Hard-Boiled Sentimentality
The Secret History of American Crime Stories
Published on 5. November 2008
Book
Paperback/Softback
344 pages
978-0-231-12691-5 (ISBN)
Description
Leonard Cassuto's cultural history links the testosterone-saturated heroes of American crime stories to the sensitive women of the nineteenth-century sentimental novel. From classics like The Big Sleep and The Talented Mr. Ripley to neglected paperback gems, Cassuto chronicles the dialogue--centered on the power of sympathy--between these popular genres and the sweeping social changes of the twentieth century, ending with a surprising connection between today's serial killers and the domestic fictions of long ago.
Reviews / Votes
This is an erudite, illuminating and highly readable study Journal of American Studies Cassuto has profitably plowed new ground in this study. It's certain to become an essential document for undersatnding crime fiction's inner workings. African American ReviewMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-231-12691-5 (9780231126915)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
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Book
11/2008
Columbia University Press
€113.89
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E-Book
11/2008
1st Edition
Columbia University Press
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€45.89
Available for download
Person
Leonard Cassuto is professor of English at Fordham University and an award-winning journalist whose writing has appeared in academic journals and popular periodicals ranging from the Wall Street Journal to Salon.com. He is the author of The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and Culture and the general editor of the forthcoming Cambridge History of the American Novel.
Content
Introduction: Sentimentality, Sympathy, Serial Killers (Dashiell Hammett, Charles Willeford, and others) Part I. Revising the Roots of the Hard-Boiled Tradition: The 1920s 1. Crime and Sympathy (Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway) 2. Hammett and the Hard-Boiled Sentimental Part II. Reading the Hard-Boiled Sentimental: From the Thirties to the Fifties 3. Depression Domesticity (James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler. Also Horace McCoy, Damon Runyon, Erskine Caldwell) 4. The Sentimental Action Hero in Cold War Crime Stories (Raymond Chandler, David Goodis, John D. MacDonald, William P. McGivern, Wade Miller, John Evans [aka Howard Browne]. Also Cornell Woolrich, Mickey Spillane, Gil Brewer) 5. Sentimental Perversion: The Canonized Nonconformists of the Fifties (Jim Thompson, Patricia Highsmith) Part III: Crime Fiction at the Sentimental Apocalypse: The Rise of the Hard-Boiled Domestic Detective and the Serial Killer from the Sixties to the Present 6. The Homely Heart of the Hard-Boiled: Ross Macdonald and John D. MacDonald (Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald, Robert B. Parker, Robert Bloch) 7. Hard-Boiled Therapists, Hard-Boiled Women, and a Vigilante (Thomas Harris, Lawrence Block, James Lee Burke, Sue Grafton, and others) 8. Shades of Professional Sympathy: Race, Crime, Detection (Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, William P. McGivern, Dennis Lehane, and others) 9. The Rise of the Serial Killer (Robert Finnegan, Truman Capote, Thomas Harris. Also Robert Bloch, John D. MacDonald, Dean Koontz, Gil Brewer, Alice Sebold, and others) Notes Selected Bibliography Acknowledgments Index