But whether he was writing about Faulkner or comic books, Fiedler was addressing pop culture, since to him the novel, from its beginning in 18th century England, was the first important popular form. At the same time, Marcus saw his first commitment was to the seriousness of literature: "There was no way Elvis Presley was going to mean as much to him as 'Absalom, Absalom.' "
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High-minded lowdown
Leslie Fiedler wasn't afraid to meet pop culture on its own level. A new look at his essays proves the critic's prescience.
BOOKS & IDEAS
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, May 06, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 26 words Type of Material: Correction
Leslie Fiedler: An article in Sunday's Calendar section about literature critic Leslie Fiedler said he worked at Montana State University. It was the University of Montana.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday, May 11, 2008 Home Edition Sunday Calendar Part E Page 2 Calendar Desk 1 inches; 23 words Type of Material: Correction
Leslie Fiedler: An article about the literature critic last Sunday said he worked at Montana State University. It was the University of Montana.
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Though he didn't invent the mythological approach, almost anyone who uses books or movies or TV as a lens into the "collective unconscious" owes a debt to Fiedler.
He's proved especially influential among writers on popular music; Marcus hears Fiedler's combination of "fun and fearlessness" in legendary rock critic Lester Bangs.
The Experience Music Project's Pop Conference, an annual gathering of critics and scholars that took place last month in Seattle, was full of "children of Fiedler," Ritz said. "It was interesting to see how his influence permeated a conference of music intellectuals and ethnomusicologists and cultural anthropologists. All these studies -- 'The Image of the Black Woman From Bessie Smith to Amy Winehouse' or whatever -- they're all Fiedlerian riffs."
Laying a future track
THE NEW Fiedler collection does not represent his finest work. His best and best-known book remains "Love and Death," so exuberantly stuffed with ideas that it has to be taken slowly despite the gunning engine of the prose. In a Salon.com piece, Paglia described Fielder as a thinker who did not impose his system "but liberated a whole generation of students to think freely and to discover their own voices."
When Ritz left SUNY before taking his PhD -- deciding he wanted to be "a pop culture participant and not a pop culture analyzer" -- many of his teachers disapproved. Not Fiedler, who encouraged the move and followed Ritz's books on Gaye and Ray Charles.
Ritz described Fiedler as demonstrating the best spirit of a writer or teacher. "He was training people to do things he couldn't do," he said, "go places he couldn't go."
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scott.timberg@latimes.com
