The Bridges Still Stand
[In Love and Death in the American Novel, Professor Leslie Fiedler] is not content with one or two or even a handful of his country's novelists; he embraces them all—or all that he considers of value—and relates them to his overriding theme. And, for good measure, he adds to them the Provençal poets, Samuel Richardson, "Monk" Lewis, Sir Walter Scott, Rousseau, Goethe, and several more. He has written a long book. Nor is he content with a scholarly audience; he reaches out to the general public, for what he has to say bears not only upon the American novel but upon "the American Experience", so inextricably entangled are literature and life. And throwing aside the caution and reticence that are commonly supposed to characterize the scholar, he speaks "with his own mouth out of his own face". He addresses us, he says, without a mask. (p. 161)
The instruments he employs for his purpose are three, in order of importance: D. H. Lawrence, Freud and Jung, and Marx—as he acknowledges. He owes his données to Lawrence. Lawrence's study of American literature is the most remarkable criticism he ever wrote: eccentric and opinionated, but yet extraordinarily perceptive and shrewd. He instinctively divined what he called the "duplicity of art, American art in particular"; and critics of American literature have ever since taken this as one of their assumptions. Professor Fiedler writes Lawrence large. His discussion of Cooper and Poe, Melville and Hawthorne is essentially Lawrentian.
He adds to Lawrence from Freud and Jung: the id and the superego, the complex and the archetype. There is nothing new here. Books have been treated as patients for many years. The disclosures drawn from them on the couch tell us by this time only the expected and are so distressingly similar that they could be reduced to one without loss. Once we have perceived the drift of Professor Fiedler's argument we can anticipate fairly accurately what he has to say about the separate novels, for each in his opinion unconsciously repeats a basic pattern.
He is indebted to Marx to the extent that he tries to connect literature with society. The structure of society, its conflicts and idealisms, modify the literary form. The Gothic novel of Europe—this is Professor Fiedler's contention, and it applies equally to the sentimental novel and the historical romance—was compelled upon its introduction into America to adjust itself to the new environment and in doing so assumed another significance. The white man and the dark man, the forest and the—in brief, the country and its peoples and their institutions—had all to be reckoned with by the earlier native romancers, and in response to these demands they created "an American language of myth and symbol". This "language" continues to be spoken down to this day. But if society determines the meaning of literature, the literature itself can be used in its turn to illuminate the nature of society.
The combined effect of Lawrence, Freud and Jung, and Marx upon Professor Fiedler's criticism is curious. If American literature is marked, as Lawrence held, by duplicity, nothing that any of the writers says can be taken at its face value but has to be interpreted. The possible interpretation offered by Freud and Jung is the correct one. And as the interpretation drawn out of literature in this fashion can be applied with equal validity to society, a true picture of the "American Experience", of the American character, can be gathered from its books. The progress is beautifully circular.
The impression Professor Fiedler gives is of literature in a state of deliquescence. Writers merge into one another from either end of the century; words whispered in one year resound authoritatively decades later; postbellum symbols are to be discovered in antebellum naiveties; plots converge acutely on objectives not yet determined; and characters slip on fresh costumes to play roles in plots other than those for which they were intended. Nothing is stable; nothing is what it seems; incest and terror alone are constant.
A critic of American literature today could not reject the gifts that Professor Fiedler's mentors have to offer. When Lawrence read Cooper's Leather-Stocking Tales and seized upon the inner significance of Natty Bumppo's character he showed at once that the Tales had an importance which they had never before been allowed by conventional criticism. The "hot-house" atmosphere of much of Hawthorne is conveniently explained by remembering Freud, and the allegories of Melville are illuminated by bearing Jung in mind. Marx, too, may properly stand at our elbow when we try to grasp the wider implications of Huckleberry Finn.
But timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. If Lawrence's insight is pursued to extremes all novels appear as prototypes of his own; if Freud's and Jung's diagnoses are implicitly trusted form and consciousness dissolve into dream and myth; and should Marx, the least harmful in this respect, be simply trusted, writers cannot be extricated from the mechanical operation of social cause and effect. And when all three are combined and brought heavily to bear without being disciplined by discrimination and tact—the essentials of criticism—literature must collapse into the confusion found in Professor Fiedler's book.
Discrimination and tact are patently what is lacking in this case. If argument were possible (Professor Fiedler precludes it by assuming that any objections to his interpretation must be based on insensitivity or prudery or worse), a few of the more important of the many texts he discusses—for he divagates into the "sub-literary" in his search for compelling evidence—might be examined to show that they ought neither to be run into one another nor be held responsible for the meanings wrung from them. But argument would be beside the point. Professor Fiedler writes in his preface that "this is finally a very personal book", and if this is borne in mind, we shall recognize that what we are being offered under the guise of criticism is, in a loose sense, a spiritual autobiography: a confession of the impact upon him of "the American Experience".
As a confession, made in response to the promptings of literature, it has considerable interest. It is too long and diffuse to be effective as a whole, but on occasion, especially when Professor Fiedler sways uneasily between love and hatred of his country, it grows impassioned and eloquent. (pp. 161-62)
"The Bridges Still Stand," in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1961; reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission), No. 3081, March 17, 1961, pp. 161-62.∗
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Literature on the Couch
Rolling His Own: Leslie Fiedler's Grim Bronco Ride, from Pocahontas to Marjorie Morningsiar