Samuele Pardini, who teaches Italian and American studies and was mentored by Fiedler, compiled "Writing Home” from letters left to him by the prominent literary critic’s family. Fiedler worked in intelligence for the Navy during WWII.
Professor of Italian Samuele Pardini published his fifth book this month, an edited volume of renowned literary critic and intellectual Leslie A. Fiedler’s letters to family written during his service in World War II.
“Writing Home: Selected World War II Letters of Leslie A. Fiedler” was published Dec. 1 by SUNY Press. Pardini compiled and edited the book from letters left to him by Fiedler’s family.
Among many contributions, Fiedler authored what is considered one of the greatest essays ever written about American culture, “Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey,” and a book of literary criticism, “Love and Death in the American Novel.”
He worked in the Office of Naval Intelligence as a cryptologist and translator from May 1944 to December 1945 and wrote of his experiences in various locations of the Pacific Theater to his wife and two sons. Fiedler couldn’t write directly about his intelligence work. Instead, he wrote about themes, events and situations that include the ethical contradictions of war. The letters offer a glimpse into a formative period in his life, shed new light on the contribution of Jewish servicemen in WWII, and a view into modern world history by a man who would become a prominent figure in American intellectualism and literary culture.
“He’s a legendary figure,” Pardini said. “The letters are an historical document in and of themselves, but they’re also the result of an unfortunately forgotten but crucial moment in our country’s history and WWII, which is the NAVY’s creation of a Japanese Language School to train super gifted university students to learn Japanese and become code breakers and intelligence officers. They eventually were essential to help defeat Japan.”
Pardini came to know and was eventually mentored by Fiedler during post-graduate studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo. They became very close, and Pardini once lived with Fiedler and his wife. When Fiedler died at 86, Pardini was the only non-family member to carry his coffin at his funeral.
He hopes the book will bring attention to overlooked passages of WWII history, as well as the sacrifices made to win the war and preserve democracy, the role Jewish servicemen played in the war, and a “counternarrative to the celebratory myth” of the Greatest Generation.
“The fact of the matter is, as the letters made abundantly clear, that war is a tragedy no matter what, soldiers were depressed, they wanted to go home, the horror was immense, including the unnecessary one they inflicted on civilians, which is what happens in wars. And that after a war people must and can learn to live together in peace again.”
At Elon, Pardini teaches courses in American Studies, Italian Studies, Interdisciplinary Studies and the Core Curriculum. His areas of expertise include 20th century modernity, comparative American Studies, Italian and Italian American studies, African American literature, literary criticism and popular culture. Among his other books, “In the Name of the Mother. Italian Americans, African Americans and Modernity from Booker T. Washington to Bruce Springsteen” won the 2018 Italian American Studies Association Book Award.