Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewI enjoyed reading
The Spaces of Violence and learned a lot from it. . . . One of the most important contributions it makes to the wider discussion of violence and American literature is its insistence that violence is not a characteristic of urban life only, but permeates all regions—urban, suburban, and rural."—Robert Rebein, author of
Hicks, Tribes, & Dirty Realists: American Fiction after Postmodernism"Giles explores in literary terms our national desire ‘to immerse ourselves in gore."—
American Book ReviewThe Spaces of Violence is a welcome contribution to scholarship on American preoccupation with cyclical carnage."—
Rocky Mountain ReviewTable of Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1. Violence and Space
- 2. Discovering Fourthspace in Appalachia: Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark and Child of God
- 3. Russell Banks’s Affliction: “All Those Solitary Dumb Angry Men”
- 4. Of Vultures, Eyeballs, and Parrots: Lewis Nordan’s Wolf Whistle
- 5. The Myth of the Boatright Men: Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina
- 6. Playing for Death: Don DeLillo’s End Zone
- 7. Drifting through Urantia: Greyhound Space in Denis Johnson’s Angels
- 8. The Return of John Smith: Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer
- 9. “The Battle of Bob Hope” and “The Great Elephant Zap”: Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers
- 10. “I Hope You Didn’t Go into Raw Space without Me”: Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho
- 11. Violence and Family Structures
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
