SOURCE: "An American Abroad," in The New York Review of Books, Vol. XXXIX, No. 1 and 2, January 16, 1992, pp. 8-12.

In the following essay, Sante discuses the effects of exile, translation, and genre on Himes's work.

There is a peculiar purgatory of esteem reserved for those American artists who have been lionized in Europe while enduring neglect at home. The obligatory jokes about Jerry Lewis aside, the history of this ambiguity stretches back to Poe and forward to such disparate figures as Nicholas Ray, David Goodis, Sidney Bechet, Samuel Fuller, Memphis Slim, Jim Thompson, Joseph Losey, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. These writers, musicians, and film makers failed to be prophets in their own country, were recognized too late or too little, in part because they worked the side of the street deemed "popular" (although not sufficiently popular), ever a focus of American cultural insecurities. Some of them became...