Leslie Fiedler

This book brings to the fore the one-off American culturalist, Leslie Fiedler, who de-territorialised literary and cultural studies. Not to be trussed by national, linguistic, or disciplinary boundaries and not to be cowed down by the redacted geographies of American texts, which excluded more than included, Fiedler stood for the principles of the Sanskritic paradigm of Vasudheva Kutumbkam which forms the fulcrum of Hindu Upanishadic philosophy. True to its sublime thought (To discriminate, one is a relative; the other a stranger, can only be the deed of small men, and for those who live magnanimously the entire world constitutes but a family), this tall man rewrote America's exceptional dream exceptionally: one of inclusion and innovation without getting into insider-outsider dichotomies. The study of sva (self) and para (other) is so unique to Indian culture that one understands why Fiedler, the Jew, always studied himself and the Jew in relation to others. The metaphoric and symbolic Auslander, who in his literary, cultural, anthropological and socio-political sojourns, in America and outside, steered clear from the oft-walked beaten path and took the road not taken by many, Fiedler can only walk ahead, grudgingly followed by many. Perambulating the academic boulevard for 5 decades, one synonymous with incendiary revelations and provocative pronouncements, still scandalising the academic elitists and delighting the students across the world even almost a decade after his physical death, Fiedler epitomises all of a modern day pedagogue and scholar critic of today. Leslie Fiedler: Critic, Provocateur, Pop Culture Critic celebrates the myriad dimensions of the kaleidoscopic Fiedler, who while celebrating difference and refashioning the canon, is one without margins and beyond borders! A Guru that every disciple would wish to have, Fiedler is an echo that continues to resound and will continue to be heard. The canonised 'other', the 'ossified fossil' of literary and cultural scholarship of yesteryears, today and tomorrow, Fiedler is to be seen as 'the critic' of this age, as the man for all ages. It appears as if Fiedler had pledged to turn the colonial (to be understood very broadly) page. He did, to the chagrin of others! I hope this book turns not one but many. Let this book be treated, more in the vein of both: an ode and an elegy to this one-man fifth column in the elitist citadel, the real 'Brave Heavy Runner' who has lit out into the territory ahead of the rest! Catch him, if you can!