Background
Leslie Fiedler was born on March 8, 1917, in Newark, New Jersey, United States. He was the son of Jacob Fiedler and Lillian Rosenstrauch.
Madison, WI, United States
Fiedler attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he got a Master of Arts in 1939 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1941.
Cambridge, MA, United States
Fiedler did research at Harvard University.
(A retrospective article on Leslie Fiedler in the New York...)
A retrospective article on Leslie Fiedler in the New York Times Book Review in 1965 referred to Love and Death in the American Novel as "one of the great, essential books on the American imagination... an accepted major work." This groundbreaking work views in depth both American literature and character from the time of the American Revolution to the present. From it, there emerges Fiedler’s once scandalous - now increasingly accepted - judgment that our literature is incapable of dealing with adult sexuality and is pathologically obsessed with death.
https://www.amazon.com/Death-American-Novel-Leslie-Fiedler/dp/1564781631/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Leslie+Fiedler&qid=1595940674&sr=8-1
1960
(From two-headed men and dwarfs to Siamese twins, the phen...)
From two-headed men and dwarfs to Siamese twins, the phenomenon of the freak has fascinated people for centuries. In this classic study of the very nature of that fascination, the renowned literary and cultural critic Fiedler offers an in-depth examination of man's views of the freak from classical times to present.
https://www.amazon.com/Freaks-Myths-images-secret-Touchstone/dp/0671225057/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Leslie+Fiedler+Freaks%3A+Myths+and+Images+of+the+Secret+Self&qid=1595940933&sr=8-1
1978
critic educator novelist author poet
Leslie Fiedler was born on March 8, 1917, in Newark, New Jersey, United States. He was the son of Jacob Fiedler and Lillian Rosenstrauch.
Fiedler attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he got a Master of Arts in 1939 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1941, and, after service in the United States Naval Reserve from 1942 to 1946, he did further research at Harvard University.
After a stint as a Fulbright lecturer in the universities of Rome and Bologna lasting from 1951 to 1953, Leslie Fiedler taught at the University of Montana, from 1941 through 1964. He served as chairman of the English department from 1954 to 1956. In 1956, Fiedler's defense of native rights was recognized by the Blackfoot Indian tribe. He was honored with the name "Heavy Runner" and was made a chief.
From 1956 to 1957, Fiedler was the Christian Gauss Lecturer at Princeton University. During his time at Princeton, Fiedler frequently traveled to New York where he made connections in publishing, including with editors of Esquire magazine. It was in Esquire that Fiedler's controversial "Nude Croquet" was published in 1957. It was deemed offensive to the point that issues of the magazine had to be withdrawn from newsstands in Knoxville, Tennessee.
It was in 1960 that Fiedler's most widely recognized book was published. "Love and Death in the American Novel" involves a deconstruction of the concept of the "great American novel" and how it is both derivatives of, and separate from, the established European novel forms. The book offended many because of the manner in which Fiedler discusses the American literary tradition. A massive text of well over 600 pages, "Love and Death in the American Novel" eventually became the subject of revision by Fiedler. He produced a more streamlined, focused version of the book which was published in 1966.
He went to the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1965 and became the Samuel Langhorne Clemens Professor of English. He also taught at Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Indiana University, the Sorbonne, and the universities of Wisconsin, Vermont, Sussex, Paris, Rome, Bologna, and Athens.
In 1967, after an involved police surveillance operation, Fiedler was arrested on the charge of maintaining premises where banned substances were being used. After having put his house under surveillance for six weeks, the narcotics squad obtained a search warrant. With only one day left in the warrant, the police raided the house and “found” small quantities of marijuana and hashish. Marsha Van der Voort later testified under oath that she had planted the illegal substances just prior to the entrance of the police. Even though they had no direct evidence that Fiedler himself had used them, the evidence was sufficient for an arrest. The scandal was disastrous for Fiedler; his home insurance was canceled by two different providers, and The University of Amsterdam reversed their decision to have him as a Fulbright lecturer. While the legal case was ongoing, Fiedler managed to secure a position as a visiting professor at The University of Sussex.
Fiedler wrote "Being Busted" (released in 1969 and dedicated to his first grandson, Seth) about this experience (and his life as a whole); sales of the book helped him to pay his increasing legal expenses. In a trial on April 9th, 1970, Fiedler was found guilty. After multiple appeals, the drug conviction was finally reversed in 1972.
Fiedler steadily produced publications through the 1970s including "The Messengers Will Come No More" (1974), "In Dreams Awake" (1975), "Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self" (1978), and "The Inadvertent Epic" (1979). However, through the decade he also began to expand his horizons into the realms of television and Hollywood. He had appearances on The Merv Griffin Show, Today, Donahue, Tomorrow, and William F. Buckley, Jr.’s show, Firing Line. He was even cast in the low-budget fantasy film "When I am King" (1978) that was never released. Fiedler was invited to Hollywood parties through his connections and was able to meet Burgess Meredith, Carroll O'Connor, and Shirley MacLaine among others.
In an interesting movement, in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Fiedler began to seriously undertake the enterprise of pop culture criticism, with an emphasis on Science Fiction. Fiedler even wrote a book devoted to the critical assessment of Science Fiction in 1983: "Olaf Stapledon: A Man Divided" and recruited critic and science fiction author Samuel R. Delany to teach at SUNY Buffalo.
(A retrospective article on Leslie Fiedler in the New York...)
1960(From two-headed men and dwarfs to Siamese twins, the phen...)
1978Fiedler was politically active from a young age; he made speeches on a soapbox on Bergen Street while in high school, joined the Young Communist League in college, and aligned himself with Trotskyism as a graduate student.
Over the years, Fiedler propounded many ingenious but controversial theories. He gained considerable notoriety with "An End to Innocence," which raised issues of race and sexuality. His major work, "Love and Death in the American Novel," argues that much of American literature - those works, for example, that discuss life on the high seas or in the wilderness - embodies themes of innocent (presexual), but often homoerotic, male bonding and escape from a domestic, female-dominated society.
Swimming, meditation
Leslie Fiedler married Margaret Ann Shipley in 1939. The couple divorced in 1972. The next year he married Sally Andersen. He had six children: Kurt, Eric, Michael, Deborah, Jennie and Miriam; and two stepsons Soren and Eric Andersen.
Doctor
Lieutenant