Intimate violence : reading rape and torture in twentieth-century fiction

"Tanner deals with the central question of all narrative texts: how the reader is manipulated into empathy or distance by the text. . . . This study . . . is the sort that needs to be redone in every classroom and by every mature reader. . . . Tanner offers provocative and useful discussions of rape and torture . . . " -Choice "This thoughtful and disturbing book raises serious questions about 'the consequences . . . of reading representations of rape and torture.' " -American Literature "In this incisive exploration of twentieth-century novels, art, and ads, Laura Tanner explains the mechanisms by which reader and viewer are implicated in violence. Equally effective as a challenge to textual assault is the grace and gentleness of Tanner's own prose. Intimate Violence signals the emergence of an astute and humane critical voice." -Wendy Steiner Through an examination of such notorious works as The White Hotel and American Psycho, Laura Tanner leads us in a disturbing exploration of the reader's complicity with fictional depictions of intimate violence.