Best known for his studies of the American novel, Leslie A. Fiedler brings a distinctive mixture of psychological, political, and sociological concerns to bear on the description and analysis of American culture. Fiedler persistently locates himself outside standard scholarly discourse in order to speculate on the wishes and guilt feelings embodied in cultural artifacts. He has sometimes indulged his need to twit the academics to maintain his reputation as a maverick, but it is based on the firm belief that literature, which is beyond good and evil, cannot be tamed to flatter the civilities of the middlebrow. Fiedler's allegiance is given to those works of literature offering archetypal images or narratives that represent the culture's deepest understanding of itself.

Fiedler has worked hard to make his own career archetypal: the writer as resident alien. He is certainly one of the few American literary critics known to a wider...