ABOUT THIS BOOK

Probes the interrelationship of violence and space in ten contemporary American novels

In The Spaces of Violence, James R. Giles examines ten contemporary American novels for the unique ways in which they explore violence and space as interrelated phenomena. These texts are Russell Banks’s Affliction, Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark and Child of God, Lewis Nordan’s Wolf Whistle, Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, Don DeLillo’s End Zone, Denis Johnson’s Angels, Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer, Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers, and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. A concluding chapter extends the focus to texts by Jane Smiley, Toni Morrison, Edwidge Danticat, and Chuck Palahniuk, who treat the destructive effects of violence on family structures.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

James R. Giles is Presidential Teaching Professor of English at Northern Illinois University and author of eight books, including Violence in the Contemporary American Novel: An End to Innocence and Confronting the Horror: The Novels of Nelson Algren.

REVIEWS

“I 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 Review

“The Spaces of Violence is a welcome contribution to scholarship on American preoccupation with cyclical carnage.”
—Rocky Mountain Review
— -

TABLE 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