The classic badman and the ballad -- Postbellum violence and its causes : "displaced rage" in a preindustrial culture -- Between the wars : the genteel novel, counterstereotypes, and initial probes -- From the genteel to the primitive : the twenties and thirties -- The ghetto bildungsroman : from the forties to the seventies -- Toasts : tales of the "bad nigger" -- Chester Himes : Harlem absurd -- A "toast" novel : pimps, hoodlums, and hit men -- Walter Mosley and the violent men of Watts -- Rap : going commercial -- The badman and the storyteller : John Edgar Wideman's homewood trilogy -- Toni Morrison : Ulysses, badmen, and archetypes--abandoning violence -- Appendix : Analysis of thirty prototype ballads