Violence in the contemporary American novel
Subtitle: an end to innocence
By: James R. Giles.
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Columbia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 161
Subjects: American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.; Violence in literature.; Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; City and town life in literature.; Inner cities in literature.; Minorities in literature.
Description: "Violence in the Contemporary American Novel attends to the trope of violence in eight contemporary American urban novels. James R. Giles shows that these representative works, published between 1968 and 1994, convey a sense of violence as an epidemic, a modern plague that threatens to extinguish the dreams, aspirations, and actual lives of the inhabitants of America's cities.

Framing his study with two cases of violence involving children in Chicago, he notes the degree to which violence in the novels is perpetrated by adults against children or, even more shockingly, by children against children.".

"Giles demonstrates that American writers have assumed a responsibility not only to record the plague of violence that so threatens the survival of the nation's children but also to seek explanations for its origins. He argues that the violence in these works, which is never portrayed as a positive form of revolutionary action but is instead represented as reactive effect, emerges largely out of ethnic antagonism, racial and gender division, and class oppression.".

"He contends that the novelists cumulatively offer diversity as an antidote to the initiation and spread of violence, and he concludes that they envision cultural diversity as urban America's opportunity for redemption and hope."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [149]-153) and index.
Table of contents: title: Preface; title: Introduction: Innocence dying younger; title: Dedalus in the Dood Kamer: William Kennedy's Quinn's book; title: The context of American innocence: Caleb Carr's The alienist; title: The Ducky Boys and the urban punk killing machine: Richard Price's The wanderers; title: A postmodern children's crusade: John Edgar Wideman's Philadelphia fire; title: Nature despoiled and artificial: Sandra Cisneros's The house on Mango Street; title: Violence and the immanence of the "thing unknown": Cormac McCarthy's Suttree; title: Redemptive landscape, malevolent city: Scott Momaday's House made of dawn; title: Discovering a substitute for salvation: John Rechy's The miraculous day of Amalia Gómez; title: Conclusion: Girl X and the country of last things; title: Notes; title: Bibliography; title: Index.