Colleagues and former students shared warm memories of Leslie Fiedler, the rebellious yet highly influential literary critic and UB professor, in a symposium on campus Thursday.
Speakers from UB and several other universities around the country recalled the former Samuel L. Clemens Professor of English, who died in January at the age of 85, as a literary giant.
"There simply aren't any more Fiedlers," said Diana Hume George, a professor of English and women's studies at Penn State Erie. "He looked like he talked -so short he wasn't exactly a normal person -- but at the same time he was massive."
Throughout the day, the speakers said Fiedler's contradictory and fascinating nature, both as a person and a critic, captured their imagination during their time at UB.
Nearly all the speakers had a story about Fiedler's "bad-boy" days at the University of Montana in the 1940s and '50s. Many remarked upon his rejection of -- and eventual influence on -- mainstream literary and cultural thought right up to his death.
Professors Mark Shechner, Kenneth Dauber and Robert Daly began the day by giving series of presentations about Fiedler's life and talking about their experiences with Fiedler on personal and professional levels.
They were followed by keynote speaker Mark Royden Winchell, an English professor at Clemson University and author of the 2002 biography of Fiedler, "Too Good to be True: The Life and Work of Leslie Fiedler."
"Leslie is one of the few critics of his age who will have an impact on American literature," Winchell said. "It was typical for him to be far ahead of the curve. It was said that Leslie could usually be found in the middle of the road that hadn't been built yet."
Winchell detailed many of Fiedler's works that stirred controversy, such as "Come Back to the Raft Agin, Huck Honey," an essay that cast the characters Huck and Jim from Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" in a homoerotic light.
Fiedler's groundbreaking style helped move a stagnant field into a new era, according to Victor Doyno, an English professor and longtime colleague of the former critic.
"Leslie was a distinctive individual," Doyno said. "He came into academy at a time when there was a certain amount of rigidity and anti-Semitism in the institution, especially in the Ivy League schools."
Fiedler also mentored a generation of critics, according to a number of English professors at the symposium who completed their doctoral dissertations under him. Following the keynote speaker, George, the professor from Penn State Erie, Richard Kopley, English professor at Penn State DuBois, and Geoffrey Green, English professor at San Francisco State University, all of whom completed their doctoral dissertation under Fiedler, spoke about him as a teacher and mentor.
"I knew him in the 70s, and in my experiences as my professor, he was gentle and thoughtful," said Kopley. "He was always willing to entertain your wildest ideas. On the page he was provocative. As e.e. cummings said, he had 'a sense of part of the universe.'"
Later in the day, a seminar room in Clemens Hall used by graduate students was dedicated in Fiedler's memory.
At the ceremony, Fiedler's widow, Sally, and his longtime assistant, Joyce Troy, took center stage. Many chuckled as Troy remembered Fiedler's love of cigars.
"I remember the cigar burns and wrappers all over the place when we cleaned out this office after Leslie retired," Troy said. "I think this memorial does justice to the legacy of Leslie as a teacher and mentor."
Several undergraduates who have never met Fiedler attended the day's events upon the suggestion of their professors.
Arman Mahoutchian, a freshman business management major, said he was impressed with the symposium.
"A good way to judge a person is how other people knew him," Mahoutchian said. "I admire a man who is admired by so many people who are respected in their own right. I wish I could have known him."
