The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir

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 re-emerges in 1930-50s America as the 'tough guy'. The Street Was Mine looks to 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 he negotiates racial and gender 'other...