There is something haunting and magical about Leslie Fiedler's criticism. We are, of course, familiar with the general outlines: its relentless probing into our culture's deepest dreams, its teasing mixture of bookish learning and urban horse sense, its sheer passion. What continues to fascinate us, though, is the uneasy feeling that we may have become better readers of Love and Death in the American Novel than we have of American novels. After all, Jim never says "Come back to the raft ag'in, Huck honey!"—but the line sticks in our collective unconscious as if it were his remark rather than the title of Fiedler's famous article. Critics aren't expected to dream so richly or so well. But that is precisely the difference between Fiedler and his imitators. Like a very good poem, his criticism has the capacity first to surprise and then to convince.

The Inadvertent Epic is...