Top Leslie Fiedler Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Leslie Fiedler Biography

Leslie Aaron Fiedler (March 8, 1917 – January 29, 2003) was an American literary critic, known for his interest in mythography and his championing of genre fiction. His work also involves application of psychological theories to American literature. His most renowned work is Love and Death in the American Novel (1960).

Read about Leslie Fiedler in Wikipedia

Random Authors

Leslie Fiedler Quotes

There is a place in men's lives where pictures do in fact bleed, ghosts gibber and shriek, maidens run forever through mysterious landscapes from nameless foes; that place is, of course, the world of dreams and of the repressed guilts and fears that motivate them [i. e. , the unconscious]. This world the dogmatic optimism and shallow psychology of the Age of Reason had denied; and yet this world it is the final, perhaps the essential, purpose of the gothic romance to assert.

Dream, Ghosts, Men, Repressed, Running, Shallow

Faulkner turned out to be a great teacher. When a student asked a question ineptly, he answered the question with what the student had really wanted to know.

Asked, Ineptly, Students, Teacher, Wanted

Saul Bellow never took my advice when he was my friend.

Advice, Bellow, My Friends, Saul, Took

When all of us are forgotten, people will still be remembering Stephen King.

Forgotten, Kings, People, Remember, Remembering

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

Continue, Criticism, Culture, Culture Religion, Depressing, Religion

Critics? How do they happen? I know how it happened to me. I would send a poem or story to a magazine and they would say this doesn't suit our needs precisely but on the other hand you sound interesting. Would you be interested in doing a review?

Critics, Hands, Interesting, Needs, Sound, Suit

DeLillo never seems committed to me to what he is writing. Very nice surfaces, but he's got nothing underneath.

Nice, Nothing, Surface, Surfaces, Writing

Hemingway seems to be in a funny position. People nowadays can't identify with him closely as a member of their own generation, and he isn't yet historical.

Funny, Hemingway, Historical, People

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

Anthropological, Contexts, Criticism, Historical, Important, Literature

It's funny to be a critic.

Critic, Critics, Funny

I used to be fond of Indian arm wrestling.

Affection, Arm, Arms, Fond, Wrestling

All good criticism should be judged the way art is. You shouldn't read it the way you read history or science.

Art, Criticism, Good, Read, Way

I long for the raised voice, the howl of rage or love.

Howl, Long, Love, Raised, Voice

I think the pattern of my essays is, A funny thing happened to me on my way through Finnegans Wake.

Essays, Funny, Happened, Patterns, Thinking, Way

To be an American (unlike being English or French or whatever) is precisely to imagine a destiny rather than to inherit one; since we have always been, insofar as we are Americans at all, inhabitants of myth rather than history.

America, Destiny, English, History, Imagine, Inherit

I've had a tough time with Pynchon. I liked him very much when I first read him. I liked him less with each book. He got denser and more complex in a way that didn't really pay off.

Book, Pay, Pynchon, Read, Tough Times, Way

I liked Camille Paglia. I liked her even better when I heard her talk.

Camille, Heard, Liked, Paglia, Talk

I admire Ginsberg as a poet, despite the fact that he seems not to know when he is being good and when he is bad. But he will last, or at least those poems will last.

Fact, Facts, Ginsberg, Know, Lasts, Poet

I like that people who are not experts can not only understand but get engaged by my work. I like that Joe Paterno can read me. Bill Bradley.

Engagement, Experts, Joe, Paterno, People, Read

Raymond Carver is good. I think he'll be appreciated more and more. He's an easy writer to imitate.

Appreciated, Easy, Good, Raymond, Thinking

1