“My feelings are too intense. I hate too bitterly, I love too exaltingly, I pity too extravagantly, I hurt too painfully. We American blacks call that “soul”.”

Chester Himes is known for his Harlem crime thriller series, but as a writer he was capable of much more. “The Quality of Hurt” is the first installment of his autobiography.

Himes was a good student but got kicked out of school. Working as a bellhop he was badly injured falling down an elevator shaft and refused treatment at an all white hospital. He turned to crime and ended up in the Ohio penitentiary for armed robbery. His criminal career is written up in a suspenseful style in this book, I was on edge waiting for his arrest to finally happen. In prison Himes started to write stories full of biting social commentary and on his release he committed to becoming a serious writer. His literary novels are not easy to come by these days - unless you specifically order a paperback online - I've only read “Lonely Crusade” about a black union worker, Lee Gordon. Himes gives us a grim vision of communists, unionists and industry bosses on the US West Coast during World War Two. Lee Gordon is the victim of racism and backstabbing, and you can feel Himes's anger in the way he writes. Some have called “Lonely Crusade”, which also deals with antisemitism, a Dostoevskyian work. Himes's novels never really took off and he was always broke, he writes about the lead up to the release of various novels and then the bitter disappointment when they weren't given the attention he was hoping for. In Los Angeles, where he worked as a script writer, he found a city so racist that he gave up on the United States and moved to France. The first part of “The Quality of Hurt” that deals with Himes's life in America is gripping. Unfortunately he skips over his prison experience.

Once in France the book loses pace. There are a string of problems with his white girlfriends caused by racial tensions but also Himes's violent temper and alcoholism. He certainly does not try to make himself out to be a hero. He has serious money problems until a French editor suggests he write pulp novels about black characters in Harlem - a place Himes had never been. The thing was he could write - and his pulp novels starting with "A Rage in Harlem" took off. It’s interesting when a literary writer like Himes turns to pulp to make money, Yukio Mishima's "Life for Sale" is another example I recently came across - the results in both cases were thrilling page turners with some quirky depths.

Himes's bitter life in America inspired some excellent raw writing, but his European experience with other boozy expats was nothing original. His relationships with other more successful black writers like James Baldwin were complicated, largely because Himes knew that he was being willfully ignored at times. At the end of "The Quality of Hurt" Himes is in his forties and the second part of his autobiography "My Life of Absurdity" accounts for his later life as an expat writer in Spain - I can't say I want to read it. However, I'm looking forward to reading more of Himes's fiction, both his crime thrillers of which I’ve read four or five, and his more ambitious literary novels. I’m surprised he is not more well known. ( )

The banality Himes gives us here does not an autobiography make, though the author himself seems unaware of this. When he occasionally alights on actual ideas instead of minutiae -- crass though these ideas may be -- the results can be dazzling. ( )