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.
Leslie FiedlerJane Austen is at the end of the line that begins with Samuel Richardson, which takes wonder and magic out of the novel, treats not the past but the present.
Leslie FiedlerRaymond Carver is good. I think he'll be appreciated more and more. He's an easy writer to imitate.
Leslie FiedlerDeLillo never seems committed to me to what he is writing. Very nice surfaces, but he's got nothing underneath.
Leslie Fiedler