{"id":4075,"date":"2013-08-14T14:00:15","date_gmt":"2013-08-14T14:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/?page_id=4075"},"modified":"2021-04-12T14:50:38","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T14:50:38","slug":"race-gender-and-empire","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeculture.com\/?page_id=4075","title":{"rendered":"Race, Gender and Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Cullen Gruesser, Race, Gender and Empire in American Detective Fiction<\/i>, Jefferson, North Carolina, and London:\u00a0McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, forthcoming Fall\/Winter 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Gruesser\"<\/a>As John Gruesser says in his Introduction, his intention isn\u2019t to offer a comprehensive history of American detective fiction but to demonstrate the malleability and the range of the form.\u00a0 By means of his judicious selection of texts, he illuminates the development of the genre from its inception, conveying a strong sense of its enormous variety and exploring some of the ways in which this fluidity enables the genre to function (in Stanley Orr\u2019s phrase) as \u201ca site of contest between contending voices and ideologies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study opens with a chapter on Poe, setting the stage by arguing that Poe\u2019s own reworking of the form \u2013 his commitment to innovation \u2013 inspired later writers \u201cto find new ways to outwit, enlighten, educate, and politicize readers.\u201d\u00a0 The adaptability of the genre is further illustrated by close discussion of other nineteenth-century writers, such as Hawthorne, Melville, Twain and Harriet Jacobs.\u00a0 Although not normally associated with detective fiction these are writers who arguably contributed in important ways to the evolution of the genre. In the following chapter, consideration of the work of Mary Wilkins Freeman and Susan Glaspell demonstrates how readily the genre can serve the purposes of political and social commentary, especially on gender and sexuality.\u00a0 As Gruesser moves on to the twentieth century, he focuses particularly on African American writers who subordinate their detective plots to their political purposes, turning to detective fiction \u201cas the means to make social, political, and moral statements that might not otherwise have found an audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is an astute and wide-ranging study of detective fiction in its historical contexts. \u00a0The broad sweep of the discussion combined with close, perceptive attention to textual detail allows Gruesser to create a distinctive and valuable analysis of cross-cultural currents within American crime writing, shedding new light on the genre’s representations of gender, race and empire.<\/p>\n

An extract from the Introduction to Race, Gender and Empire in American Detective Fiction<\/i>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Detective \ufb01ction merits scholarly attention not solely because so many people read it but also because it re\ufb02ects the evolution of modern society. Despite detection\u2019s association with British authors, manners, and settings, American writers invented both its classic, or (to use John Irwin\u2019s more precise term) analytical, and hard-boiled varieties. Following the lead of John G. Cawelti in Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture <\/i>(1976), several critics have emphasized the supposed rigidity of detective and mystery writing. A comprehensive analysis of American detection, however, reveals its adaptability to a multiplicity of artistic, personal, ideological, and political programs. The wide range of directions in which authors have taken the genre serves to substantiate Raymond Chandler\u2019s contention in the \ufb01rst epigraph to this chapter that it is a \u201c\ufb02uid\u201d form that cannot be easily pigeonholed. No doubt Poe, who craved but never achieved sustained popular success as a \ufb01ction writer, would have been surprised to discover that in the second half of the 1800s the genre he launched would reappear in action-packed dime novels featuring protagonists such as the Old Sleuth, New York Detective, and Nick Carter, as well as a series of books about the exploits of America\u2019s most famous detective agency (well known for its trademark open eye, the eye that never sleeps), supposedly written by Allan Pinkerton himself. He would certainly be shocked to learn that two generations after his death white women and African Americans would embrace detection as a means of addressing social and political issues of particular concern to themselves. Moreover, he would likely be amazed to \ufb01nd that over the last 170 years the descendants of his aristocratic French sleuth C. Auguste Dupin have come in an array of shapes, sizes, nationalities, genders, socio-economic classes, sexual orientations, political points of view, subject positions, and ethnic and racial backgrounds. This work traces some of the roles that gender, race, and empire have played in American detection from Poe\u2019s originary tales through the myriad variations upon them published before 1920 to hard-boiled \ufb01ction (the origins of which derive in part from turn-of-the- twentieth-century notions about gender, race and nationality), and it concludes with a discussion of contemporary mystery series with inner-city settings that address black male and black female heroism.”<\/p>\n

John Cullen Gruesser, a professor of English at Kean University, is the author of The Empire Abroad and the Empire at Home: African American Literature and the Era of Overseas Expansion <\/i>(2012) and the editor of A Century of Detection: Twenty Great Mystery Stories, 1841-1940 <\/i>(2010).\u00a0 He currently serves as President of the Poe Studies Association.<\/p>\n

Race, Gender and Empire in American Detective Fiction\u00a0<\/i>will soon be available from\u00a0Amazon<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0is further described on the McFarland website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“From its inception, American detective fiction has been adaptable to a multiplicity of artistic, personal, ideological and political programs. The wide range of directions in which authors have taken the genre reminds us of Raymond Chandler\u2019s view that it is a “fluid” form that cannot be pigeonholed.\u2028\u2028This book highlights detection\u2019s malleability by analyzing the works of particular groups of authors from specific time periods written in response to other texts. Specifically, it traces some of the roles that gender, race and empire have played in American detective fiction from Edgar Allan Poe\u2019s works through the myriad variations upon them published before 1920 to hard-boiled fiction (the origins of which derive in part from turn-of-the-20th-century notions about gender, race and nationality), and it concludes with a discussion of contemporary mystery series with inner-city settings that address black male and black female heroism.\u2028In addition to fiction by Poe, the book analyzes texts by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Harriet Jacobs, Mark Twain, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Susan Glaspell, Dashiell Hammett, Carroll John Daly, Pauline Hopkins, John Edward Bruce, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, and Valerie Wilson Wesley.”<\/p>\n

CONTENTS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Introduction: Manipulation, Malleability, and Metafiction\u00a0in American Detection<\/p>\n

ONE <\/b>\u2022 \u201cHaving defeated him in his own castle\u201d:\u00a0Character Rivalry, Authorial Sleight of Hand, and\u00a0Generic Fluidity in Edgar Allan Poe\u2019s Dupin Tales<\/p>\n

TWO <\/b>\u2022 Expanding on Poe: Varieties of Detection in\u00a0Key American Literary Texts 1<\/b>850\u20131<\/b>882<\/p>\n

THREE <\/b>\u2022 Subverting and Re-Entrenching Traditional\u00a0Gender Roles: Female Sleuths, Dangerous Women,\u00a0and the Imperial Origins of Hard-Boiled Fiction<\/p>\n

FOUR <\/b>\u2022 Detecting Empire Abroad and at Home:\u00a0Interrogations of United States Overseas Expansion and\u00a0Jim Crow in Early African American Detective Writing<\/p>\n

Coda: Black Freedom, Hard-Boiled Motherhood, and Mythic\u00a0Heroism in Contemporary American Detective Fiction<\/p>\n

Appendix: Interviews with Valerie Wilson Wesley\u00a0(May 2003, January and February 201<\/b>3)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Cullen Gruesser, Race, Gender and Empire in American Detective Fiction, Jefferson, North Carolina, and London:\u00a0McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers,<\/p>\n

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