In a somewhat rambling series of essays [What Was Literature?: Class Culture and Mass Society]—partly analytical, partly polemical, and partly autobiographical—Fiedler argues that traditional approaches to and standards of literature have become obsolete. Suggesting that a criticism which ignores or condescends to Uncle Tom's Cabin, Longfellow, Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind, soap operas, Roots, et alia can have little to say about American culture. Fiedler tries to sweep the decks clean for a truly relevant approach. He proposes no clear methodology, however, and appears to equate taste with the twitches of the autonomic nervous system, and value with mass popularity. A little weary, sometimes self-contradictory and repetitive, Fiedler's arguments are sporadically lively, always intelligent. They can still provoke and entertain—if only on style alone.

Earl Rovit, "Literature: 'What Was Literature?: Class Culture and Mass Society'," in Library Journal (reprinted from Library Journal...