Leslie Fiedler was one of the most influential critics of the twentieth century, a maverick of American letters whose fearless and impassioned criticism polarized readers but also informs much of our understanding of American literature and culture today. First published in 1960, Love and Death in the American Novel is Fiedler’s magnum opus, a groundbreaking study of the American novel from the time of the revolution to the time of Fiedler’s writing.
Fiedler conceived of his book as being itself a kind of gothic novel, one whose subject was the American experience as portrayed in classic American fiction. Through clear-eyed examinations of the works of writers such as Cooper, Poe, Twain, Melville, Hawthorne, and Faulkner, Fiedler makes the audacious—and compelling—argument that the American novel differs from its European counterpart in its inability to deal with sexuality between men and women, and its obsession instead with violence, escape, and death.
