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The Flagellants
This extraordinary first novel is a brilliant, detailed record of a stormy relationship written in a unique, concrete language that takes on an independent, stylized life of its own.
A lyrical and evocative novel that tells the story of the stormy and fragmented relationship between Jimson, an aspiring black poet concerned with Afro-American cultural history, and ideal, a young black woman whose roots are in Black Bottom, USA .-Jimson and Ideal meet in Greenwich Village and fall in love, but theirs is a tempestuous affair as they struggle to get beyond the roles a racially oppressive society has forced upon them. The result is a painful and moving exploration of the relations between men and women.
"A complex, scathing and often brilliant depiction of the disintegration of a black couple's relationship. ... The Flagellants portrays a modern-day love affair gone sour--both Ideal and Jimson are presented with equal care and depth."
--Mel Watkins, New York Times Book Review
"[Jimson and Ideal] brilliantly and bitterly tear off layer after layer of rationalization and myth.... It is rare in fiction for characters to possess complete awareness of their situation. That is what happens here. ... Novels so ambitious almost always fail.. . The Flagellants succeeds."
--Roger Ebert, The American Scholar
"Polite is not a blend of influences; she is. As a writer, she is immediately, irruptively, lyrically herself. As with most good writers, her writing has a life of its own, a life within the larger life of the work for which it is employed. ... The Flagellants does not attempt to define reality, psychical or political or social or 'real.' It is an attempt genuinely to exist, to be reality--a task more difficult for the novel every day. ... But this book is art, not argument. Everything in it grows from its texture. Its language is acutely sensory or vaultingly rhapsodic."
--Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic
A lyrical and evocative novel that tells the story of the stormy and fragmented relationship between Jimson, an aspiring black poet concerned with Afro-American cultural history, and ideal, a young black woman whose roots are in Black Bottom, USA .-Jimson and Ideal meet in Greenwich Village and fall in love, but theirs is a tempestuous affair as they struggle to get beyond the roles a racially oppressive society has forced upon them. The result is a painful and moving exploration of the relations between men and women.
"A complex, scathing and often brilliant depiction of the disintegration of a black couple's relationship. ... The Flagellants portrays a modern-day love affair gone sour--both Ideal and Jimson are presented with equal care and depth."
--Mel Watkins, New York Times Book Review
"[Jimson and Ideal] brilliantly and bitterly tear off layer after layer of rationalization and myth.... It is rare in fiction for characters to possess complete awareness of their situation. That is what happens here. ... Novels so ambitious almost always fail.. . The Flagellants succeeds."
--Roger Ebert, The American Scholar
"Polite is not a blend of influences; she is. As a writer, she is immediately, irruptively, lyrically herself. As with most good writers, her writing has a life of its own, a life within the larger life of the work for which it is employed. ... The Flagellants does not attempt to define reality, psychical or political or social or 'real.' It is an attempt genuinely to exist, to be reality--a task more difficult for the novel every day. ... But this book is art, not argument. Everything in it grows from its texture. Its language is acutely sensory or vaultingly rhapsodic."
--Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic
- GenresFictionAfrican American
214 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1966
3 people are currently reading
572 people want to read
About the author
Carlene Hatcher Polite
6 books8 followersCarlene Hatcher Polite was an American writer.
In 1964 Polite moved to Paris where her first book The Flagellants was published in French in 1966, and was subsequently published in English in 1967. The book received critical acclaim, with Mel Watkins in The New York Times Book Review stating it was “a complex, scathing and often brilliant depiction of the disintegration of a black couple’s relationship,” and that it “was among the first fictional works by a black woman to focus directly on the theme of the sometimes bitter antagonism between black men and women.”
Polite published her second book Sister X and the Victims of Foul Play, about the investigation into the death of a black nightclub dancer in Paris, in 1975.
In 1964 Polite moved to Paris where her first book The Flagellants was published in French in 1966, and was subsequently published in English in 1967. The book received critical acclaim, with Mel Watkins in The New York Times Book Review stating it was “a complex, scathing and often brilliant depiction of the disintegration of a black couple’s relationship,” and that it “was among the first fictional works by a black woman to focus directly on the theme of the sometimes bitter antagonism between black men and women.”
Polite published her second book Sister X and the Victims of Foul Play, about the investigation into the death of a black nightclub dancer in Paris, in 1975.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
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November 22, 2018BURIED
Surprisingly good. 'Surprisingly' because it came out of no=where. I don't recall quite how I stumbled upon the title.* Shelved way back in '15. The Village Bookshop found a copy ; out of the blue like I said.
She's an African=American living in Paris, writing in English. Novel first pub'd in French. That was all late '60s. This Ed from Beacon again in 1987. Still with a score of 13::3.
And it's good. It's good in that sense that I'd call it experimental. It's good in the sense that it don't run on cliche. It's good in the sense that it's got good stuff going on in it.
Subjectively, I picked this up knowing my mind didn't want to do any work. Any analytical work. Any kind of 'understanding'. So thank the lit=gods this weren't no plot=based thing that I had to pay attention to. This was prose. Reading/listening. So if you ask me what it's about, I'll be here :: "?". Because that's not how I was reading it. I suggest though that it is totally worthy of reading in that manner you have in mind. Me, I was of no mind to read closely or deeply. This is the kind of book I want when I can't pay attention. I can listen to it and need not master it.
Seek this out.
* Naturally. The BBC. And Ali (come back Ali!) ::
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Surprisingly good. 'Surprisingly' because it came out of no=where. I don't recall quite how I stumbled upon the title.* Shelved way back in '15. The Village Bookshop found a copy ; out of the blue like I said.
She's an African=American living in Paris, writing in English. Novel first pub'd in French. That was all late '60s. This Ed from Beacon again in 1987. Still with a score of 13::3.
And it's good. It's good in that sense that I'd call it experimental. It's good in the sense that it don't run on cliche. It's good in the sense that it's got good stuff going on in it.
Subjectively, I picked this up knowing my mind didn't want to do any work. Any analytical work. Any kind of 'understanding'. So thank the lit=gods this weren't no plot=based thing that I had to pay attention to. This was prose. Reading/listening. So if you ask me what it's about, I'll be here :: "?". Because that's not how I was reading it. I suggest though that it is totally worthy of reading in that manner you have in mind. Me, I was of no mind to read closely or deeply. This is the kind of book I want when I can't pay attention. I can listen to it and need not master it.
Seek this out.
* Naturally. The BBC. And Ali (come back Ali!) ::
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
July 9, 2025
There's a core novel here that's worth a great deal. Unfortunately, the boho poetics and liminal shifting between, essentially, stage direction and uninterrupted torrents of pure dialogue become taxing—quick. While I can handle period produced bohemianism as well as the next guy with an earnest Fugs discography, Polite’s characters speak like no one since the Big Bang introduced rhythmic complexity into being. Imagine a series of vignettes that read like the summary ejaculations of two drunken MFA’s in—fuck me, I dunno—Intersectionality and American Studies. Their resultant Sermons on the Mount track as the stilted dialogue of Iowa Writer’s graduates trying to out-clusterfuck the other by degrees of referentialism too baroque for people that are supposed to be as drunk as these characters; trust me, I speak from a shadowy past’s experience. Per consequence’s right of reversal, this review reads like an anal-retentive headache because…well, I’m trying to find some footing where there is none and to what purpose? There’s just not much good to say; there’s a heatwave in effect; you’re a busy person; I respect you too much to ever do that, girl; Tuli Kupferberg is dead dead dead; etc. & co. So, I’ll just stop. Now—( [poof!] )
February 27, 2025
An original novel that as the blurb states explores the “bitter antagonism between black men and women” (the titular flagellation), in an unabashedly intellectual style, weaving bold and complex imagery around stylised dialogues between the two antagonists. Surreal, inscrutable at points, with a mesmerising rhythm to the prose, The Flagellants is a curious treat, available as a POD book from the original publisher.
October 25, 2010
Really 3.5 (I hate grades). Although first published in France, The Flagellants is nonetheless a thoroughly American novel and one very much of its times (1960s). Hatcher Polite theorizes a version of Black Liberation that concerns itself with the self and the couple as both fatally enmeshed in, yet separate from, the "community" with and within which they struggle to define and enact their "freedom." She chooses as her protagonists Ideal and Jimson, a man and woman who throughout the novel perform a sadomasochistic dance with, it seems, full knowledge (and consent) that we, their audience, must play our part too, that of voyeurs. As noted in the "introduction' by Claudia Tate, Ideal and Jimson's quests for self-definition have to contend with the psychological debris of American racism and its history of slavery. As a black man and woman they have been "liberated to their own species of 20th-century alienation." Tate claims that Flagellation "was one of the first novels to probe questions of freedom that lie outside the perimeter of civil liberties." Words such as "liberation" and "alienation," in and of themselves, evoke that time, half a century ago, when many Americans, particularly the young and disenfranchised, thought that they could remake their world and establish for themselves a new, different, "freer" and more self-fulfilling place within it.
The novel is modernist in style, dialogic in form (shuffling back & forth between Jimson's and Ideal's points of view) and quasi stream-of-consciousness in its technique. Hatcher Polite's prose is often jazz-inflected and even poetic, in the sense of its musicality and evocativeness (e.g., "The good answer blew a succulent sound down through the center of their common growl"& "Jimson, since you want to be succulently involved in petals, open and display your pistils. Flower me minute flecks of yellow dust"). Jimson is of the black middle class, spoiled child (he was given his own car at 16), self-described poet, dabbler in attitude, & play-actor (he has acquired a West Indian accent). One might label him a sado-idealist with an "inner child" enthrall to feelings of inadequacy. Jimson doesn't ever work, really. He feels that mundane jobs that might pay the bills are beneath him. He finally secures a sinecure at the Bureaucratique, a job uniquely fitted to his talent for doing nothing. On the job, he writes poetry with titles such as "A Byzantine Lady Under Glass." Ideal has a hometown, comes from Black Bottom, comes out of history. She and her first husband Adam ran away from their town's cultural provincialism to the Big City, the Big Apple, The Village. Ideal is a dancer before she meets Jimson (also married) and before they take up together and become locked into their own dance of mental (and sometimes physical) flagellation. Because of his phony accent, Ideal doesn't at first take Jimson for an American Negro. Because of her light skin color, Jimson first takes Ideal to be Puerto Rican. It may be significant to their relationship that they come by their "difference" differently, he, through performance, she, by way of history. Prior to Jimson's employment at the Bureaucratique, Ideal is the breadwinner in the household. She, unlike her man, seems willing to defer the Ideal in order to cope with the reality of day-by-day survival. And it is after Jimson insists that she stay home to be exclusively his housewife that her alcoholism, jealousy and psychological dis-ease push her over the edge. She may or may not kick Jimson out at the end. What a relief if she does. Which is not to say that Ideal is any more sympathetic a character than Jimson. It's just that she is ultimately better equipped to do what's necessary.
The novel is modernist in style, dialogic in form (shuffling back & forth between Jimson's and Ideal's points of view) and quasi stream-of-consciousness in its technique. Hatcher Polite's prose is often jazz-inflected and even poetic, in the sense of its musicality and evocativeness (e.g., "The good answer blew a succulent sound down through the center of their common growl"& "Jimson, since you want to be succulently involved in petals, open and display your pistils. Flower me minute flecks of yellow dust"). Jimson is of the black middle class, spoiled child (he was given his own car at 16), self-described poet, dabbler in attitude, & play-actor (he has acquired a West Indian accent). One might label him a sado-idealist with an "inner child" enthrall to feelings of inadequacy. Jimson doesn't ever work, really. He feels that mundane jobs that might pay the bills are beneath him. He finally secures a sinecure at the Bureaucratique, a job uniquely fitted to his talent for doing nothing. On the job, he writes poetry with titles such as "A Byzantine Lady Under Glass." Ideal has a hometown, comes from Black Bottom, comes out of history. She and her first husband Adam ran away from their town's cultural provincialism to the Big City, the Big Apple, The Village. Ideal is a dancer before she meets Jimson (also married) and before they take up together and become locked into their own dance of mental (and sometimes physical) flagellation. Because of his phony accent, Ideal doesn't at first take Jimson for an American Negro. Because of her light skin color, Jimson first takes Ideal to be Puerto Rican. It may be significant to their relationship that they come by their "difference" differently, he, through performance, she, by way of history. Prior to Jimson's employment at the Bureaucratique, Ideal is the breadwinner in the household. She, unlike her man, seems willing to defer the Ideal in order to cope with the reality of day-by-day survival. And it is after Jimson insists that she stay home to be exclusively his housewife that her alcoholism, jealousy and psychological dis-ease push her over the edge. She may or may not kick Jimson out at the end. What a relief if she does. Which is not to say that Ideal is any more sympathetic a character than Jimson. It's just that she is ultimately better equipped to do what's necessary.
December 20, 2018
“An hysterical woman is a bitch without a peer....”
So penned Carlene Hatcher Polite, the Lispector of Detroit, as I have taken to calling her.
The Flagellants is assumably gathers its nutrients from the author’s relationship with poet Allen Polite, listed as mentor of Amiri Baraka, teeming with similar bullshit, and the Bureaucratique of the novel is seemingly in reference to Polite’s position working at the United Nations.
Before Beyonce and Jay-Z were the Afric Virgo-Sagittarius love story, there was Ideal and Jimson, but myths have no patents [parents] and biographies are not novels.
The Black heterosexual couple is cracked, and it cracked on the auction blocks, but Polite does not bed with history. The psychology behind Black men and their investigation behind their castration is well-charted here, if not leaving the mystery of who is holding the handle still murky. For Ideal is trying to document Jimson’s crime unbeknowst that he is after the same thing.
Flagellation, anchorites, and the Black artist as wedded to suffering. We have got parts, now back to the manual.
So penned Carlene Hatcher Polite, the Lispector of Detroit, as I have taken to calling her.
The Flagellants is assumably gathers its nutrients from the author’s relationship with poet Allen Polite, listed as mentor of Amiri Baraka, teeming with similar bullshit, and the Bureaucratique of the novel is seemingly in reference to Polite’s position working at the United Nations.
Before Beyonce and Jay-Z were the Afric Virgo-Sagittarius love story, there was Ideal and Jimson, but myths have no patents [parents] and biographies are not novels.
The Black heterosexual couple is cracked, and it cracked on the auction blocks, but Polite does not bed with history. The psychology behind Black men and their investigation behind their castration is well-charted here, if not leaving the mystery of who is holding the handle still murky. For Ideal is trying to document Jimson’s crime unbeknowst that he is after the same thing.
Flagellation, anchorites, and the Black artist as wedded to suffering. We have got parts, now back to the manual.
March 3, 2025
Dialogue heavy, erratic, and experimental. It's an interesting book but it was challenging to get through. The style wasn't for me.
April 26, 2024
ideal, a neurotic biracial woman and her erudite lover, jimson - bound together by a toxic throughline of polemic arguments, trauma bonding, domestic abuse, coercive threats, manipulation, emotional terror and professed affectations of "true love".
my cousin gifted this to me after seeing it on my readlist and although i appreciated that, i realized it was both the worst and best time to be reading it as i'm currently going through a friend breakup and third party situation that imitates the horrors in this book in a way that hits a little too close to home, giving way to a very on and off reading pace. i mentioned this book to my sister otp who likened my description to the fetishistic sam levinson film 'malcolm & marie' on netflix. the recurring textual allusions to this being a virgo ~ sagittarius pairing brought to mind the astrological optics of the relationship between beyonce and jay-z as well as the hint that this may be semi autobiographical given the author's shared sun sign. that in mind, it's become my tendency to cast characters as a way to put a face to a name, so:
zendaya as ideal
william jackson harper as jimson
my initial impression was feeling jaded with how superfluous the writing was; convoluted word choice and poetic descriptions of random shit that felt very hit or miss emotionally. about a quarter way through i realized the nature of the book and acclimated to the mercurial aesthetic, a somber psychoanalytic excavation of double consciousness and black life in america through the microcosm of a failed relationship. a diligent woman undyingly tethered to her abuser, too paranoid and isolated to remove herself from her situation. a well read man adamant in his refusal to be held accountable, provide, or actualize himself outside of pretentious misogynoiristic ramblings and careerist aspirations.
flagellants" re: extremist religious practitioners who flogged each other in public as a way to invite god's mercy, and simultaneously a metaphorical reference for this couple as they trade barbs and intellectualize their opposing perspectives of black plight in this country. there is no mutuality to abuse - there is only an aggressor who instills and normalizes their imbalance of power with violence and a victim who retaliates against it, anything else is a disingenuous obfuscation. as much as it hurts, i feel this might've helped in my realization that until there is such a thing as communal love and justice among us, i have to understand that people reserve the agency to make their own mistakes and that some [men] are too deplorable to be left alive.
insightful article + (resonant music that got me thru it):
• remorseless - billy woods
• light of the seven - ramin djawadi
• de profundis - max richter
• i used to thug her (sweetness) - mach-hommy
• sexy love - max b
• neria - oliver mtukudzi
my cousin gifted this to me after seeing it on my readlist and although i appreciated that, i realized it was both the worst and best time to be reading it as i'm currently going through a friend breakup and third party situation that imitates the horrors in this book in a way that hits a little too close to home, giving way to a very on and off reading pace. i mentioned this book to my sister otp who likened my description to the fetishistic sam levinson film 'malcolm & marie' on netflix. the recurring textual allusions to this being a virgo ~ sagittarius pairing brought to mind the astrological optics of the relationship between beyonce and jay-z as well as the hint that this may be semi autobiographical given the author's shared sun sign. that in mind, it's become my tendency to cast characters as a way to put a face to a name, so:
zendaya as ideal
william jackson harper as jimson
my initial impression was feeling jaded with how superfluous the writing was; convoluted word choice and poetic descriptions of random shit that felt very hit or miss emotionally. about a quarter way through i realized the nature of the book and acclimated to the mercurial aesthetic, a somber psychoanalytic excavation of double consciousness and black life in america through the microcosm of a failed relationship. a diligent woman undyingly tethered to her abuser, too paranoid and isolated to remove herself from her situation. a well read man adamant in his refusal to be held accountable, provide, or actualize himself outside of pretentious misogynoiristic ramblings and careerist aspirations.
flagellants" re: extremist religious practitioners who flogged each other in public as a way to invite god's mercy, and simultaneously a metaphorical reference for this couple as they trade barbs and intellectualize their opposing perspectives of black plight in this country. there is no mutuality to abuse - there is only an aggressor who instills and normalizes their imbalance of power with violence and a victim who retaliates against it, anything else is a disingenuous obfuscation. as much as it hurts, i feel this might've helped in my realization that until there is such a thing as communal love and justice among us, i have to understand that people reserve the agency to make their own mistakes and that some [men] are too deplorable to be left alive.
insightful article + (resonant music that got me thru it):
• remorseless - billy woods
• light of the seven - ramin djawadi
• de profundis - max richter
• i used to thug her (sweetness) - mach-hommy
• sexy love - max b
• neria - oliver mtukudzi
October 19, 2017
A challenging but necessary read.
December 2, 2020
Her and her boyfriend should break up. I think they did but I'm not sure.
October 26, 2019
A funny, grotesque, surreal, existential banger about masochism, race and racism, being Black in America, sex and misogyny, and the self-devouring sicknesses embedded deep in American culture. Totally not something I would likely have read, or even heard of, if I hadn't been assigned it as part of a class; definitely something I'm very grateful to have had to read.
November 25, 2019
Read this book for my Black Arts Movement class. Within the context of this class, the book was interesting, breaking into new novel structures, abandoning traditional plot and dialogue. It's a bold book. It reads more like poetry than prose. Like a long, tangled poetic rant about race, politics, feminism.
February 16, 2021
Wow! A cyclonic tear through a relationship - up close and personal. Carlene Hatcher Polite is a goddamn wordsmith - the type that demands your utmost attention. I found that trying to skim through her words or find a flow, caused me to miss amazing turns of phrase, or jaw dropping insights. This, as you can imagine, was a blessing and a curse. Take your time with this book.
March 22, 2007
on the real side. . .
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews