Book Description

Murdering Masculinities offers a provocative new reading of crime fiction that changes the way we think about masculinity, psychoanalytic theory, and the potentials of popular fiction. Greg Forter contends that the American crime novel is a more aesthetically complex and politically progressive form than has generally been assumed. While there are many crime novels that celebrate male power and an invulnerable male self, he focuses on a subtradition that seeks instead to murder masculinity-to encourage male readers and characters alike to embrace desires for self-dissolution that conventional masculinity disavows as feminine.