who play and control the numbers and who are
heroin dealers and addicts trying to kick their
habits.
In his novels, The Book of Numbers, S.R.O. (ac-
ronym for single-room occupancy [1971]), The
Soul Murder Case (1975), and Giveadamn Brown
(1978), Pharr is an ethnographer, revealing and ex-
ploring the underworld cultures of black cities like
Harlem and Chicago and offering a participating
narrator’s view of the seemingly limitless talents
of the numbers operator, the physical challenges of
the recovering addict, and the tenuous lifestyle of
the addict determined to keep the drug habit.
In The Book of Numbers, Pharr does not omit
the southern city, thereby suggesting in all of his
novels that major American cities have evolved into
black microcosms. The city of El Dorado, Arkan-
sas, in The Book of Numbers is an example of such
a microcosm. The central characters, Dave and
Blueboy, are numbers dealers out to make a for-
tune from the game. However, when they become
wealthy, they catch the attention of white officials,
who determine to wrest the numbers business
away and crush Dave and Blueboy’s power. Remi-
niscent of RICHARD WRIGHT’s The Long Dream, in
which the black male figure must defend with his
life his power in his community, The Book of Num-
bers both celebrates and mourns the struggle to
survive against racial bigotry.
Just as he uses aspects of the life of a travel-
ing waiter in The Book of Numbers, Pharr also uses
elements of his own experiences as a struggling
writer in S.R.O. With S.R.O., Pharr journeys fur-
ther into the lives of addicts, drug dealers, pros-
titutes, lesbians, homosexuals, and the mentally
ill, all of whom live in a welfare, single-room oc-
cupancy hotel in New York City. While The Soul
Murder Case focuses on one family’s efforts to
cope with drugs, S.R.O. is more than 500 pages
of psychological, social, and interracial study of
the tenants in Hotel Logan, which can be seen as
a trope for inner-city life. The novel is structured
with italicized, inner chapters, which Pharr called
“insights” into the events at the Logan. As an alco-
holic and part-time waiter with dwindling funds,
Sid Bailey, the central character, narrates the lives
and interrelationships of the tenants and engages
in extended philosophical discussions about the
intersections of drug life, race, and politics. Bai-
ley’s co-discussants, residents of the Logan, are the
Sinman, a wealthy white drug dealer and addict
who believes God is dead, and Sinman’s friend,
Blind Charlie, a fearsomely large black man with
an unpredictable temper. While Pharr roman-
ticizes life at the Logan, his main character, Sid,
must nevertheless try to find a means to stabilize
his life amid the violence and self-indulgence of
the Logan experience.
The Soul Murder Case: A Confession of the Vic-
tim adopts the violence of S.R.O., but the violence
in Pharr’s third novel opens the locked door that
encloses the addict fighting to shake drug de-
pendency. Having recovered from being a heroin
addict, Bobby Dee, the main character, acknowl-
edges his experience as a former addict in helping
Marion, his 15-year-old adopted daughter, shake
heroin. Pharr does not spare the reader in report-
ing the harrowing details of Marion’s withdrawal:
her violent attack on Bobby to get more drugs, her
delirium, diarrhea, nightmares, and sweats. Sex
and passion between Candace, Marion’s mother,
and Bobby match the intensity of the effort to
cure Marion.
Pharr’s last novel, Giveadamn Brown, is a pica-
resque, comedic adventure set in Harlem and its
underworld of drugs. The theme of the outsider
moving into an underworld urban community is
one that Pharr employed in his first two novels,
but in Giveadamn Brown, the effect of the naive,
small-town southerner outwitting big-time drug
dealers is raucous. Except for The Book of Num-
bers, Pharr’s novels are out of print. They deserve
renewed attention for their incisive study of sur-
vival in the black urban underworld.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Clarke, Graham. “Beyond Realism: Recent Black Fic-
tion and the Language of ‘The Real Thing.’ ” In
Black Fiction: New studies in the Afro-American
Novel Since 1945, edited by A. Robert Lee, 204–- New York: Barnes & Noble, 1980.
Epps, Garrett. “To Know the Truth: The Novels of
Robert Deane Pharr.” Hollins Critic. 13, no. 5 (De-
cember 1976): 1–10.
414 Pharr, Robert Deane