Failed Frontiersmen: White Men and Myth in the Post-Sixties American Historical Romance - Cultural Frames, Framing Culture

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Review Quotes: James Donahue's "Failed Frontiersmen" is a brilliant and close examination of post-1960s historical novels and their obsession with changing ideals of American masculinity. Donahue interrogates the persistence of masculine heroification in a collection of important texts from authors as wide-ranging as John Barth and Cormac McCarthy and illuminates their fixation on stories of failed masculinity within the hypermasculine and distinctly racialized spaces of various historical American frontiers. The detailed readings given to each novel, the analysis of the role of the frontier chronotope, and the critique of the figure of the frontiersman in these texts make an important and insightful contribution to masculinity and gender studies and to the ongoing process of mythologizing and demythologizing American history.--Sara Spurgeon, Texas Tech University, author of "Exploding the Western: Myths of Empire on the Postmodern Frontier"Biographical Note: James J. Donahue, coeditor with Derek C. Maus of "Post-Soul Satire: Black Identity after Civil Rights, " is Associate Professor of English and Communication at the State University of New York at Potsdam. Description for Sales People: James Donahue shows how contemporary American male writers in the romance tradition engage with frontier mythology and expose its failure to deliver on its promises of cultural stability and political advancement, especially in the wake of the 1960s. Contributor Bio:  Donahue, James J James J. Donahue is associate professor of English at SUNY Potsdam.