Leslie A. Fiedler

"No other study of the American novel has such fascinating and on the whole right things to say."—Washington Post

Love and Death in the American Novel

Nude Croquet

Waiting for the End

 Myths and Images of the Secret Self

Freaks

The poet, novelist, essayist, and professor comments on the ethics of organ transplants, the cultural images of medical professionals, the relationship between literature and child abuse, New Age spirituality, impotence, and deformity

Essays on Bioethics, Theology & Myth

Tyranny of the Normal

A Love Story

The Second Stone

For more than 50 years, Leslie Fiedler played a pivotal role in the development of American literary culture. Despite his often unacknowledged influence, the academy, intellectuals, and the general audience in America and abroad still read his work and draw on its concepts. The essays in The Devil Gets His Due reacquaint readers with the depth and breadth of Fiedler's achievements. Tackling subjects ranging wildly from Dante, Ezra Pound, and Mary McCarthy to Rambo, Iwo Jima, and Jerry Lewis, these writings showcase Fiedler's pioneering of an egalitarian canon that encompassed both ?high” and popular literature, cinema, and history. As such, they show a powerful mind critiquing whole aspects of a culture and uncovering lessons therein that remain timely today. A lengthy introduction by Professor Samuele F. S. Pardini offers both context and history, with an in-depth profile of Fiedler and his career as both a literary critic and a public intellectual.

The Uncollected Essays of Leslie Fiedler

The Devil Gets His Due

Myths and Images of the Secret Self

The Return of the Vanishing American

The Stories of Leslie A. Fiedler

Discusses Uncle Tom's cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Gone with the wind by Margaret Mitchell, Roots by Alex Haley, and the novels of Thomas Dixon Jr.

From Uncle Tom's Cabin to Roots

The Inadvertent Epic

Samuel Langhorne CLEMENS

The Innocents Abroad ... With an Afterword by Leslie A. Fiedler

Essays on Culture and Politics

An End to Innocence

One of the most imaginative figures to emerge from the science fiction field. Olaf Stapledon left an indelible mark on many other writers, from Arthur C. Clarke to Saul Bellows, but never won a mass following himself. This study by a renowned American literary critic provides a long-needed introduction to the life and work of the man Brian Aldiss called "the great classical example, the cold pitch of perfection as he turns scientific concepts into ontological epic prose poems, the ultimate science fiction writer." Probing the recurrent themes and images of Stapledon's novels -- which include Last and First Men, Odd John, Star Maker, and Sirius -- Leslie A. Fiedler brilliantly illuminates the complexity and richness that underlie Stapledon's fiction. As Fiedler demonstrates, Stapledon was very much a product of the 1930s, embracing a set of leftist attitudes that were common to many other "Oxbridge-educated sons of the English upper classes." But, as Fiedler further shows, there is much more to Stapleton's books than their superficial ideological content: his works are unique in their awe-inspiring vision of the breadth of the physical universe and the depths of the human psyche. "Certainly since encountering him," Fielder writes, "I have never been able to stare up at thee night sky with the same secure faith that either God exists or he does not; anymore than I have been able between sleeping and waking to be sure that the nighttime "I" preparing to dream is identical with or totally different from the conscious "I" about to surrender its dominion."

Olaf Stapledon, a Man Divided

From two-headed men and dwarfs to Siamese twins, the phenomenon of the freak has fascinated people for centuries. In this classic study of the very nature of that fascination, the renowned literary and cultural critic Fiedler offers an in-depth examination of man's views of the freak from classical times to present. 150 photos and line drawings.

Qual è l'origine dei miti americani? In che modo la storia antropologica del Nuovo mondo, a partire dalla scoperta di Colombo fino ai nostri giorni, si intreccia al suo racconto letterario e, in tempi più recenti, cinematografico? Questo saggio di Leslie A. Fiedler, uscito nell'edizione italiana all'inizio degli anni Settanta e ormai diventato un classico, indaga a fondo «quella peculiare forma di follia che consiste nel sognare e raggiungere il West»: gli archetipi della frontiera, della corsa all'Ovest, della contrapposizione violenta fra «pellerossa» e «visopallido», ma anche dell'incontro con «l'altro» come conoscenza e iniziazione. Risalendo all'antichità, passando per Dante e Shakespeare, fino a Fenimore Cooper, Twain, Hemingway e Frost, Fiedler ridisegna la figura dell'«indiano», anomalia antropologica che mai si è lasciata tradurre nei termini dell'Occidente europeo e poi americano, e per questo additata con orrore e poi sterminata, anche se la letteratura ci offre opzioni più sfaccettate e ambivalenti. La letteratura e il cinema western hanno tentato - invano, come dimostra Fiedler attraverso una carrellata di figure emblematiche, Pocahontas su tutte - di trasfigurare i miti fondatori dell'America e di cancellarne le premesse innominabili. Come incubi che riemergono dall'inconscio collettivo di un popolo, parole e immagini non possono reprimere la tragedia del genocidio, la distruzione di quei «selvaggi» che non intendevano piegarsi all'ordine imposto dall'uomo bianco: «Ciò che noi continuiamo a vivere e rivivere sugli schermi cinematografici e televisivi. è la leggenda della loro fine, che in qualche modo. riusciamo a sentire come la nostra fine, in quanto abbiamo in comune col nemico vinto un'unica cosa: la leggenda dell''americano disparente'».

Mito e letteratura in America

Il ritorno del pellerossa

A child describes her experiences feeding a deer family in the winter.

Leslie A. Fiedler

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