One cannot help asking just whom Fiedler was trying to put on when he wrote ["Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey"]—just as the same question needs to be asked with each ensuing volume of his studies in "literary anthropology," as Fiedler has frequently referred to his work. There has always been an element of absurdity or shock in Fiedler's work, and at times it is impossible not to wonder if Fiedler takes his own work seriously. (p. 133)

Reading over Fiedler's collected literary criticism, from An End of Innocence in 1955 to his … The Return of the Vanishing American in 1968, one cannot help being upset by the great number of generalizations, repetitions, and strained conclusions which so often have marred his frequently brilliant commentaries on American fiction. Yet, one cannot help thinking that Fiedler, as critic of the hip school of American criticism, and as guru of...