Food, Consumption, and Masculinity in American Hardboiled Fiction

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 showsthat 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. 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.