Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 40

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Popular Culture Review

Harlem (1991), directed by Bill Duke, the African-American actordirector featured in Predator ("A Rage" 128-130). Perhaps Himes’s
most successful and politically-charged detective story. Cotton Comes
to Harlem, originally publish^ in France as Retour en Afrique (1964),
was adapted for the screen by actor-director Ossie Davis in 1970 and
proved to be a landmark film for African-American cinema because of
its enormous popular success in attracting black audiences. Spike Lee,
the contemporary black filmmaker whose films have attracted wide
black audiences, has employed the acting talents of Davis in a number
of films.
The novel Cotton Comes to Harlem, published during the mid60's, the height of the Civil Rights era, offers a range of possibilities
for interpretation. Although Himes gives primary attention to the
crime solving efforts of his detective duo. Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave
Digger Jones, there are other layers of meaning generated by Himes's
narration and plotting. He portrayed Harlem in a geographic and
cultural sense and depicted central black female characters in often
unflattering presentations. Himes also provided a level of social
commentary on race relations and African-American political
movements. The novel is framed by the harsh and violent action
typical of the detective genre.
Nat Hentoff, noted jazz critic, reviewed the novel for Book Week,
concluding that Himes's novel was "paced like a hard-edged, up
tempo Charlie Parker blues except that Himes often substitutes scene
clearing violence for creative spontaneity . . . ." Hentoff recognized
that Himes had portrayed Jones and Johnson with a "raw
consciousness of being black" a nd that Himes was "skilled at quick
action prose that skims but seldom stumbles" (Hentoff 576). The
views expressed in the Times Literary Supplement were
complimentary of Himes's ability to express his vision of both black
and white characters in a satiric mode. Himes was thought to have
"mellowed, in the direction of humor," following his previous novel.
If He Hollers Let Him Go, which was a straightforward critique of
the black-white struggle in the South ("Balefull" 37). Anthony
Boucher, who reviewed Cotton Comes to Harlem for the New York
Times, thought that many of the portrayals of African-Americans in
Himes’s series would be objectionable were they written by white
writers, especially during the mid-1960's. The reviewer remarked,
"If a white writer created so many shiftless or vicious denizens of