Josef Benson is assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Parkside. Benson’s cultural history, literary and theoretical criticism, fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared in over twenty publications, including The Raymond Carver Review, The Journal of Bisexuality, The Adirondack Review, and Southwestern American Literature.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction- U.S. American Hypermasculinities - Ironic Failed Heroism - Aesthetics as Critique Chapter One: An Ironic Contention: The Heroic Failure of the Kid in Blood Meridian- The Origins of American Frontier Hypermasculinities- Hypermasculinities on the Frontier- The Judge as Narrative Force- Images of Dead Children- Christian Imagery- The Kid as Ironic HeroChapter Two: A Hero by Default: John Grady Cole as Hypermasculine Heroic Failure in All the Pretty Horses- Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses- Cowboy Hypermasculinities- The Tenuousness of Identities Based on Myth- An America with No Room for a Cowboy- Mexican Context- Homosexuality- Failed HeroismChapter Three: Black Masculinities and Cultural Incest in Song of Solomon- American Context- Blackness as an Invention of Whites- Black Masculinities- Aesthetics: Flight toward Orality- Pilate as Failed Hero- The Trafficking of Women and the Incest Taboo- A Politics of FailureChapter Four: Staggerlee in the Closet: Rufus Scott as Failed Ironic Hero in Another Country- Morrison, Baldwin, and Family- Staggerlee as Hypermasculine Folkloric Referent- Politics of Failure- American Context: Baldwin, Cleaver, and Mailer- Closeted Sexualities- Blackness Defined by Whites- Sex, Race, and Heroic FailureConclusion: Masculinity as Hypermasculine FailureReferences CitedAbout the Author

In this reading of novels by Morrison, McCarthy, and Baldwin, Benson seeks to reframe cultural ideals of masculinity. He first articulates a connection between the rugged frontiersman of southern lore and the stereotypical black hypersexual male by understanding both as arising from rural southern white ideals of hypermasculinity. He then reads Morrison, Baldwin, and McCarthy as interrogating that hypermasculine identity through their protagonists, who refuse to perpetuate this identity and—by resisting—become ironic heroes. This seeming failure becomes, paradoxically, a space of revision whereby, Benson argues, one might find a new definition of black masculinity. . . .Summing Up: Recommended. . . .Graduate students, researchers, faculty.

Josef Benson is assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Parkside. Benson’s cultural history, literary and theoretical criticism, fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared in over twenty publications, including The Raymond Carver Review, The Journal of Bisexuality, The Adirondack Review, and Southwestern American Literature.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction- U.S. American Hypermasculinities - Ironic Failed Heroism - Aesthetics as Critique Chapter One: An Ironic Contention: The Heroic Failure of the Kid in Blood Meridian- The Origins of American Frontier Hypermasculinities- Hypermasculinities on the Frontier- The Judge as Narrative Force- Images of Dead Children- Christian Imagery- The Kid as Ironic HeroChapter Two: A Hero by Default: John Grady Cole as Hypermasculine Heroic Failure in All the Pretty Horses- Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses- Cowboy Hypermasculinities- The Tenuousness of Identities Based on Myth- An America with No Room for a Cowboy- Mexican Context- Homosexuality- Failed HeroismChapter Three: Black Masculinities and Cultural Incest in Song of Solomon- American Context- Blackness as an Invention of Whites- Black Masculinities- Aesthetics: Flight toward Orality- Pilate as Failed Hero- The Trafficking of Women and the Incest Taboo- A Politics of FailureChapter Four: Staggerlee in the Closet: Rufus Scott as Failed Ironic Hero in Another Country- Morrison, Baldwin, and Family- Staggerlee as Hypermasculine Folkloric Referent- Politics of Failure- American Context: Baldwin, Cleaver, and Mailer- Closeted Sexualities- Blackness Defined by Whites- Sex, Race, and Heroic FailureConclusion: Masculinity as Hypermasculine FailureReferences CitedAbout the Author

In this reading of novels by Morrison, McCarthy, and Baldwin, Benson seeks to reframe cultural ideals of masculinity. He first articulates a connection between the rugged frontiersman of southern lore and the stereotypical black hypersexual male by understanding both as arising from rural southern white ideals of hypermasculinity. He then reads Morrison, Baldwin, and McCarthy as interrogating that hypermasculine identity through their protagonists, who refuse to perpetuate this identity and—by resisting—become ironic heroes. This seeming failure becomes, paradoxically, a space of revision whereby, Benson argues, one might find a new definition of black masculinity. . . .Summing Up: Recommended. . . .Graduate students, researchers, faculty.

Josef Benson is assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Parkside. Benson’s cultural history, literary and theoretical criticism, fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared in over twenty publications, including The Raymond Carver Review, The Journal of Bisexuality, The Adirondack Review, and Southwestern American Literature.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction- U.S. American Hypermasculinities - Ironic Failed Heroism - Aesthetics as Critique Chapter One: An Ironic Contention: The Heroic Failure of the Kid in Blood Meridian- The Origins of American Frontier Hypermasculinities- Hypermasculinities on the Frontier- The Judge as Narrative Force- Images of Dead Children- Christian Imagery- The Kid as Ironic HeroChapter Two: A Hero by Default: John Grady Cole as Hypermasculine Heroic Failure in All the Pretty Horses- Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses- Cowboy Hypermasculinities- The Tenuousness of Identities Based on Myth- An America with No Room for a Cowboy- Mexican Context- Homosexuality- Failed HeroismChapter Three: Black Masculinities and Cultural Incest in Song of Solomon- American Context- Blackness as an Invention of Whites- Black Masculinities- Aesthetics: Flight toward Orality- Pilate as Failed Hero- The Trafficking of Women and the Incest Taboo- A Politics of FailureChapter Four: Staggerlee in the Closet: Rufus Scott as Failed Ironic Hero in Another Country- Morrison, Baldwin, and Family- Staggerlee as Hypermasculine Folkloric Referent- Politics of Failure- American Context: Baldwin, Cleaver, and Mailer- Closeted Sexualities- Blackness Defined by Whites- Sex, Race, and Heroic FailureConclusion: Masculinity as Hypermasculine FailureReferences CitedAbout the Author

In this reading of novels by Morrison, McCarthy, and Baldwin, Benson seeks to reframe cultural ideals of masculinity. He first articulates a connection between the rugged frontiersman of southern lore and the stereotypical black hypersexual male by understanding both as arising from rural southern white ideals of hypermasculinity. He then reads Morrison, Baldwin, and McCarthy as interrogating that hypermasculine identity through their protagonists, who refuse to perpetuate this identity and—by resisting—become ironic heroes. This seeming failure becomes, paradoxically, a space of revision whereby, Benson argues, one might find a new definition of black masculinity. . . .Summing Up: Recommended. . . .Graduate students, researchers, faculty.