Underrated pleasure of reading hard boiled/noir lit from the ‘40s & ‘50s: descriptions of tough guy meals. Pounds of steak and ham from the ice box, shots of rye whiskey, gallons of coffee right before bed. No vegetables ever, with one exception

Dorothy Hughes had serial killer dixon Steele order a salad with avocados in ‘in a lonely place’ and it was the only time in the great, short book where I thought “oh right, this was written by a woman”

Also, I feel like “masculinity and food in mid century men’s literature” sounds 100 percent like a term paper topic @melnickjeffrey1 would’ve given me at least a b on 20 plus years ago

If they ate like their characters, Jim Thompson, Mickey Spillane, dashiell Hammett and Raymond chandler must’ve had arteries as hard as concrete