Epilogue — An Experience in Literary Archaeology: Publishing a Black Lost Generation

Abstract

Back in the early 1990s, in a former life, I was a reader for the Série Noire,¹ a crime fiction and mystery series published by Gallimard, in France. My task was to read about 20 novels a week and tell the publisher which one could indeed be added to the series and which were the 19 others that should not even have been submitted to us. Gallimard’s Série Noire is a very important series and part of its tremendous impact on the literary market is due to its historical past. From the start, the series included Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson among others, when these writers were largely unknown in the United States or, if they were published in the United States, had no literary recognition. It was also a series which published Chester Himes when Himes could not even find an American publisher, could not even live in his own country. When you worked for the Série Noire, even at the lowest level, as a simple reader, you had the acute sensation that you had embarked on a genuine mission: it was your duty to find American literary treasures that had not yet been discovered in their native country. It was your duty to give them not only French recognition, but in a way, the world recognition the mythical dimension that such a mythic series as the Série Noire could actually provide. The fact that someone like Himes would not exist today, had he not been discovered by Marcel Duhamel, the historical founder of the Série Noire, emphasized in my eyes the special link of the series to American literature, and also to black American culture.