The Street Was Mine
White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir
Authors: Abbott, M.
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- About this book
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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.
- About the authors
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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.
- Reviews
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'Although more revisionist than feminist, this book does damage to white boys.' - A. Hirsch, Choice
- Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Introduction
Pages 1-19
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“I Can Feel Her”
Pages 21-64
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“Another Soft-Voiced Big Man I Had Strangely Liked”
Pages 65-89
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The Woman in White
Pages 91-123
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“Nothing You Can’t Fix”
Pages 125-154
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Bibliographic Information
- Bibliographic Information
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- Book Title
- The Street Was Mine
- Book Subtitle
- White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir
- Authors
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- M. Abbott
- Copyright
- 2002
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan US
- Copyright Holder
- Megan E. Abott
- eBook ISBN
- 978-1-4039-7001-5
- DOI
- 10.1057/9781403970015
- Hardcover ISBN
- 978-0-312-29481-6
- Softcover ISBN
- 978-1-349-38787-8
- Edition Number
- 1
- Number of Pages
- IX, 246
- Topics
