Intimate Violence

<p>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<br /><br />This thoughtful and disturbing book raises serious questions about 'the consequences . . . of reading representations of rape and torture.' --American Literature<br /><br />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. <i>Intimate Violence</i> signals the emergence of an astute and humane critical voice. --Wendy Steiner<br /><br />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.</p>