Cast the First Stone / Yesterday Will Make You Cry by Chester Himes

Cast the First Stone was published as Chester Himes' third novel. In fact, it was begun before both If He Hollers Let Him Go (1942) and Lonely Crusade (1947) but struggled to find a publisher.  What was eventually released by Coward McCann in 1952 barely resembles Himes' original manuscript, having been rewritten multiple times by the author and suffering through heavy editing and reordering by the publisher. An author in the vein of Richard Wright and James Baldwin, Himes left the US after this disappointing experience with the publishing industry.  He would relocate to Paris where he later gained success for a series of novels set in Harlem featuring two black police detectives, Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. In 1998, Himes' original manuscript, under the original title, Yesterday Will Make You Cry was published by Norton, restoring an important literary work.

New York : Coward McCann, 1952

Jim Monroe has just begun his sentence of twenty to twenty-five years for robbery. He's young, still a teenager really, and good looking. From the moment he sets foot in the prison, there is already competition to make him. There is an honesty about the existence of wolves and fags within the prison. It quickly becomes clear that everything in the prison is transactional; poker games, smokes, and sex.

As Jim becomes acclimated to his new environment, he begins to understand if he helps others, he’ll get something in return. While he was perceived as a prospective fag upon his arrival, he quickly gains capital by running poker games and occasionally fronting money to those in need. Others are willing to fag for him, should he want that. Over time, Jim's descriptions of other inmates becomes increasingly tinged with adjectives of beauty or a sense of attraction.

The bulk of novel is focused on the day-to-day activities of the prison; work assignments, meals, working around the rules, getting caught breaking the rules, being transferred to less desirable jobs and cell blocks for breaking the rules.

While the relationship between inmates and guards is always adversarial, there are examples of violence against inmates resulting in broken bones and even death. One prisoner dies of pneumonia while in the hole because the guards won’t allow him to see a doctor. During an escape attempt, prisoners from other wards brutalized or kill several guards in the process. When the prisoners are caught, punishment is swift. When a fire breaks out hundreds of inmates die while locked in their cells. Guards do little to save them and many inmates put themselves in danger to save others.

Jim longs for connection with others, but he rejects the constant conversation about sex with other inmates. Metz is the first inmate he meets that he has a true connection with. They talk about everything including religion and philosophy. It is in the aftermath of the fire however that Jim finally asks Mal, an inmate he met on his first day, to be his woman and kisses him. This traumatic event and his need for connection begin to change how he sees relationships. Later, an innocent friendship with Dido, a young inmate who is unsteady and quickly grows dependent on Jim, grabs the attention of the other inmates and the guards. Dido is devoted and would do anything for Jim. Their complicated relationship puts Jim's possible commutation at risk.

Told in the first person, Cast the First Stone reads like a pulp novel, with a focus on sensational themes. Hiding between the lines are glimpses of the true emotions of the characters but the focus is on the action of the story, not about how the characters feel about their situation.

New York : W.W. Norton, 1998

Yesterday Will Make You Cry feels related to Cast the First Stone, but is obviously the more sophisticated and complex of the two. Told in the third person and including an extended flashback that provides the background of Jim's childhood, the characters are more complex. They aren't a caricature of the 'prisoner.' While they are tough, they also have feelings and crave human connection.

Yesterday retains some of the pulp sensibility and language, surprisingly for the 1930's using the f-word. However, the overall feeling is of a true literary work — complex and engaging.

In Melvin Van Peebles' introduction, he discusses the problematic cover copy on the 1950s paperback release which certainly implied that the novel was about black prisoners. This, no doubt, came from a belief that a black writer couldn't (or wouldn't be permitted to) write white characters. While there are black characters in the novel, all of the central characters are white.

Peebles' criticism is so strong, that it is truly jarring that the publisher decided to use an archival photograph on the dustjacket that shows a prison lineup of all black men. Further exacerbating the message, when Library of Congress created the catalog record for the work, they assigned it a subject of Afro-Americans—Fiction. It appears we still can't imagine a black man writing white characters.


Bibliographies & Ratings: Cast the First Stone: Cory (III); Garde (OTP, a***);  Young (1826 *)

Self Portrait by John Craxton

Self Portrait (1946-47)
John Craxton (English, 1922-2009)
Oil on paper
32.3 x 23.2 cm (12.75 x 9.125 in)

Out of Sickness by John Paignton (John S. Barrington)

London : Neville Woodbury Limited, 1950

As the novel opens in 1939, David, an extremely handsome young Englishman, has just inherited the estate of a Frenchmen who has committed suicide in Cannes. Wanting to study art and having been supported by the Frenchman in his studies, he was now free to travel and do as he wished. Searching for love, he falls in and out of relationships with both men and women finally culminating in marriage. When that sours and he is nearly out of money, he travels by ship to America partly to avoid the encroaching war in Europe but also to avoid his feelings around his failed marriage.

When he returns to Britain the war is in full effect and much has changed. Everyone is doing what is necessary to get by, including members of his family. One of his brothers is being kept by a rich man and his sister falls into prostitution. The underworld of bohemians, queers and black market racketeers in the West End of London that we would normally associate with the period between the wars continues unaffected even once the horrors of the Blitz begin.

Acting as a stretcher bearer for the A.R.P (Air Raid Precautions), David helps to rescue those trapped in bombed buildings. While there is tremendous fear, misery, and death all around, everyone is also in search of someone to love. David goes from one person to another, searching for that special one but it always ends in disaster and disappointment. While he has liaisons with both men and women and at one point in the novel refers to himself as bisexual, his search for love is always directed towards women.

Portrait of John S. Barrington
by Angus McBean

'Like the houses that were collapsing suddenly, completely, irrevocably, human beings were also falling to pieces, their values changing ; some mental canker was destroying happiness.'

The end of the war finds David without funds and his decision to hustle to make ends meet appears to bring his search for love to an end.

The content of the novel is based on actual experience. According to the dustjacket, 'the author spent ten years living this novel, and five years writing it.'  John Paignton was the pseudonym of John S. Barrington. Barrington is better known for his photographs of physique models published during the 1950s and 60s. After the war, he managed to get some of his earlier photos into physique magazines of the time and also started advertising at magazine kiosks in London. That's how he met Neville Woodbury, an artist and collector. Woodbury would later start an imprint that published a handful of books. In exchange for photography lessons and models supplied by Barrington he produced both Out of Sickness (with Barrington's original cover art signed 'J.S.B.') published under the Paignton moniker, and Art and Anatomy published under Barrington's actual name.

Bibliographies & Ratings: Young (2960)

Untitled (Hand in Pocket) by Andy Warhol

Untitled (Hand in Pocket) (c1956)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987)
Ballpoint pen on paper
16 3/4 x 13 3/4 in.

McCaffery by Charles Gorham

New York : The Dial Press, 1961

16-year-old Vincent McCaffery has grown up in the Irish-Catholic immigrant enclave of Yorkville on the upper east side of Manhattan. After his mother's death, for which he rightly blames his father, Vincent is lost. He's not old enough to take a 'real job' but is uninterested in the kinds of work that a boy might do. His friend Conny suggests a way for them to get some easy money — something he heard from his older brother who serves in the navy. 'What we oughta do is roll a faggot.'

What starts off as a simple way to get money — pick up a queer in the park and then when things get serious, knock him out with a rock and take his wallet — quickly escalates when Vincent finds that he enjoys beating the filthy queers. One can read Vincent's animus against gay men as coming out of his self-hatred and doubt related to his own sexuality. When they are picked up by the police, Vincent is only encouraged when the queer refuses to press charges. When the police warn McCaffery and Conny to stay out of the park, Conny ends his participation in the scam. Vincent is undaunted.

When he is later picked up by a man in a Cadillac who seems to know all about him, he is given an opportunity to make money under his protection. He is unsure he wants to commit to prostituting himself to both men and women but when he discovers his father forcing his aunt to have sex with him in much the same way he had forced his wife (leading to the pregnancy that killed her), he attacks him with a kitchen knife and leaves his childhood home forever.  He quickly moves into Easy Tiger's place in the Village and begins his new life. Although he is making money and living in comfortable surroundings he soon realizes that he has sacrificed his autonomy and all of his power to make his own choices.

While the gay characters of this novel are not central or well developed, the larger questions around blackmail, what would later be known as gay-bashing, and exploitation of teenage boys for prostitution are central. This is a dark story of money, power and poverty.

Bibliographies & Ratings: Young (1543)

Now & Then by William Corlett

London : Abacus, 1996, ©1995

Revealed in alternating chapters taking place in 1990s London and Kent and in 1960s public school, Corlett tells the story of Christopher Metcalfe. After his father dies, he returns to the family home in Kent and while there, he finds the box of his school things that his father had saved. The picture of Stephen Walker, two years his senior, with whom he shared an intense relationship starts him on a journey to discover what really happened and where Stephen is now.

The chapters taking place at school in the 1960s hearken back to classic boarding school novels of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There is a focus on sport, and an emphasis on the classic structures of prefects using (or abusing) their power over younger boys. And like those classic stories there is an unsanctioned, too-close relationship between a prefect and one of the younger boys. Unlike those classic romances, they share far more than a chaste kiss. In fact, one is reminded of the scene in Peyrefitte's Les amitiés particulières when the relationship is bonded over the sharing of blood — only in the case of Stephen and Christopher, it's a different bodily fluid.

Christopher never got over losing Stephen all those years ago, and in many ways the pain of that event seems to have prevented him from moving on. Neither his family nor his closest friend knows anything about his romantic life or even whether or not he is gay. He has walled that part of himself off. His search for Stephen forces uncomfortable conversations with his family and brings him in contact with others from school who share their knowledge of events all those years ago that Christopher never knew. How much do his memories reflect what really happened? This is Christopher coming to terms with the love of his life — a love, that at the time was impossible, not to mention illegal.

Portrait of Mefody Lukjanov by Konstantin Somov

Portrait of Mefody Lukjanov (1918)
Konstantin Somov (Russian, 1869-1939)
Oil on canvas
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

Mefody Lukjanov was the artists lover from 1910-1932.