Murdering Masculinities: Fantasies of Gender and Violence in the American Crime Novel

Though American crime novels are often derided for containing misogynistic attitudes and limiting ideas of masculinity, Greg Forter maintains that they are instead psychologically complex and sophisticated works that demand closer attention. Eschewing the synthetic methodologies of earlier work on crime fiction, Murdering Masculinities argues that the crime novel does not provide a consolidated and stable notion of masculinity. Rather, it demands that male readers take responsibility for the desires they project on to these novels.
Forter examines the narrative strategies of five novels--Hammett's The Glass Key, Cain's Serenade, Faulkner's Sanctuary, Thompson's Pop. 1280, and Himes's Blind Man with a Pistol--in conjunction with their treatment of bodily metaphors of smell, vision, and voice. In the process, Forter unearths a "generic unconscious" that reveals things Freud both discovered and sought to repress.

Author: Gregory Forter
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 11/01/2000
Pages: 278
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.91lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.63d
ISBN: 9780814726914

Review Citation(s):
Choice 07/01/2001 pg. 1958

About the Author
Forter, Gregory: - Greg Forter teaches American Literature at the University of South Carolina, Columbia.