SOURCE: A review of The Collected Stories, in World Literature Today, Vol. 66, No. 4, Autumn, 1992, pp. 722-23.

In the following review, Payne asserts that "The generously conceived and readable Collected Stories will facilitate fuller critical response to Himes, and it should enhance his appeal to general readers."

After attending Ohio State University, Chester Himes involved himself with gang activity until his eight-year imprisonment. His first publication, a piece about a prison fire, appeared in Esquire in 1932, when the gifted African-American prose stylist and poet was in his early twenties. Like many creators of American culture, Himes has achieved substantially greater critical recognition in France than in his own country. He emigrated to France in 1953. Although Himes's best work has been stylistically compared with Hemingway, and compared with Baldwin, Hurston, and Welty for its insight, his fiction has still not received the extensive critical attention it merits. I think, however...