ABSTRACT
From the Delivered to the Dispatched: Masculinity in Modern American Fiction (1969-1977) focuses on masculinity in late twentieth-century American fiction. This rigorous study shows the ways post-war American authors engage with the tension between capitalist consumer culture and traditional national conceptions of American manhood. Drawing on examples from the works of prolific contemporary American writers, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison and Michael Herr, Stilley investigates hypermasculine male violence, the classical and grotesque body, as well as specific regional themes such as the Western frontier, the American Adam, the Southern Gothic and the Suburban Gothic.
Abstract
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 "The land that he saw looked like a paradise. It was not, he knew."
Suburbia and the Maladjusted American Male in John Cheever’s Bullet Park
2 "This-here river don’t go nowhere."
Fraudulent Frontiers and the Failure of the Adamic Archetype in James Dickey’s Deliverance
3 "A violence born of total helplessness."
Jane, Dick and the Deterministic Denial of the Black American Male in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
4 "White pussy is nothin but trouble."
Death, Desire and the Displacement of the Feminine Body in Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God
5 "They were killers. Of course they were; what would anyone expect them to be?"
Martial Camouflage, Containment and Castration in Michael Herr’s Dispatches
Conclusion: "THIS IS NOT AN EXIT"
American Masculinity Since 1977
Works Cited
Index
