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Title: The End of a Primitive (Old School Books) by Chester B. Himes ISBN: 0-393-31540-1 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: January, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Race and Gender Analysis Beyond the Mainstream Discourse
Comment: I'll say what the other reviewers have failed to: Jesse Robinson is a black male, a writer with no commercial successes, who reluctantly bailed on the Communist Party in the Stalinist consolidation after WWII, and, true to Wright's paradigm, is wholly emasculated by white supremacy.
Kriss Cummings is an ethnic white female, petty bourgeois, working for an overseas finance institution that embodies the spirit of liberal imperialism. Due to her gender, her German ancestry and working class origins she's reached the "glass ceiling" for her particular type. She is also branded as unmarriable, due to a lengthy history of sexual looseness (which, ironically, she accrued by pleasing the same males who now brand her.)
End of a Primitive is a deeply complex book that merits hundreds of pages of analysis. For now let's delve only this far: Both Jesse and Kriss are under the rule of the archetypal "white male," which some might assume would predispose them (the "white woman" and the "black man") to some sense of solidarity. Yet in Himes' discourse this is not the case. "Hog will eat hog," forms the base premise upon which the book is built upon.
Kriss ridicules, degrades, and humiliates Jesse to feel "white." Jesse asserts his masculinity through beatings and various other forms of abuse. In this way the two compete for dominance, finally culminating in the "End of a Primitive, the beginning of a human being."
The old censored edition, by the way, was altered in such a way as to make the book friendlier to white liberals (the publishers' target audience) who identified with Kriss. Thus the basis of her character (as a white woman who validates her whiteness through domination of blacks) was stripped away.
Himes also allowed for a considerable amount of his trademark humor. Upon hearing Kriss rationalize her sexual indiscretions through a heap of pseudo-feminist rhetoric, Jesse informs her that if they were living in the 18th Century, she'd be "making history, not just sociology like you're making now."
End of a Primitive explores American race relations in a manner so thorough and fearless it becomes threatening to those who avoid these issues. Thus, the book never enjoyed much success in retail or academia. Yet there are many, myself included, who believe it deserves a spot in the American canon right next to Ellison.
Rating: 2
Summary: Disappointing
Comment: The End of a Primitive is a dark novel. The plot, if it can be called such, is centered around two depressed alcoholics, one a down on his luck African American, the other an outwardly successful but lonely, depressed white woman. She is a sexually frustrated party girl, while he is more outwardly melancholy. They both drown their misery and self-pity in alcohol. The setting --1950's New York, with racism and cultural taboos firmly in background. They meet and have a weekend of substance abuse and sexual frenzy. The ending is good for neither.
The point of the novel is the banality of our two protagonists. Unfortunately, the novel lacks depth and becomes banal itself -- coming across as more petulant than thoughtful. That does not make for a great novel -- and this one, called a classic by some, is overrated.
Rating: 4
Summary: An Interracial "Lost Weekend"
Comment: Himes' French publishers called this book "sadism and buffoonery", but it's much more than that, a meditation on the manners, mores, and racism of '50's America. The Old School editors have once again done a bang-up job, restoring the text to Himes' original, not the whitewashed version published as "The Primitive" in 1955. Check it out!
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Title: Yesterday Will Make You Cry by Chester B. Himes ISBN: 039331829X Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: If He Hollers Let Him Go: A Novel by Chester B. Himes, Hilton ALS ISBN: 1560254459 Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Collected Stories of Chester Himes by Calvin C. Hernton, Chester B. Himes ISBN: 1560252685 Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Pinktoes: A Novel (Banner Books (Jackson, Miss.).) by Chester B. Himes ISBN: 0878058877 Publisher: Univ Pr of Mississippi (Trd) Pub. Date: August, 1996 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Run Man Run by Chester B. Himes ISBN: 0786702095 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: July, 1995 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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