SOURCE: Cochran, David. “So Much Nonsense Must Make Sense: The Black Vision of Chester Himes.” Midwest Quarterly 38 (autumn 1996): 1-30.

In the following essay, Cochran points out the ways in which Himes's detective novels show the dark side of American capitalism and a violent, absurd vision of the nation.

In the penultimate chapter of Chester Himes's 1969 crime novel Blind Man with a Pistol—the last in his series of stories set in Harlem—the eponymous character makes his first appearance, shooting craps in a small gambling house on a hot summer afternoon. After losing all his money, he walks to the subway station and boards a train. An eccentric pride precludes the man from admitting his blindness to anyone, including himself, and his naturally surly temperament is exacerbated by his gambling losses. On a crowded subway car he sits across from Fat Sam, an embittered black laborer carrying on...