The End of a Primitive: A Novel

by Chester Himes

Overview

Two lives spiral into a chaotic, fatal pas de deux during a weekend of sex, alcohol and violence—from the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series

Years ago, Jesse Robinson and Kriss Cummings had a passionate weekend in Chicago, but they haven’t seen each other since. Jesse’s career as a novelist has been trending downward, and much of his time is spent drinking and brooding in his Harlem tenement. Kriss is divorced and infertile, disillusioned with her life and often seeking out intimacy with Black men. When they meet again, this time drinking excessively and sniping at each other, sexual frustration and resentment with their marginal lives mount as they hurtle toward a macabre climax.

Taking place over the course of a bourbon-soaked weekend in 1952, The End of a Primitive tells the story of two absurd lives in McCarthy-era New York that are fated to end in destruction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593686706
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/08/2024
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.19(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Chester Himes began his writing career while serving in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery from 1929 to 1936. From his first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), Himes dealt with the social and psychological repercussions of being black in a white-dominated society. Beginning in 1953, Himes moved to Europe, where he met and was strongly influenced by Richard Wright. It was in France that he began his best-known series of crime novels—including Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965)—featuring two Harlem policemen. As with Himes's earlier work, the series is characterized by violence and grisly, sardonic humor. He died in Spain in 1984.

Editorial Reviews

In 1953, Himes, an important, provocative, yet largely forgotten African American novelist, left America for France in a deep depression over a lifetime of hardship to write this racially conscious roman noir. Himes (If He Hollers, Let Him Go) relates the story of two lonely, angry people in racially troubled McCarthy-era America whose lives intersect briefly in New York, an encounter that results in sex, violence and death. One character is an infertile, divorced white woman named Kriss Cummings (pun intended) who considers black men sexual trophies, of which she has many (" `Kriss is solving the Negro Problem in bed.' "). The other, Jesse Robinson, is a black writer rooming in Harlem who is on the outs with his publisher (his latest work is " `too sordid.... Why don't you write a black success novel?' ") The two, who met previously in Chicago, reconnect to smoke, swear, drink endless amounts of bourbon, and cut each other down. Their oddly sheltered world is one of sexual frustration, racial injustice and total despair. Himes's plot line is deceptively simple; the complex racial and sexual issues raised by this deliberately unshapely narrative are ugly and unresolved. Part of the Old School Books series of reprinted pulp fiction by black authors, the book has a hardboiled style with a racial twist that is both unsettling and addictive: "Black son of a bitch has got to have some means of joining the human race. Old Shakespeare knew. Suppose he'd had Othello kiss the bitch and make up. Would have dehumanized the bastard." (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

"A shockingly raw study of the sexual encounter between a black man and a white woman, two people so angry at the world, so frustrated by personal failure in a racist, sexist society, that their affair is bound to end in violence. . . . The story is pure ugly, but Himes puts some powerful writing in it."

New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio