The Devil Gets His Due

Despite his often-unacknowledged influence, academics, intellectuals, and the general audience in America and abroad still read Leslie Fiedler’s work and draw on its concepts. He inspired both reverence (Leonard Cohen penned: “leaning over the American moonlight / like the shyest gargoyle / who will not become angry or old”) and rage (Saul Bellow called him “the worst fucking thing that ever happened to American literature”). The essays in The Devil Gets His Due will reacquaint readers with the depth and breadth of Fiedler’s achievements. Tackling subjects ranging wildly from Dante, Ezra Pound, and Mary McCarthy to Rambo, Iwo Jima, and Jerry Lewis, these writings showcase Fiedler’s pioneering of an egalitarian canon that encompassed both “high” and popular literature, cinema, and history. As such, they show a powerful mind critiquing whole aspects of a culture and uncovering lessons therein that remain timely today. A lengthy introduction by Professor Samuele F. S. Pardini offers both context and history, with an in-depth profile of Fiedler and his career as both a literary critic and a public intellectual.