Description
Book SynopsisA cultural history of macho criticism
Trade ReviewExhaustively researched and meticulously detailed, James Penner's [book] cuts an insightful swath through fifty years of 20th century macho literary criticism . . . Scholars, historians, and culture critics will have much to chew on here. May 2011
* Reno Tahoe Tonight *
With a literary fluid style and a pleasant wit, Penner steers the reader through five decades of fluctuating visions of masculinity, not only in novels and criticism, but also in various artistic endeavors and in 'cultured society' as a whole. ...[A]n invaluable book.8/22/11
* GRAAT *
A nice addition to the steadily lengthening shelf of literary gender studies, this perceptive, well-researched volume ... surveys a vast landscape of eclectic literary achievement: from hypermasculine warrior myths, anticommunist crusades, and the New Critics to Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Norman Mailer, and William S. Burroughs ... [this] study merits a long look. Summing Up: Highly recommendedJuly 2011
* Choice *
Pinks, Pansies, and Punks offers an indispensable text that compellingly theorizes the significance of masculinity's role in literary culture and the twentieth-century social contexts that shaped—and were shaped by—it.
* Twentieth Century Literature *
All in all it [Pinks, Pansies, and Punks] is a recommendable, as informative introduction to the American culture and Gendergeschichte [gender studies] of the middle twentieth century.
* Orbis Litterarum *
Penner's study is an ambitious and provocative look at mid-century delineations of masculinity in American literary culture. . . . [It] asks readers to reconsider and expand the horizons of their understanding of twentieth-century male identity, and to reflect on their critical efforts to fit writers, artists, and other critics into specific categories and definitions. In many ways, this is what makes it such a rich and potentially valuable a contribution not only to masculinity and gender studies, but to American literary and cultural studies as well.
* College Literature *
In compelling ways, Penner navigates through layered textual materials to show how multiple configurations of masculinity can and do co-exist . . . This book proves a very interesting study for those interested in Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, or Literary Criticism. Vol. 40:6
* Women's Studies *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: A Short History of Macho Criticism
1. "Healthy Nerves and Sturdy Physiques": Remaking the Male Body of Literary Culture in the 1930s
2. Doughfaces, Eggheads, and Softies: Gendered Epithets and American Literary Culture in the 1940s
3. Highbrows and Lowbrows: Squares, Beats, Hipsters, White Negroes, New Critics, and American Literary Culture in the 1950s
4. Reforming the Hard Body: The Old Left, the Counterculture, and the Masculine Kulturkampf of the 1960s
5. The Gender Upheavals of the Late 1960s and Early 1970s: The Black Panthers, Gay Liberation, and Radical Feminism
Epilogue: The End of Innuendo
Notes
Bibliography
Index
