Devil Gets His Due

For more than 50 years, Leslie Fiedler played a pivotal role in the development of American literary culture. Despite his often unacknowledged influence, the academy, intellectuals, and the general audience in America and abroad still read his work and draw on its concepts. The essays in The Devil Gets His Due 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.