Overview
- Demonstrates how food in crime fiction is used to construct the gender, sexual, or racial makeup of characters
- Extends critical focus to food consumption and masculinity in crime fiction
- Reads hardboiled fiction to illustrate the gradual process of redefining consumerism in America
Part of the book series: Crime Files (CF)
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
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 thatfood 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.
Reviews
“Marta Usiekniewicz has written a book that leaves us all in her debt. Food, Consumption, and Masculinity in American Hardboiled Fiction renews and extends our understanding of the tough guys of hardboiled fiction by showing how their toughness is constituted by what and how they consume. Combining theoretical sophistication with clear and incisive readings of a wide range of texts, this book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in crime fiction, gender, and popular culture.” (Prof. David Schmid, Department of English, University at Buffalo)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Marta Usiekniewicz is an Assistant Professor at the University of Warsaw’s American Studies Center. A specialist in American literature and cultural studies, she has published on crime fiction, disability studies, and intersections of fatness, race, and consumption. She teaches courses on embodiment in popular culture, food studies, and sexualities. She is on the editorial board of Gender Forum -- An Internet Journal of Gender Studies.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Food, Consumption, and Masculinity in American Hardboiled Fiction
Authors: Marta Usiekniewicz
Series Title: Crime Files
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29160-9
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-29159-3Published: 13 July 2023
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-29162-3Due: 13 August 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-29160-9Published: 12 July 2023
Series ISSN: 2947-8340
Series E-ISSN: 2947-8359
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 237
Topics: Contemporary Literature, North American Literature, Fiction, Popular Culture , Crime and Society, Gender Studies