Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Anxiety, Conformity and Masculinity
- 1 ‘Organization Man’, Domestic Ideology and Manhood
- 2 ‘Everything in him had come undone’: Violent Aggression, Courage and Masculine Identity
- 3 Representing Sexualities and Gender
- 4 Identity and Assimilation in Jewish American Fiction
- 5 African American Identity and Masculinity
- Afterword
- Works Cited and Consulted
- Index
Introduction: Anxiety, Conformity and Masculinity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 September 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Anxiety, Conformity and Masculinity
- 1 ‘Organization Man’, Domestic Ideology and Manhood
- 2 ‘Everything in him had come undone’: Violent Aggression, Courage and Masculine Identity
- 3 Representing Sexualities and Gender
- 4 Identity and Assimilation in Jewish American Fiction
- 5 African American Identity and Masculinity
- Afterword
- Works Cited and Consulted
- Index
Summary
Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go, 1945:
All the tightness that had been in my body, making my motions jerky, keeping my muscles taut, left me and I felt relaxed, confident, strong. I felt just like I thought a white boy oughta feel; I had never felt so strong in all my life. (45)
Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me, 1952:
I killed Amy Stanton on Saturday night on the fifth of April, 1952, at a few minutes before nine o’clock. […]
She smiled and came towards me with her arms held out. ‘I won't darling. I won't ever say anything like that again. But I want to tell you how much –’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘You want to pour your heart out to me.’
And I hit her in the guts as hard as I could.
My fist went back against her spine, and the flesh closed around it to the wrist. I jerked back on it, I had to jerk, and she flopped forward from the waist, like she was hinged. (152, 164–5)
Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead, 1948:
Their love-making is fantastic for a time:
He must subdue her, absorb her, rip her apart and consume her. […]
I’ll take you apart, I’ll eat you, oh, I’ll make you mine, I’ll make you mine, you bitch. (419)
John Horne Burns, The Gallery, 1947:
I caught on fast, with the lessons she gimme [the corporal said]. These babes know something … She taught me to kiss slow, to take my time. I useta close my eyes an just jab, hoping for the best … Rosetta kisses sleepy like. Sometimes she puts her tongue in my ear. Or just brushes her lips along my throat. Gee … (305)
James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room, 1956:
I was not suggesting for a moment that you jeopardize, even for a moment, that […] immaculate manhood. (33)
J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1951:
But I’d plug him anyway. Six shots right through his fat, hairy belly. […] Then I’d […] call up Jane and have her come over and bandage up my guts. I pictured her holding a cigarette for me to smoke while I was bleeding and all.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Anxious MenMasculinity in American Fiction of the Mid-Twentieth Century, pp. 1 - 29Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020