg Slim

The authors in bold have entries in Cult Fiction. I had heard of neither of them. By the toss of a coin I chose Iceberg Slim.

According to his biography in Cult Fiction, Iceberg Slim is a seminal influence in black American culture. His assured use of the vernacular and unapologetic honesty in writing about the black underclass from within has inspired many other black artists, notably Ice T who took his name from Iceberg. Seeing how important he is, I was surprised I had never heard of him and was sure that his books would be easy to find.

The "Must Read" for Iceberg Slim are

MUST READ Mama Black Widow, Pimp, Trick Baby

I chose to read Pimp, Iceberg's autobiographical account of his career as a pimp before he became a writer. To find it I went to the library. But I was surprised to learn that they didn't have it. Feeling certain that they ought to have it, I filled in a request form suggesting that the library buy a copy. A couple of weeks later I got a letter from them saying that they didn't think it was worthwhile for the library to buy a copy of this book. Very disappointing.

So I bought myself a copy from Unity to read.

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The cover of Pimp shows just what sort of pimp Iceberg was. The cover has him dressed in a lurid pink shirt with a giant gold-nugget ring. He was clearly more a dandy Huggy Bear-type pimp than Harvey Keitel in Taxi Driver. I can imagine him sashaying down the streets of Chicago in furs and platforms followed by his girls ("Ice, daddy, we love you." "Shut up, I know it!").

But the first chapter of the book dispels the idea that he might be some sort of cartoon pimp out of a blacksploitation comedy. The chapter relates an evening from the height of Iceberg's career, when his control over his whores was at its height, and demonstrates how he kept his girls in order through abuse, bullying, cynical psychology and intimidation. The rest of the book is fairly similar, though more violent at times, as Iceberg describes what it takes to be a super successful pimp with a stable of faithful, profitable whores and a patch of turf defended from rivals. It is a harsh business gaining a rep as a pimp and keeping ahead of the game. It takes a lot of guile, a vicious streak and an endless capacity for brutal misogyny.

For all this it is an incredible book. An endlessly fascinating story and a gripping, raw read that feels original even though it is 40 years old. The most impressive aspect of the book is its verisimilitude. The novel is, naturally enough, completely true to life, for that particular world. The book even includes a four-page glossary so we can follow what the characters are saying. (I made an attempt to speak Jive myself but could only keep it up for a couple of days.) More than this though is the honesty in the writing. It isn't just the setting that seems realistic, Iceberg's account of his life also feels completely genuine. So willing is he to reveal his dark brutal soul from those days that you are convinced he isn't hiding anything from us.

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I felt in Iceberg's writing that there was some kind of remorse for wasting his life as a pimp. He doesn't really say this directly, or at least not very strongly. In fact, he writes about the pimp lifestyle with gusto and offers no apologies. But I get a strong sense of catharsis in his admission to having lived that life.

It is so easy to see Iceberg Slim's influence in blacksploitation and contemporary gangsta culture (and beyond, The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction lists Irvine Welsh as having been influenced by Iceberg). But it is also quite clear that Slim's message has been lost in some parts of the subcultures he helped to create, specifically those parts that aspire to that kind of lifestyle . Slim however didn't write about his life to glorify it, he wrote about it to shame it by exposure.