The Devil Gets His Due: The Uncollected Essays

345 Pages·2008·12.531 MB·English

by  Leslie Fiedler, Samuele F. S. Pardini (ed.)

t U.S. $26.00
h

e devil
the LESLI E FIE DLER
d was:
gets
e credited by the Oxford English Dictionary as the
first person to use the term “postmodernism” in
v
literature
his due
The uncollected essays of
i the author of Love and Death in the American Novel,
l LESLIE “one of the great, essential books on the American
imagination,” according to the New York Times
praise for leslie fiedler
g Book Review
e FIEDLER
“Fiedler was the original chest-thumping extrovert of American criticism, the victim of a police drug frame-up in 1967, as
t
and no one ever did it better.” —Slate described in his book Being Busted
s

a frequent guest on The Merv Griffin Show, Today,
“One of the most daring skinny-dippers in U.S. literary and social criticism h Donahue, and William F. Buckley, Jr.’s Firing Line
LESLIE FIEDLER … Fiedler has boldly led his readers down whirlpools of the national i
received a Lifetime Achieve- s “the worst fucking thing that ever happened to
subconscious.” —Time
ment Award from the National Book Critics Circle in American literature.” —Saul Bellow
1998. He died in 2003, a month before his 86th birthday. d
“A scandalous interpreter of American literature and an all-around intel- the subject of an effort by Meadow Soprano to
u explain his theory about the homoerotic subtext of
Samuele F. S. Pardini teaches at Elon University in lectual wild man.” —Chronicle of Higher Education
Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd” to her mother Car-
North Carolina, where he lives with his wife Tara and
mella on a certain hit HBO series
e
their son Dante. “Fiedler’s masterpiece Love and Death in the American Novel [is] usually re-
“leaning over the American moonlight / like the shy-
garded … as one of the few indispensable works in the field. But Fiedler’s
est gargoyle / who will not become angry or old.”
ideas resonated far beyond the academy to echo throughout American
—Leonard Cohen
culture … [An] indelible, invaluable critic.” —Bookforum EL
d
iE a fellow of the American Academy and Institute of
t
e Arts and Letters and the recipient, in 1989, of that
“It is impossible to read Leslie Fiedler’s criticism without a sense of awe dS
institution’s Chancellor Charles P. Norton Medal
b
and excitement.” —Los Angeles Times yL
SI the recipient of the Hubbell Medal for lifetime con-
aE tribution to the study of literature
m

u
eF Tackling subjects ranging widely from Dante, Ezra
l
eI Pound, and Mary McCarthy to Rambo, Iwo Jima, and

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. Jerry Lewis, these writings showcase Fiedler’s pioneer-

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ing of an egalitarian canon that encompassed both
.
ISBN (10) 1-59376-188-0 PL “high” and popular literature, from science fiction and
ISBN (13) 978-1-59376-188-2 a
rE cinema to history. As such, they show a powerful mind
d
inR critiquing whole aspects of a culture and uncovering les-
i sons therein that remain startling and valuable today.
An introduction by Professor Samuele F. S. Pardini
samuele f. s. pardini offers both context and history, with an in-depth profile
edited by
of Fiedler and his career as a literary critic and a public
Counterpoint www.counterpointpress.com
counterpoint
intellectual.
Distributed by Publishers Group West
Author photo courtesy of Sally Fiedler
Jacket by Jacob McMurray
the devil gets his due
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The·Devil
Gets·His·Due
The Uncollected Essays of
LESLIE FIEDLER
Edited by Samuele F. S. Pardini
COUNTERPOINT  berkeley
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Copyright © 2008 by the Estate of Leslie Fiedler
Editing and Introduction © 2008 by Samuele F. S. Pardini
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions.
Every effort has been made to secure permissions. We regret
any inadvertent omission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fiedler, Leslie A.
The devil gets his due : the uncollected essays of Leslie Fiedler / Leslie Fiedler;
edited by Samuele F. S. Pardini.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
isbn-13: 978-1-59376-188-2
isbn-10: 1-59376-188-0
1. American literature—History and criticism. 2. English literature—History
and criticism. 3. Popular literature—United States—History and criticism.
4. Literature—Philosophy. 5. Popular culture—Philosophy. I. Pardini, Samuele F. S.
II. Title.
ps3556.i34d48 2008
814'.54—dc22 2007044754
Cover design by Jacob McMurray
Interior design by David Bullen
Printed in the United States of America
counterpoint
2117 Fourth Street
Suite D
Berkeley, CA 94710
www.counterpointpress.com
Distributed by Publishers Group West
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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To Tara and Dante
“L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle”
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction
Sympathy for the Devil. Looking Backward for a New Tradition.
by Samuele F. S. Pardini xiii
Toward an Amateur Criticism 3
“Giving the Devil His Due” 13
Explication de Texte Inferno Canto XXVI 25
D. H. Lawrence on D. H. Lawrence As Told to Leslie A. Fiedler 34
The Deerslayer 37
Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey! 46
New England and the Invention of the South 54
Huckleberry Finn: The Book We Love to Hate 64
“As Free as Any Cretur . . .” 77
1601 86
Is Shakespeare Dead? 92
The State of Writing 99
Edmund Wilson’s Criticism: A Re-examination 104
The Ordeal of Criticism 107
Love is not Enough 111
The Intellectual Roots of Anti-Intellectualism 115
A Fortyish View 120
Intellectual Uncles 125
The Canon and the Classroom: A Caveat 128
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Ezra Pound: The Poet as Parodist 136
Francis Scott Fitzgerald 148
Pop Goes the Faulkner: In Quest of Sanctuary 149
Looking Back After 50 Years 162
Robert Penn Warren: A Final Word 172
Capote’s Tale 181
The City and the Writer 183
Style and Anti-Style in the Short Story 187
The Higher Unfairness 199
Encounter with Death 202
A Homosexual Dilemma 204
The Noble Savages of Skid Row 207
Up from Adolescence 210
The Divine Stupidity of Kurt Vonnegut: Portrait of the
Novelist as Bridge over Troubled Water 215
Notes on Philip José Farmer 230
The Return of James Branch Cabell; Or, the Cream of
the Cream of the Jest 236
Who Really Died in Vietnam? The Cost in Human Lives 246
James Fenimore Cooper: The Problem of the Bad
Good Writer 252
Mythicizing the Unspeakable 263
The Legend 274
Getting It Right: The Flag Raisings at Iwo Jima 282
Mythicizing the City 296
Whatever Happened to Jerry Lewis? That’s Amore . . . 304
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to the following people for helping with this project: first and foremost
my “caro maestro” Leslie Aaron Fiedler, for his friendship, his teaching, and for
writing until the very end of the journey; Sally Fiedler for granting permission
for the essays and for keeping the door open—always; Geoffrey Green, for his
suggestions, advice, encouragement and, more importantly, for his friendship;
Lawrence P. Rapp and Joyce Troy for compiling and updating a bibliography
of Leslie Fiedler’s works; the librarians of the Lockwood Library at SUNY Buf-
falo, of the Jean and Alexander Heard Library at Vanderbilt University, and of
the Belk Library at Elon University; Matthew Schwartz, the hardest-working
man in the copyright business; Luke Gerwe, the hardest-working man in the
copyediting business; my very patient and dedicated editor at Counterpoint/
Soft Skull Press and fellow immigrant Richard Nash, “Erin go bragh”; Roxanna
Aliaga who can pronounce my first name, and everybody else at Counter-
point/Soft Skull Press; Dr. Frank Haraf, Jr. and Dr. Jill Roberts, who help turn
people’s hopes into reality; my parents, Giorgio and Dania Pardini, and my
brother Stefano and his family for their continued support over the years; Tara
and Dante Leslie Pardini, for their patient support (including the help with the
title!), and for the love and joy they bring into my life every day.
Publication credits: “Toward an Amateur Criticism,” The Kenyon Review,
vol. 12, no. 4, Autumn 1950. Reprinted by permission of The Kenyon Review;
“ ‘Giving the Devil His Due,’ ” The Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 12, no. 2,
1979. Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishing; “Explication de Texte
Inferno Canto XXVI,” New Directions, 1942. Reprinted by permission of the
author’s estate; “D. H. Lawrence on D. H. Lawrence As Told to Leslie A. Fiedler,”
The New Leader, December 1953. Reprinted by permission of The New Leader;
“Introduction” by Leslie Fiedler to The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper
(Modern Library, 2002). Reprinted by permission of Modern Library, a divi-
sion of Random House, Inc.; “Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey!”,
The Partisan Review Collection, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center
at Boston University. Reprinted by permission of Boston University; “New
England and the Invention of the South,” American Literature: The New En-
gland Heritage, eds. James Nagel and Richard Astro (Garland Publishing,
1981). Reprinted by permission of James Nagel; “Huckleberry Finn: The Book
ix
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