Leslie Fiedler takes his title [No! In Thunder] from a comment Melville made about Hawthorne: "There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says No! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say Yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,—why, they are the travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpetbag—that is to say, the Ego."

That is a stirring declaration, and probably it is true of the greatest art. It is true of Donne's best love poems, of Flaubert's Emma Bovary, Conrad's "Nostromo," Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury," or Camus's "The Stranger." No flicker of affirmation is allowed, except the ironic one that comes of itself after the worst has been confronted….

One side of Fiedler's mind seems honestly drawn to Melville's commitment to "No! in thunder." The...