Leslie Fiedler

[David Morris]

>From: Terrance Flaherty <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>
>Leslie Fiedler, discussing the homosexual-pastoral nature of most American 
>fiction, points out in An End to Innocence (1948) that Ishmael, the 
>narrator of Moby Dick (1851), and Queequeg, the cannibal, are "ambiguously 
>intertwined" in bed when they awake at the Spouter Inn.

Thanks for mentioning Leslie Fiedler:

http://www.centerforbookculture.org/dalkey/backlist/fiedler.html

"A retrospective article on Leslie Fiedler in the New York Times Book Review 
in 1965 referred to Love and Death in the American Novel as "one of the 
great, essential books on the American imagination . . . an accepted major 
work." This groundbreaking work views in depth both American literature and 
character from the time of the American Revolution to the present. From it, 
there emerges Fiedler's once scandalous--now increasingly accepted--judgment 
that our literature is incapable of dealing with adult sexuality and is 
pathologically obsessed with death."

http://www.godine.com/essays.html#cell322

"Tyranny of the Normal
Essays on Bioethics, Theology & Myth
by Leslie Fiedler

This is a bold new collection of essays from Leslie Fiedler, one of 
America’s most brilliant literary and social critics. Wound together by the 
common threadof bioethics, they encompass such issues as abortion, the 
removal of life support (or as Fiedler says, “permitting the imperfect to 
die”), the role that doctors play in our society, the trend back to herbal 
medicine, and how we confront (or try not to confront) old age and Eros.

Fiedler speaks of bioethics not as a health-care professional, but as a 
passionate, well-informed amateur. A literary critic, he brings particular 
breadth to the topic, using it as a window through which to examine the 
mythology of abnormality in our society. His examples are culled from 
history, from personal experience, and from those works that have most 
penetrated our culture, our attitudes, even our collective subconscious: 
whether acknowledged literary classics (Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 
Hyde, the works of Dickens and Shakespeare) or more popular entertainments, 
such and Ken Kesey’s “youth novel” One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest and the 
enormously successful television shows Marcus Welby, M.D. and E.R. As in his 
earlier book, the bestselling Freaks, Fiedler’s concern her is with the 
Other, the individual who does not fit withing society’s parameters of 
“normalcy” and so becomes the Outsider — even as that individual 
uncomfortably challenges many of our cherished assumptions about our 
capacities for civilization and tolerance. Frequently controversial, at time 
infuriating, these essays will anger parties on all sides of these debates. 
But they will also appeal to anyone who appreciates the unorthodox insights 
of an inquisitve and voracious mind."





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