Title: The street was mine : white masculinity in hardboiled fiction and film noir /
Authors: Abbott, Megan, 1971-
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan,
Year: 2002
Subjects: Men, White, in literature.; Detective and mystery stories, American History and criticism.; Detective and mystery films United States History and criticism; Film noir United States History and criticism; City and town life in motion pictures.; Private investigators in literature.; City and town life in literature; Masculinity in literature.; Men in motion pictures.; Race in literature.; Men in literature; Noir fiction, American History and criticism.
Abstract: "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 reemerges in 1930s-50s America as the "tough guy." The Street Was Mine looks at 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 the tough guy negotiates racial and gender "otherness," this study argues that he embodies the promise of an impervious white masculinity amidst the turmoil of the Depression through the beginnings of the Cold War.