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.

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 ReviewThe Spaces of Violence is a welcome contribution to scholarship on American preoccupation with cyclical carnage."—Rocky Mountain Review

• PrefaceAcknowledgments1. Violence and Space2. Discovering Fourthspace in Appalachia: Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark and Child of God3. Russell Banks’s Affliction: “All Those Solitary Dumb Angry Men”4. Of Vultures, Eyeballs, and Parrots: Lewis Nordan’s Wolf Whistle5. The Myth of the Boatright Men: Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina6. Playing for Death: Don DeLillo’s End Zone7. Drifting through Urantia: Greyhound Space in Denis Johnson’s Angels8. The Return of John Smith: Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer9. “The Battle of Bob Hope” and “The Great Elephant Zap”: Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers10. “I Hope You Didn’t Go into Raw Space without Me”: Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho11. Violence and Family StructuresNotesWorks CitedIndex

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.

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 ReviewThe Spaces of Violence is a welcome contribution to scholarship on American preoccupation with cyclical carnage."—Rocky Mountain Review

• PrefaceAcknowledgments1. Violence and Space2. Discovering Fourthspace in Appalachia: Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark and Child of God3. Russell Banks’s Affliction: “All Those Solitary Dumb Angry Men”4. Of Vultures, Eyeballs, and Parrots: Lewis Nordan’s Wolf Whistle5. The Myth of the Boatright Men: Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina6. Playing for Death: Don DeLillo’s End Zone7. Drifting through Urantia: Greyhound Space in Denis Johnson’s Angels8. The Return of John Smith: Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer9. “The Battle of Bob Hope” and “The Great Elephant Zap”: Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers10. “I Hope You Didn’t Go into Raw Space without Me”: Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho11. Violence and Family StructuresNotesWorks CitedIndex

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.

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 ReviewThe Spaces of Violence is a welcome contribution to scholarship on American preoccupation with cyclical carnage."—Rocky Mountain Review

• PrefaceAcknowledgments1. Violence and Space2. Discovering Fourthspace in Appalachia: Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark and Child of God3. Russell Banks’s Affliction: “All Those Solitary Dumb Angry Men”4. Of Vultures, Eyeballs, and Parrots: Lewis Nordan’s Wolf Whistle5. The Myth of the Boatright Men: Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina6. Playing for Death: Don DeLillo’s End Zone7. Drifting through Urantia: Greyhound Space in Denis Johnson’s Angels8. The Return of John Smith: Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer9. “The Battle of Bob Hope” and “The Great Elephant Zap”: Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers10. “I Hope You Didn’t Go into Raw Space without Me”: Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho11. Violence and Family StructuresNotesWorks CitedIndex