Food, Consumption, and Masculinity in American Hardboiled Fiction

Description

Food, Consumption, and Masculinity in American Hardboiled Fiction draws on three related bodies of knowledge: crime fiction criticism, masculinity studies, and the cultural analysis of food and consumption practices from a critical eating studies perspective. In particular, this book focuses on food as an analytical category in the study of tough masculinity as represented in American hardboiled fiction. Through an examination of six American novels: Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, Leigh Brackett's No Good from a Corpse, Dorothy B. Hughes's In a Lonely Place, Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, and Rex Stout's Champagne for One, this book shows how these novels reflect the gradual process of redefining consumption and consumerism in America, which traditionally has been coded as feminine. Marta Usiekniewicz shows that food and eating also reflect power relations and larger social and economic structures connected to class, gender, geography, sexuality, and ability, to name just a few. Acknowledgments Contents Chapter 1: Introduction: Consumption, Control, and Cannibalism Missing on the Plate: Food in Crime Fiction Crime Fiction and the Crisis of White Masculinity Tough White Masculinity and Austere Consumption Cannibal at the Table Tough Masculinity and the Crime Fiction Timeline Overview References Chapter 2: Criminal Consumption in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (1929) Prophylactic Impenetrability The White Isolated Body Whitewashed and “Queerless” San Francisco White Consumption Gender Policing at the Table Civilizing Masculine Restraint The Eating Detective The Masculine Carnivore Success to Crime Conclusion References Chapter 3: Control and Cannibalism in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (1939) Consumption and the Subject Excess and Gendered Consumption Control, Consumption, Cannibalism, and Abjection Suspicious Ingestion Unreliable Narration and Marlowe’s Meals Homosocial Control and Consumption by Proxy Drinking to Excess Conclusion References Chapter 4: Mature Consumption in Leigh Brackett’s No Good from a Corpse (1944) Genre Blending Narrating Clive’s Tough Body Maturity as Hegemonic Masculinity Consumption and Punishment Consumption and Homosocial Care Generic Vice Conclusion References Chapter 5: Pathologies of Prophylactic Masculinity in Dorothy B. Hughes’s In a Lonely Place (1947) Competing White Masculinities: Alienation and Integration Cannibal: Insatiable Appetites and Restraint Spectacular Consumption of Food Masculinity, Girth, and Embodiment Racializing Domesticity Conclusion References Chapter 6: Dangers of Postwar Satiety in Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me (1952) Lou Ford: A Subject Split Unstable Rural Masculinity Eating Is Ordinary Food as Measure of Health and Satisfaction Sexual Consumption and Murderous Meals White Cannibalism and Waste Barren Land or Impotent Rurality Conclusion References Chapter 7: Homosocial Consumption in Rex Stout’s Champagne for One (1958) Formula, Innovation, Anachronisms, and Popularity The Plot and the Nonstory Nero Wolfe: The Sedentary Genius Archie Goodwin: The Man Who Memorized All A Salute to Crime for the 1950s The Book of Household Management: Homosociality at West 35th Street Conclusion References Chapter 8: Conclusions References Index