One cannot help asking just whom Fiedler was trying to put on when he wrote ["Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey"]—just as the same question needs to be asked with each ensuing volume of his studies in "literary anthropology," as Fiedler has frequently referred to his work. There has always been an element of absurdity or shock in Fiedler's work, and at times it is impossible not to wonder if Fiedler takes his own work seriously. (p. 133)
Reading over Fiedler's collected literary criticism, from An End of Innocence in 1955 to his … The Return of the Vanishing American in 1968, one cannot help being upset by the great number of generalizations, repetitions, and strained conclusions which so often have marred his frequently brilliant commentaries on American fiction. Yet, one cannot help thinking that Fiedler, as critic of the hip school of American criticism, and as guru of thousands of undergraduate English majors (and their younger instructors), deserves whatever following he has managed to build up for himself. It is not perhaps so much what Fielder is saying that offends the other, shall I say, more traditional critic as much as his method: a frontal attack based on shock, entertainment (especially valuable it seems to me in a day when criticism takes itself far too seriously), and the destruction of shibboleths and prejudices we should have rid ourselves of years, if not generations, ago. The result has been that Fiedler's criticism remains for the most part highly readable and almost uniformly fresh—whether one agrees with what he says or not. One wonders if some critics have not even been a little jealous of Fiedler's quasi-underground fame. (pp. 133-34)
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