Leslie Fiedler

"Too Good to Be True" is a comprehensive account of Leslie Fiedler's life and work. Born in 1917, Fiedler has, in a sense, had four overlapping careers. He first came to prominence as one of the premier Jewish intellectuals of the postwar era -- writing on literature, culture, and politics in such magazines as Partisan Review and Commentary. At approximately the same time, he helped lead the attack that myth criticism was mounting on the hegemony of the New Criticism. If he had stopped writing entirely at that point, Fiedler would still be remembered as an important cultural critic of the fifties.

With his brash, groundbreaking magnum opus, Love and Death in the American Novel, Fiedler established himself as a revolutionary interpreter of our native literary tradition. Subsequent critics of American literature have been compelled to adopt or attack his positions because to ignore them has been impossible.

Fiedler was one of the first critics to proclaim the death of modernism and to suggest some of the directions that literature might take in its aftermath. The Oxford English Dictionary credits him with being the first individual to apply the term postmodernism to literature. This alone caused much enmity among those who had built their careers on the assumption that modernism would last forever.

To many academics, Fiedler's lack of solemnity and his wild flights of imagination have made him appear amateurish. How could anyone who enjoys himself that much possibly be taken seriously? One of the favorite critics of young people and non-English majors, Fiedler has seemed to enjoy remaining disreputable -- even as some of his once-controversial views have been made a part of standardor traditional scholarship. Like Huck, returned to the raft from the fog, he often seems "too good to be true."

Mark Royden Winchell has made his subject come alive in a highly intelligent and critical way. A combination

In the Mainstream represents the second in a multi-volume study of the Jewish American as both writer and character in our nation's literature. This book focuses on the period from 1950 to the 1980s. The author provides abundant evidence that by the end of the 1950s, Jewish writers had achieved full status in the realm of American fiction. His study examines precursors and strains of influence relating to this development, with special attention to the influence occasioned by Menorah Journal, Partisan Review, and Commentary.

Bound Together By the common thread of bioethics, these essays encompass such issues as abortion, the removal of life support, the role that doctors play in our society, and how we confront old age and Eros. Controversial, at times infuriating, Fiedler's comments are sure to anger parties on all sides; but they will also appeal to anyone who appreciates the unorthodox insights of an inquisitive and voracious mind.

Although in recent years scholars have explored the cultural construction of masculinity, the ways in which masculinity intersects with other categories of identity, particularly those of race and ethnicity, have largely been ignored. The essays in Race and the Subject of Masculinities address this concern and focus on the social construction of masculinity - black, white, ethnic, gay, and straight - in terms of the often complex and dynamic relationships among these inseparable categories.Discussing a wide range of subjects from the inherent homo-eroticism of martial-arts cinema to the relationship between working-class ideologies and Elvis impersonators, from the emergence of a gay black masculine aesthetic in the works of James Van der Zee and Robert Mapplethorpe to the comedy of Richard Pryor, Race and the Subject of Masculinities provides a range of opportunities for thinking about how race, sexuality, and 'manhood' are reinforced and reconstituted in today's society. Editors Harry Stecopoulos and Michael Uebel have gathered essays that make clear how the formation of masculine identity is never as obvious as it might seem to be. Examining personas as varied as Eddie Murphy, Bruce Lee, Tarzan, Malcom X, and Andre Gide, these essays draw on feminist critique and queer theory to demonstrate how cross-identification through performance and spectatorship among men of different races and cultural backgrounds has served to redefine masculinity in contemporary culture.The contributors to Race and the Subject of Masculinities offer an important challenge to the new studies of masculinity by taking seriously the role of race in the making of men. Readers interested in issues of race, gender, sexuality, and popular culture studies will find this collection provocative and entertaining.Contributors. Herman Beavers, Jonathan Dollimore, Richard Dyer, Robin D. G. Kelly, Christopher Looby, Leerom Medovoi, Eric Lott, Deborah E. McDowell, Jos} E. Mu-oz, Harry Stecopoulos, Yvonne Tasker, Michael Uebel, Gayle Wald, Robyn Wiegman