Leslie A. Fiedler (1917-2003) was an influential American literary critic. Well known for Love and Death in the American Novel (1960), Fiedler penned many other works and was also a teacher. He was heavily interested in mythology and advocated genre fiction.
Fiction
Winter 1990
What Used to Be Called Dead
We laid the Old Man on the pallet because he could not stand always on his feet as all men have now learned to do. Once all men had been […]
Nonfiction
Winter 1964
A Kind of Solution: The Situation of Poetry Now
What then of poetry in 1963? What of the so-called “Beat Movement” in verse and the unforeseen triumphs of certain poets as cabaret entertainers—with or without benefit of jazz backgrounds […]
Nonfiction
Spring 1956
Green Thoughts in a Green Shade: Reflections on the Stony Sestina of Dante Alighieri
I have dreamed for many years now of rescuing from silence and misunderstanding the sestina of Dante which begins Al poco giorno e al gran cerchio d’ombra. But each time […]
Fiction
Spring 1955
The Dancing of Reb Hershl with the Withered Hand
It was in the time of my grandfather that the small but prosperous Jewish community of M. was threatened with extinction. My grandfather had known as a young man many […]
Nonfiction
Autumn 1954
Introducing Cesare Pavese
At the moment when Italy is becoming for us a country of the imagination, a contemporary cultural fact for the first time in perhaps fifty years, we have a special […]
Drama
Autumn 1953
The Bearded Virgin and the Blind God
The Argument It is told of the only bearded female saint that, despite her conversion to Christianity, she was destined by her pagan father to marry a pagan husband. Praying […]
Nonfiction
Summer 1952
Italian Pilgrimage: The Discovery of America
For shipboard reading en route to Italy, I took along with me The Marble Faun. It was a toss-up between that and Innocents Abroad. There seemed no use in trying […]
Book Reviews
Autumn 1951
The Critic’s Excluded Middle
The Novel in France by Martin Turnell. New Directions. $4.25. The positive values of Martin Turnell’s study are the fundamental values of all criticism that deserves even to be dissented […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1951
Style and Anti-Style in the Short Story
The Short Stories of Conrad Aiken. Duell, Sloan and Pierce. $3.00. The Injustice Collectors by Louis Auchincloss. Houghton Mifflin. $2.50. The Delicate Prey by Paul Bowles. Random House. $3.00. Prize […]
My Credo: A Symposium of Critics
Autumn 1950
I. Toward An Amateur Criticism
Looking back over my own brief critical practice, I find that it has been rather consistently based on presuppositions fashionably called “obscurantist.” Though not always consciously, I have been searching […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1948
The Fate of the Novel
The Mote and the Beam by Percy Winner. Harcourt Brace. $3.00. A Flask for the Journey by F. L. Green. Reynal & Hitchcock. $3.00. Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman […]
Book Reviews
Spring 1948
Mann and His Critics
The Stature of Thomas Mann edited by Charles Neider. New Directions. $5.00 One is always a little reluctant to begin by saying of a book—it is bad. One will […]
The Kenyon Review Credos
Toward an Amateur Criticism
From The Kenyon Review, Autumn 1950, Vol. XII, No. 4 Looking back over my own brief critical practice, I find that it has been rather consistently based on presuppositions fashionably […]