Leslie Fiedler
Encyclopedia
Leslie Aaron Fiedler was a Jewish-American literary critic, known for his interest in mythography
and his championing of genre fiction
. His work also involves application of psychological theories to American literature. He was in practical terms one of the early postmodernist critics working across literature in general, from around 1970. His most cited work is Love and Death in the American Novel (1960).
, to Jewish parents Lillian and Jacob Fiedler. "Eliezar Aaron" was his original Hebrew name. In his early years, Fiedler developed a strong connection to his grandparents, Leon (originally Leib) and Perl Rosenstrauch. As Mark Royden Winchell writes in his 2002 book on Fiedler, "during Leslie's childhood, Leon and Perl Rosenstrauch were more like parents to Leslie than were his own father and mother" (Winchell 5).
At an early age, Fiedler's family moved from Newark to East Orange, New Jersey
, a town that lacked a substantial Jewish community. Fiedler was forced to contend with anti-semitism
from his fellow students who were Protestants and Catholics. The move to East Orange was short-lived and the family soon returned to Newark where Fiedler continued his education in public schools. Fiedler developed a resentment toward his teachers, who forced him to use standard English pronunciations instead of his ethnic dialect. While attending school, Fiedler also worked in his uncle's shoe store where his encounters with coworkers served as inspiration for some of the characters he created in his later work. At South Side High School, Fiedler began to express interest in socialism
, which eventually led to him nearly getting arrested after a loud political rant on a soapbox
on Newark's Bergen Street.
only after raising the money for tuition himself. Fiedler's flirtations with socialist ideology continued in his undergraduate career. He joined the Young Communist League
and later aligned himself with the ideas of Trotsky. Fiedler's political opinions led to on-campus acts of rebellion (For instance, at one point he adamantly refused to salute the flag during an ROTC parade). His behavior led to many professors refusing to recommend him for graduate schools; as Winchell notes, one professor even left a scathing and ironic remark in Fiedler's file: "Mr. Fiedler will never be a gentleman or a scholar" (Winchell, 25). Because of this lack of recommendations, Fiedler did not gain admission to the elite eastern schools, but did receive a scholarship from the University of Wisconsin–Madison
and he decided to go there in 1938.
Among his professors at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Fiedler developed a special fondness for William Ellery Leonard
. Leonard oversaw Fiedler's thesis (a Marxist reading of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde
) and his dissertation (an interpretation of Donne's poetry in relation to medieval thought).
when Pearl Harbor
was bombed. Fiedler made the sudden decision to join the Navy. He was recruited and placed in a Colorado
-based training program for learning the Japanese language
. The Navy's intention was to use Fiedler as a translator for captured Japanese
prisoners
.
Just before Fiedler left for Pearl Harbor
as a lieutenant junior grade, his wife gave birth to his second son, Eric Ellery Fiedler. He would have four more children: Michael in 1947, Debbie in 1949, Jenny in 1952, and Miriam in 1955. But, as a translator of Japanese, Fiedler was present on Iwo Jima
for the raising of the American Flag on Mount Suribachi. After performing various translation-oriented duties, Fiedler was discharged in 1945. Although initially intending to return to the University of Montana, Fiedler was unexpectedly offered a position at Harvard
as a Rockefeller Fellow. He took a number of courses and became involved in the Harvard Poetry Society. Fiedler also occasionally taught portions of American Poetry classes pertaining to Jewish poets.
and was the subject of a great amount of critical debate and controversy. "Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey!" argued a recurrent theme in American literature was an unspoken or implied homoerotic relationship between men, famously using Huckleberry Finn
and Jim as examples. Pairs of men flee for wilderness rather than remain in the civilizing and domesticated world of women. Fiedler also deals with this male bonding in Love and Death in the American Novel (1960), Waiting for the End
(1964) and The Return of the Vanishing American (1968).
As Winchell wrote in his book on Fiedler, "Reading ‘Come Back to the Raft’ over half a century later, one tends to forget that, prior to Fiedler, few critics had discussed classic American literature
in terms of race, gender
, and sexuality
" (Winchell 53). Fiedler emphasized the fact the males paired in these wilderness adventures tend to be of different races as well, which created an additional critical dimension. "Come Back to the Raft" not only caused a stream of letters of protest to be sent to Partisan Review, but it also was attacked by the critical community. For instance, Queer theorist
Christopher Looby
argues that Fiedler's claims were noticeably given from a 20th century, urban perspective and did not adequately address the time period in which Huckleberry Finn
was written. (Cf. the debate on the sexuality of Abraham Lincoln
.)
, the University of California, Santa Barbara
, and (once again) at the University of Montana. Fiedler decided to return to Missoula. Shortly after his return to Montana, he wrote another article that made him the subject of controversy, Montana; or the End of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Also published in the Partisan Review, the essay deals with the development of the frontier. Fiedler's argument includes descriptions of Montanans that were thought to be offensive to the actual residents of his community.
Through the late 1940s and early 1950s Fiedler was being published in several journals and was making himself known in the critical scene. His literary work appeared in Kenyon Review; he was also named the 1956 Kenyon Fellow in Criticism. Even though the Kenyon Review was a journal often associated with New Criticism
, Fiedler questioned the principles of New Criticism in his writing. Fiedler targets New Criticism in his well-known essay Archetype and Signature.
After a stint as a Fulbright lecturer
in the universities of Rome
and Bologna
lasting from 1951 to 1953, Fiedler became the Chair of the Department of English in the University of Montana. He held this post from 1954 to 1956 during which time he fought against stalwart opposition to hire a black professor. In 1955, Fiedler's book An End to Innocence was published; it was concerned with the necessity for America as a nation to move from a state of innocence to a state of experience (or adulthood).
Indian tribe. He was honored with the name "Heavy Runner" and was made a chief. From 1956 to 1957, Fiedler was the Christian Gauss Lecturer at Princeton University
. During his time at Princeton, Fiedler frequently travelled to New York
where he made connections in publishing, including with editors of Esquire
magazine.
It was in Esquire that Fiedler's controversial Nude Croquet was published in 1957. It was deemed offensive to the point that issues of the magazine had to be withdrawn from newsstands in Knoxville, Tennessee
. In his book on Fiedler, Winchell describes the nature of the eroticism described in the story:
" and how it is both derivative of, and separate from, the established European novel
forms. The book offended many because of the manner in which Fiedler discusses the American literary tradition. A massive text of well over 600 pages, Love and Death in the American Novel eventually became the subject of revision by Fiedler. He produced a more streamlined, focused version of the book which was published in 1966.
In 1961, Fiedler become a Fulbright lecturer yet again, this time in Athens
. His journey to Greece gave him the opportunity to see his brother Harold, who was the American consul
in Istanbul
. Soon after his one year stint in Athens was complete, Fiedler's first novel, The Second Stone was published (1963).
, attempted to recruit various writers and critics from across the country in 1964. Fiedler was signed on to teach summer school in 1964 and was then offered a teaching position for a year. Even though he had been with the University of Montana for two decades, Fiedler moved on to the University at Buffalo's "all-star" teaching staff in 1965.
In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.
.
Fiedler wrote Being Busted (released in 1969 and dedicated to his first grandson, Seth) about this experience (and his life as a whole); sales of the book helped him to pay his increasing legal expenses. In a trial on April 9, 1970, Fiedler was found guilty. After multiple appeals, the drug conviction was finally reversed in 1972.
In the same year, Fiedler also divorced his wife, to whom he had been married for 33 years. A year later, he married Sally Smith Anderson.
, Today, Donahue
, Tomorrow
, and William F. Buckley, Jr.
's show, Firing Line
. He was even cast in the low-budget fantasy film When I Am King (1978) that was never released. Fiedler was invited to Hollywood parties through his connections and met Burgess Meredith
, Carroll O'Connor
and Shirley MacLaine
among others.
, with an emphasis on science fiction
. Fiedler even wrote a book devoted to the critical assessment of science fiction in 1983: Olaf Stapledon: A Man Divided and recruited critic and science fiction author Samuel R. Delany
to teach at SUNY Buffalo. In 1988, Fiedler was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and in 1989, he received the Chancellor Charles P. Norton Medal.
In the 1990s, Fiedler's output decreased and new material was sporadic. In 1994, Fiedler received the Hubbell Medal for lifetime contribution to the study of literature. In 1998, Fiedler was given the National Book Critics Circle
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. On January 30, 2003, a month before his 86th birthday, he died in Buffalo.
Mythography
A mythographer, or a mythologist is a compiler of myths. The word derives from the Greek "μυθογραφία" , "writing of fables", from "μῦθος" , "speech, word, fact, story, narrative" + "γράφω" , "to write, to inscribe". Mythography is then the rendering of myths in the arts...
and his championing of genre fiction
Genre fiction
Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre....
. His work also involves application of psychological theories to American literature. He was in practical terms one of the early postmodernist critics working across literature in general, from around 1970. His most cited work is Love and Death in the American Novel (1960).
Early years
Fiedler was born in Newark, New JerseyNewark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...
, to Jewish parents Lillian and Jacob Fiedler. "Eliezar Aaron" was his original Hebrew name. In his early years, Fiedler developed a strong connection to his grandparents, Leon (originally Leib) and Perl Rosenstrauch. As Mark Royden Winchell writes in his 2002 book on Fiedler, "during Leslie's childhood, Leon and Perl Rosenstrauch were more like parents to Leslie than were his own father and mother" (Winchell 5).
At an early age, Fiedler's family moved from Newark to East Orange, New Jersey
East Orange, New Jersey
East Orange is a city in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census the city's population 64,270, making it the state's 20th largest municipality, having dropped 5,554 residents from its population of 69,824 in the 2000 Census, when it was the state's 14th most...
, a town that lacked a substantial Jewish community. Fiedler was forced to contend with anti-semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
from his fellow students who were Protestants and Catholics. The move to East Orange was short-lived and the family soon returned to Newark where Fiedler continued his education in public schools. Fiedler developed a resentment toward his teachers, who forced him to use standard English pronunciations instead of his ethnic dialect. While attending school, Fiedler also worked in his uncle's shoe store where his encounters with coworkers served as inspiration for some of the characters he created in his later work. At South Side High School, Fiedler began to express interest in socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, which eventually led to him nearly getting arrested after a loud political rant on a soapbox
Soapbox
A soapbox is a raised platform on which one stands to make an impromptu speech, often about a political subject. The term originates from the days when speakers would elevate themselves by standing on a wooden crate originally used for shipment of soap or other dry goods from a manufacturer to a...
on Newark's Bergen Street.
Undergraduate years
Fiedler finished his schooling at South Side High in 1934. Because of his parents' poor financial condition, he was at first unable to attend college. He recalled sitting on the steps of his father's bankrupt drugstore, disconsolate, weeping that he "wanted to go to college." Eventually he received a small scholarship, but it was insufficient to fund his university education. He enrolled in NYU HeightsNew York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
only after raising the money for tuition himself. Fiedler's flirtations with socialist ideology continued in his undergraduate career. He joined the Young Communist League
Young Communist League
The Young Communist League was or is the name used by the youth wing of various Communist parties around the world. The name YCL of XXX was generally taken by all sections of the Communist Youth International.Examples of YCLs:...
and later aligned himself with the ideas of Trotsky. Fiedler's political opinions led to on-campus acts of rebellion (For instance, at one point he adamantly refused to salute the flag during an ROTC parade). His behavior led to many professors refusing to recommend him for graduate schools; as Winchell notes, one professor even left a scathing and ironic remark in Fiedler's file: "Mr. Fiedler will never be a gentleman or a scholar" (Winchell, 25). Because of this lack of recommendations, Fiedler did not gain admission to the elite eastern schools, but did receive a scholarship from the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
and he decided to go there in 1938.
Graduate school
In spite of Fiedler's scholarship, his move to Wisconsin for his MA left him very short of funds. He reportedly had to survive on forty cents a day. Fiedler continued to believe in Trotsky's ideas. These ideas were opposed by the UW–Madison's Stalinists. One of the more prominent of the campus Stalinists was Margaret Shipley, who became Fiedler's girlfriend. Within a few months of knowing each other, Fiedler and Shipley decided to marry; Fiedler was 22 at the time. In the same year that he married Shipley, Fiedler received his MA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He attained his doctorate two years later.Among his professors at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Fiedler developed a special fondness for William Ellery Leonard
William Ellery Leonard
William Ellery Leonard was an American poet, playwright, translator, and literary scholar.-Early life:...
. Leonard oversaw Fiedler's thesis (a Marxist reading of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde
Troilus and Criseyde
Troilus and Criseyde is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer which re-tells in Middle English the tragic story of the lovers Troilus and Criseyde set against a backdrop of war in the Siege of Troy. It was composed using rime royale and probably completed during the mid 1380s. Many Chaucer scholars regard it...
) and his dissertation (an interpretation of Donne's poetry in relation to medieval thought).
First teaching appointment and Pearl Harbor
In 1941, Fiedler was offered a job as an assistant professor at the University of Montana in Missoula. It was in February of this year that his first son, Kurt Fiedler, was born two months prematurely. Fiedler was in the process of establishing himself in MontanaMontana
Montana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller, "island ranges" are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name,...
when Pearl Harbor
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
was bombed. Fiedler made the sudden decision to join the Navy. He was recruited and placed in a Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
-based training program for learning the Japanese language
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
. The Navy's intention was to use Fiedler as a translator for captured Japanese
Japanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
prisoners
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
.
Just before Fiedler left for Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor, known to Hawaiians as Puuloa, is a lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet...
as a lieutenant junior grade, his wife gave birth to his second son, Eric Ellery Fiedler. He would have four more children: Michael in 1947, Debbie in 1949, Jenny in 1952, and Miriam in 1955. But, as a translator of Japanese, Fiedler was present on Iwo Jima
Iwo Jima
Iwo Jima, officially , is an island of the Japanese Volcano Islands chain, which lie south of the Ogasawara Islands and together with them form the Ogasawara Archipelago. The island is located south of mainland Tokyo and administered as part of Ogasawara, one of eight villages of Tokyo...
for the raising of the American Flag on Mount Suribachi. After performing various translation-oriented duties, Fiedler was discharged in 1945. Although initially intending to return to the University of Montana, Fiedler was unexpectedly offered a position at Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
as a Rockefeller Fellow. He took a number of courses and became involved in the Harvard Poetry Society. Fiedler also occasionally taught portions of American Poetry classes pertaining to Jewish poets.
"Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey!"
Fiedler's first critical work appeared in 1948 and came about from his habit of reading American novels to his sons. The essay appeared in a journal called Partisan ReviewPartisan Review
Partisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:...
and was the subject of a great amount of critical debate and controversy. "Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey!" argued a recurrent theme in American literature was an unspoken or implied homoerotic relationship between men, famously using Huckleberry Finn
Huckleberry Finn (character)
Huckleberry "Huck" Finn is a fictional character created by Mark Twain, who first appeared in the book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and is the protagonist and narrator of its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He is 12 or 13 years old during the former and a year older at the time of the latter...
and Jim as examples. Pairs of men flee for wilderness rather than remain in the civilizing and domesticated world of women. Fiedler also deals with this male bonding in Love and Death in the American Novel (1960), Waiting for the End
Waiting for the End
"Waiting for the End" is a song by American rock band Linkin Park, released on October 1, 2010. It is the second single from their fourth studio album, A Thousand Suns, which was released on September 14, 2010...
(1964) and The Return of the Vanishing American (1968).
As Winchell wrote in his book on Fiedler, "Reading ‘Come Back to the Raft’ over half a century later, one tends to forget that, prior to Fiedler, few critics had discussed classic American literature
American literature
American literature is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States. During its early history, America was a series of British...
in terms of race, gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
, and sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
" (Winchell 53). Fiedler emphasized the fact the males paired in these wilderness adventures tend to be of different races as well, which created an additional critical dimension. "Come Back to the Raft" not only caused a stream of letters of protest to be sent to Partisan Review, but it also was attacked by the critical community. For instance, Queer theorist
Queer theory
Queer theory is a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of LGBT studies and feminist studies. Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself...
Christopher Looby
Christopher Looby
Christopher Looby is an American literary critic specializing in 18th and 19th century American literature. He is a Professor of English at UCLA.-Background:...
argues that Fiedler's claims were noticeably given from a 20th century, urban perspective and did not adequately address the time period in which Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in England in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by...
was written. (Cf. the debate on the sexuality of Abraham Lincoln
Sexuality of Abraham Lincoln
The sexual orientation of Abraham Lincoln is a topic of debate based on speculation of circumstantial events, a poem open to interpretation, common figures of speech used by Lincoln, his courting of several women, his marriage and children, and other information, with nothing conclusive to confirm...
.)
The Frontier, new criticism, and the early-1950s
After the end of his one-year tenure as a Rockefeller Fellow, Fiedler was offered jobs at the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, the University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
, and (once again) at the University of Montana. Fiedler decided to return to Missoula. Shortly after his return to Montana, he wrote another article that made him the subject of controversy, Montana; or the End of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Also published in the Partisan Review, the essay deals with the development of the frontier. Fiedler's argument includes descriptions of Montanans that were thought to be offensive to the actual residents of his community.
Through the late 1940s and early 1950s Fiedler was being published in several journals and was making himself known in the critical scene. His literary work appeared in Kenyon Review; he was also named the 1956 Kenyon Fellow in Criticism. Even though the Kenyon Review was a journal often associated with New Criticism
New Criticism
New Criticism was a movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic...
, Fiedler questioned the principles of New Criticism in his writing. Fiedler targets New Criticism in his well-known essay Archetype and Signature.
After a stint as a Fulbright lecturer
Fulbright Program
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright-Hays Program, is a program of competitive, merit-based grants for international educational exchange for students, scholars, teachers, professionals, scientists and artists, founded by United States Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946. Under the...
in the universities of Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
and Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
lasting from 1951 to 1953, Fiedler became the Chair of the Department of English in the University of Montana. He held this post from 1954 to 1956 during which time he fought against stalwart opposition to hire a black professor. In 1955, Fiedler's book An End to Innocence was published; it was concerned with the necessity for America as a nation to move from a state of innocence to a state of experience (or adulthood).
The mid- and late-1950s
In 1956, Fiedler's defense of native rights was recognized by the BlackfootBlackfoot
The Blackfoot Confederacy or Niitsítapi is the collective name of three First Nations in Alberta and one Native American tribe in Montana....
Indian tribe. He was honored with the name "Heavy Runner" and was made a chief. From 1956 to 1957, Fiedler was the Christian Gauss Lecturer at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
. During his time at Princeton, Fiedler frequently travelled to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
where he made connections in publishing, including with editors of Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
magazine.
It was in Esquire that Fiedler's controversial Nude Croquet was published in 1957. It was deemed offensive to the point that issues of the magazine had to be withdrawn from newsstands in Knoxville, Tennessee
Knoxville, Tennessee
Founded in 1786, Knoxville is the third-largest city in the U.S. state of Tennessee, U.S.A., behind Memphis and Nashville, and is the county seat of Knox County. It is the largest city in East Tennessee, and the second-largest city in the Appalachia region...
. In his book on Fiedler, Winchell describes the nature of the eroticism described in the story:
- "If we define pornographyPornographyPornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
as that which excites lust, Leslie's story is decidedly anti-pornographic in its almost clinical obsession with the sexual indignities of middle age" (Winchell, 148).
Love and Death in the American Novel and the early-1960s
It was in 1960 that Fiedler's most widely recognized book was published. Love and Death in the American Novel involves a deconstruction of the concept of the "great American novelGreat American Novel
The "Great American Novel" is the concept of a novel that is distinguished in both craft and theme as being the most accurate representative of the zeitgeist in the United States at the time of its writing. It is presumed to be written by an American author who is knowledgeable about the state,...
" and how it is both derivative of, and separate from, the established European novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
forms. The book offended many because of the manner in which Fiedler discusses the American literary tradition. A massive text of well over 600 pages, Love and Death in the American Novel eventually became the subject of revision by Fiedler. He produced a more streamlined, focused version of the book which was published in 1966.
In 1961, Fiedler become a Fulbright lecturer yet again, this time in Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
. His journey to Greece gave him the opportunity to see his brother Harold, who was the American consul
Consul
Consul was the highest elected office of the Roman Republic and an appointive office under the Empire. The title was also used in other city states and also revived in modern states, notably in the First French Republic...
in Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
. Soon after his one year stint in Athens was complete, Fiedler's first novel, The Second Stone was published (1963).
The University at Buffalo
In a move to create an exceptionally staffed English department, Albert Spaulding Cook, chairman of English at the University of BuffaloUniversity at Buffalo, The State University of New York
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, also commonly known as the University at Buffalo or UB, is a public research university and a "University Center" in the State University of New York system. The university was founded by Millard Fillmore in 1846. UB has multiple campuses...
, attempted to recruit various writers and critics from across the country in 1964. Fiedler was signed on to teach summer school in 1964 and was then offered a teaching position for a year. Even though he had been with the University of Montana for two decades, Fiedler moved on to the University at Buffalo's "all-star" teaching staff in 1965.
In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.
Drug charges
In 1967, after an involved police surveillance operation, Fiedler was arrested on the charge of maintaining premises where banned substances were being used. After having put his house under surveillance for six weeks, the narcotics squad obtained a search warrant. With only one day left in the warrant, the police raided the house and "found" small quantities of marijana and hashish. Marsha Van der Voort later testified under oath that she had planted the illegal substances just prior to the entrance of the police. Even though they had no direct evidence that Fiedler himself had used them, the evidence was sufficient for an arrest. The scandal was disastrous for Fiedler; his home insurance was canceled by two different providers, and the University of Amsterdam reversed their decision to have him as a Fulbright lecturer. While the legal case was ongoing, Fiedler managed to secure a position as visiting professor in the University of SussexUniversity of Sussex
The University of Sussex is an English public research university situated next to the East Sussex village of Falmer, within the city of Brighton and Hove. The University received its Royal Charter in August 1961....
.
Fiedler wrote Being Busted (released in 1969 and dedicated to his first grandson, Seth) about this experience (and his life as a whole); sales of the book helped him to pay his increasing legal expenses. In a trial on April 9, 1970, Fiedler was found guilty. After multiple appeals, the drug conviction was finally reversed in 1972.
In the same year, Fiedler also divorced his wife, to whom he had been married for 33 years. A year later, he married Sally Smith Anderson.
The 1970s
Fiedler steadily produced publications through the 1970s including The Messengers Will Come No More (1974), In Dreams Awake (1975), Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self (1978), and The Inadvertent Epic (1979). Throughout the decade, however, he also began to expand his horizons into the realms of television and Hollywood. He had appearances on The Merv Griffin ShowThe Merv Griffin Show
The Merv Griffin Show is an American television talk show, starring Merv Griffin. The series ran from October 1, 1962 to March 29, 1963 on NBC, September 20, 1965 to September 26, 1969 in first-run syndication, from August 18, 1969 to February 11, 1972 at 11:30 PM ET weeknights on CBS and again in...
, Today, Donahue
The Phil Donahue Show
The Phil Donahue Show, also known as Donahue, is an American television talk show that ran for 26 years on national television. Its run was preceded by three years of local broadcast in Dayton, Ohio, and it was broadcast nationwide between 1967 and 1996.In 2002, Donahue was ranked #29 on TV Guide's...
, Tomorrow
Tomorrow (TV series)
Tomorrow was an American late-night television talk show hosted by Tom Snyder...
, and William F. Buckley, Jr.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
's show, Firing Line
Firing Line
Firing Line was an American public affairs show founded and hosted by conservative William F. Buckley, Jr. Its 1,504 episodes over 33 years made Firing Line the longest-running public affairs show in television history with a single host...
. He was even cast in the low-budget fantasy film When I Am King (1978) that was never released. Fiedler was invited to Hollywood parties through his connections and met Burgess Meredith
Burgess Meredith
Oliver Burgess Meredith , known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor in theatre, film, and television, who also worked as a director...
, Carroll O'Connor
Carroll O'Connor
John Carroll O'Connor best known as Carroll O'Connor, was an American actor, producer and director whose television career spanned four decades...
and Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine is an American film and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author, well-known for her beliefs in new age spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career...
among others.
The 1980s and beyond
In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Fiedler began to seriously undertake the enterprise of pop culture criticismPopular culture studies
Popular culture studies is the academic discipline studying popular culture from a critical theory perspective. It is generally considered as a combination of communication studies and cultural studies....
, with an emphasis on science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
. Fiedler even wrote a book devoted to the critical assessment of science fiction in 1983: Olaf Stapledon: A Man Divided and recruited critic and science fiction author Samuel R. Delany
Samuel R. Delany
Samuel Ray Delany, Jr., also known as "Chip" is an American author, professor and literary critic. His work includes a number of novels, many in the science fiction genre, as well as memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society.His science fiction novels include Babel-17, The Einstein...
to teach at SUNY Buffalo. In 1988, Fiedler was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and in 1989, he received the Chancellor Charles P. Norton Medal.
In the 1990s, Fiedler's output decreased and new material was sporadic. In 1994, Fiedler received the Hubbell Medal for lifetime contribution to the study of literature. In 1998, Fiedler was given the National Book Critics Circle
National Book Critics Circle
The National Book Critics Circle is an American tax-exempt organization for active book reviewers. Its flagship is the National Book Critics Circle Award....
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. On January 30, 2003, a month before his 86th birthday, he died in Buffalo.
Works
- "Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey!" (1948)
- An End to Innocence: Essays on Culture and Politics (1955)
- Whitman (1959) (editor)
- The Jew in the American Novel (1959) Herzl Institute pamphlet
- No! In Thunder: Essays on Myth and Literature (1960)
- Love and Death in the American Novel (1960)
- Nude Croquet (1960) (stories, with others)
- The Riddle of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1962) with R. P. BlackmurR. P. BlackmurRichard Palmer Blackmur was an American literary critic and poet. He was born and grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. An autodidact, Blackmur worked in a bookshop after graduating from high school, and attended lectures at Harvard University without enrolling...
, Northrop FryeNorthrop FryeHerman Northrop Frye, was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century....
, Edward Hubler, Stephen SpenderStephen SpenderSir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
, Oscar WildeOscar WildeOscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s... - Pull Down Vanity (1962) stories
- The Second Stone: A Love Story (1963) novel
- A Literary Guide to Seduction (1963) with Robert Meister
- The Continuing Debate: Essays on Education for Freshmen (1964) with Jacob Vinocur
- Waiting for the End: The American Literary Scene from Hemingway to Baldwin (1964)
- Back to China (1965) novel
- The Last Jew in America (1966) stories
- The Return of the Vanishing American (1968)
- O Brave New World American Literature from 1600 – 1840 (1968) editor with Arthur Zeiger, City University of New York.
- Being Busted (1969)
- Nude Croquet: The Stories (1969)
- The Art of the Essay (1969) editor
- Cross the Border — Close the Gap (1972),
- Unfinished Business (1972) essays
- Collected Essays of Leslie Fiedler (1972)
- To the Gentiles (1972)
- The Stranger in Shakespeare (1972)
- Beyond The Looking Glass: Extraordinary Works of Fairy Tale and Fantasy (1973) editor, with Jonathan Cott
- "Rebirth of God, The Death of Man", an essay in Salmagundi: A Quarterly of the Humanities & Social Sciences, Winter, 1973, No.21,pp. 3–27.
- The Messengers Will Come No More (1974)
- In Dreams Awake: A Historical-Critical Anthology of Science Fiction (1975, editor)
- A Fiedler Reader (1977)
- The Inadvertent Epic: From Uncle Tom's Cabin to Roots (1978) Massey LectureMassey LecturesThe Massey Lectures are an annual week-long series of lectures on a political, cultural or philosophical topic given in Canada by a noted scholar. They were created in 1961 to honour Vincent Massey, Governor General of Canada...
- Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self (1978)
- English Literature: Opening Up the Canon, Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1979, New Series #4, edited by Leslie A. Fiedler and Houston A. Baker Jr., Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.
- What was literature?: Class Culture And Mass Society (1982)
- Buffalo Bill and the Wild West (1982)
- Olaf Stapledon: A Man Divided (1983)
- Fiedler on the Roof: Essays on Literature and Jewish Identity (1991)
- The Tyranny of the Normal: Essays on Bioethics, Theology & Myth (1996)
- A New Fiedler Reader (1999)
By Fiedler
- "The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic."
- "To be an American (unlike being English or French or whatever) is precisely to imagine a destiny rather than to inherit one; since we have always been, insofar as we are Americans at all, inhabitants of myth rather than history."
About Fiedler
- "Leslie Fiedler is the "BEST" thing that ever happened to American literature." – Saul BellowSaul BellowSaul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
- Re: The Second Stone, "A triumph in any terms, bawdy, satirical, and compassionate." - Kansas City Star
- Re: Love and Death in the American Novel, Revised, 1966 Edition. "One of the great, essential books on the American imagination . . . an accepted major work." -The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
- Fiedler is portrayed as the sex-obsessed mid-western critic Myron Masterton by Frederick C. CrewsFrederick C. CrewsFrederick Campbell Crews is an award-winning American essayist, literary critic, author, and Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley. He received popular attention for The Pooh Perplex, a book of satirical essays parodying contemporary casebooks...
in his satire of then current literary criticism The Pooh Perplex: A Student Casebook (1963).