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About this book
This book considers a recurrent figure in American literature: the solitary white man moving through urban space. The descendent of Nineteenth-century frontier and western heroes, the figure re-emerges in 1930-50s America as the 'tough guy'. The Street Was Mine looks to the tough guy in the works of hardboiled novelists Raymond Chandler ( The Big Sleep ) and James M. Cain ( Double Indemnity ) and their popular film noir adaptations. Focusing on the way he negotiates racial and gender 'otherness', this study argues that the tough guy embodies the promise of an impervious white masculinity amidst the turmoil of the Depression through the beginnings of the Cold War, closing with an analysis of Chester Himes, whose Harlem crime novels ( For Love of Imabelle ) unleash a ferocious revisionary critique of the tough guy tradition.
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
Reviews
'Although more revisionist than feminist, this book does damage to white boys.' - A. Hirsch, Choice
About the author
MEGAN ABBOTT is Assistant Professor of English at State University of New York-Oswego. She received her Ph.D. in English and American Literature from New York University in 2000.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Street Was Mine
Book Subtitle: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir
Authors: Megan E. Abott
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403970015
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts Collection, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: Megan E. Abott 2002
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-312-29481-6Published: 06 February 2003
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-38787-8Published: 06 February 2003
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4039-7001-5Published: 19 December 2002
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 246
Topics: Literary Theory, Cultural Theory, North American Literature, Fiction, Twentieth-Century Literature, Film History