[In Love and Death in the American Novel, Professor Leslie Fiedler] is not content with one or two or even a handful of his country's novelists; he embraces them all—or all that he considers of value—and relates them to his overriding theme. And, for good measure, he adds to them the Provençal poets, Samuel Richardson, "Monk" Lewis, Sir Walter Scott, Rousseau, Goethe, and several more. He has written a long book. Nor is he content with a scholarly audience; he reaches out to the general public, for what he has to say bears not only upon the American novel but upon "the American Experience", so inextricably entangled are literature and life. And throwing aside the caution and reticence that are commonly supposed to characterize the scholar, he speaks "with his own mouth out of his own face". He addresses us, he says, without a mask...