Mark Royden Winchell - Too Good to Be True: The Life and Work of Leslie Fiedler

Copyright 2002 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved 5 4 3 2 1 06 05 04 03 02

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Winchell, Mark Royden, 1948 Too good to be true : the life and work of Leslie Fiedler / Mark Royden Winchell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8262-1389-8 (alk. paper) 1. Fiedler, Leslie A. 2. CriticismUnited StatesHistory20th century. 3. Authors, American20th centuryBiography. 4. CriticsUnited StatesBiography. I. Title. PS3556.134 Z944 2002 810.9dc21 [B] 2002024564

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Frontispiece: Leslie in Kyoto, Japan, in the late 1980s

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T H I S B O O K is written in response to the conundrum suggested by the epigraphs with which it begins. The contributions of Leslie Fiedler should command considerable space in any objective history of American criticism during the second half of the twentieth century. In a sense, Fiedler has had four overlapping careers. He first came to prominence as one of the premier Jewish intellectuals of the postwar erawriting on literature, culture, and politics in such magazines as Partisan Review and Commentary. At approximately the same time, he was helping to lead the attack that myth criticism was mounting on the hegemony of the New Criticism (often, as it turns out, in the presumed house journals of the New Critics themselves). Although Northrop Frye has constructed a more comprehensive system of myth criticism, Fiedler has made more practical use of this approach in judging particular texts and in explaining the importance of song and story in human experience. Had he stopped writing entirely in 1960, Fiedler would still be remembered as an important cultural critic of the fifties.

With his brash and groundbreaking magnum opus, Love and Death in the American Novel (1960, rev. 1966), Fiedler established himself as a revolutionary interpreter of our native literary tradition. Subsequent critics of American literature have either had to adopt or attack his positions (sometimes doing both at the same time). Simply to ignore them has been nearly impossible. In this third (and most significant) of his careers, Fiedler changed the terms in which we discuss the American novel to a greater extent than anyone writing before or since.

Not content with reinterpreting the past and analyzing the present, Fiedler has tried to chart the future of our culture. He was one of the first critics to proclaim the death of modernism and to suggest some of the directions that literature might take in its aftermath. (The Oxford English Dictionary credits him with being the first individual to apply the term postmodernism to literature.) This fact alone was enough to earn him the enmity of many who had built their careers on the assumption that modernism would last forever or at least outlive them.

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Although his admirers have always appreciated the breadth of Fiedler's achievement, the academic clerisy has frequently seen him as a gadfly and dilettante. His lack of solemnity and his wild flights of imagination have made him seem like an amateur among professionals (a charge to which he gladly pleads guilty). No one who enjoys himself that much could possibly be taken seriously. To compound matters, he is one of the favorite critics of young people and non-English majors. Also, unlike more conventional revolutionaries, he has managed to remain disreputable, even as his once controversial views have become received wisdom. Like Huck, returned to the raft from the fog, he often seems too good to be true.

I first became acquainted with Fiedler's achievement in an undergraduate course in literary criticism, which I took in the spring of 1970. Then, in 1985, I published a brief introduction to his writing in Twayne's United States Authors Series. It became apparent to me at the time that a much fuller treatment of his life and work was needed. The present volume is based on extensive interviews and other research conducted well after my earlier book went out of print. The primary connection between the two studies is my abiding interest in Leslie Fiedler as an influential and provocative critic, who has made a profound difference in American literary studies.

As with any prolific writer, Fiedler's performance has been uneven. I have not sought to write a hagiography. Nevertheless, the opportunity to return to his work is a pleasure for all who enjoy the life of the mind. Fiedler, even when he seems to be in the wrong, is more engaging than most critics when they seem to be in the right. Perhaps because he is someone to whom literature has actually happened, readers of Fiedler are particularly curious to know something about the man behind the words. In thinking of Leslie Fiedler, I am reminded of Holden Caulfield's assertion: What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author who wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up whenever you felt like it. Fiedler is one of the few academics who has that kind of effect on readers. In lieu of his phone number, I offer this account of his remarkable life.

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T H I S B O O K would not have been possible without the assistance of many generous people. Leslie Fiedler's secretary, Joyce Troy, provided many helpful documents and consented to a personal interview. In addition to granting an interview, Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian also supplied several photographs that are used with permission and gratitude. James M. Cox read and commented on this book in manuscript, and William Empson's biographer, John Haffenden, supplied valuable information concerning Empson's life. David Ritter devoted many hours to proofreading the text, and he and Cari Carter assisted in preparing the index. As always, I received encouragement and support from my wife, Donna, and my sons, Jonathan and Matthew.