Chris's Reviews > Blind Man with a Pistol

This is the only Himes I've read and I'm guessing it probably isn't the best place to start -- see Ben Winch's great review of another Himes book for a summary of Himes' work -- but I've been meaning to put up this quote from the book because it is so damn good:

While Coffin Ed was transmitting the essential facts over the radio-phone, colored people in various stages of undress began emerging from the black dark tenements alongside. Black women in terrycloth robes with their faces greased and their straightened hair done in small tight plaits like Topsy; brownskinned women with voluptuous breasts and broad buttocks wrapped in bright-coloured nylon, half-straight hair hanging loosely about their cushion-mouthed sleepy-eyed faces; high yellows in their silks and curlers. And the men, old, young, nappy-headed, conk-haired, eyes full of sleep, faces lined where witches were riding them, mouths slack, wrapped in sheets, blankets, raincoats, or just soiled and wrinkled pajamas. Collecting in the street to see the dead man. Looking inexpressibly stupid in their morbid curiosity. A dead man was always good to see. It was reassuring to see somebody else dead. Generally the dead men were also colored. A white dead man was really something. Worth getting up any time of the night. But no one asked who cut him. Nor why. Who was going to ask who cut a white man's throat in Harlem? Or why? Just look at him, baby. And feel good it ain't you. Look at that white mother-raper with his throat cut. You know what he was after...