Leslie Fiedler

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 cited work is Love and Death in the American Novel (1960).

Fiedler was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish parents Lillian and Jacob Fiedler. "Eliezar Aaron" was his original Hebrew name. In his early years, he developed a strong connection to his grandparents, Leon (originally Leib) and Perl Rosenstrauch. As Mark Royden Winchell writes in his 2002 book on Fiedler, "during Leslie's childhood, Leon and Perl Rosenstrauch were more like parents to Leslie than were his own father and mother"

At an early age, Fiedler's family moved from Newark to East Orange, New Jersey, a town that lacked a substantial Jewish community. Fiedler was forced to contend with anti-semitism from his fellow students who were Protestants and Catholics. The move to East Orange was short-lived and the family soon returned to Newark where Fiedler continued his education in public schools. Fiedler developed a resentment toward his teachers, who forced him to use standard English pronunciations instead of his ethnic dialect. While attending school, Fiedler also worked in his uncle's shoe store where his encounters with coworkers served as inspiration for some of the characters he created in his later work. At South Side High School, Fiedler began to express interest in socialism, which eventually led to him nearly getting arrested after a loud political rant on a soapbox on Newark's Bergen Street.

Fiedler graduated from South Side High School in 1934. Because of his parents' poor financial condition, he was at first unable to attend college. He recalled sitting on the steps of his father's bankrupt drugstore, disconsolate, weeping that he "wanted to go to college". Eventually he received a small scholarship, but it was insufficient to fund his university education. He matriculated at the now-defunct Bronx, New York campus of New York University only after raising the money for tuition himself. Fiedler's flirtations with socialist ideology continued in his undergraduate career.. He joined the Young Communist League and later aligned himself with Trotskyism. Fiedler did not gain admission to the elite eastern schools, he received a scholarship from the English graduate program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he earned his MA in 1939 and PhD in 1941.

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