What Can We Do about Fagin? The Jew-Villain in Western Tradition

Leslie A. Fiedler, a swashbuckling literary critic, was a loud, provocative voice in American letters. Born in Newark, New Jersey, he flirted with socialism and Trotskyism before serving in the navy as a cryptologist. As a literary man, he straddled the worlds of academe and small magazines; an anti-highbrow, he championed passionate, transgressive writing, explaining, “I long for the raised voice, the howl of rage or love.” His own hot-blooded writing included poetry as well as memoir and fiction.