Masculinity and the Paradox of Violence in American Fiction, 1950-75 explores the intersections of violence, masculinity, and racial and ethnic tension in America as it is depicted in the fiction of Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, James Baldwin, and Philip Roth. Maggie McKinley reconsiders the longstanding association between masculinity and violence, locating a problematic paradox within works by these writers: as each author figures violence as central to the establishment of a liberated masculine identity, the use of this violence often reaffirms many constricting and emasculating cultural myths and power structures that the authors and their protagonists are seeking to overturn. Prof. McKinley breathes fresh new life into masculinity studies with this penetrating and detailed examination of violence and masculinity in six master American writers in the third quarter of the Twentieth Century. The period from 1950 to 1975 is diverse and prime for mining meanings of masculinity out of these literary giants in their respective expressions of American manhood. McKinley's theoretical template is fertile, derived from the work of seminal French Existentialism, particularly Sartre and De Beauvoir. What makes her analysis so powerful is that McKinley does not attempt to simply chronicle or explain motifs of masculinity. She moves one step further and interrogates them in the full force of Platonic inquiry. This study unsheathes moments of interpretations of masculinity and its underside-violence-in ways that are strikingly innovative, such as her exploration of the intertwining of aesthetics and violence within the complex tapestry of anxiety. The complications and struggles for gendered American identity are strikingly and compellingly articulated in this fine tome.