Tyranny of the Normal: Essays on Bioethics, Theology & Myth
Leslie Fiedler, author ofFiedler on the Roof: Essays on Literature and Jewish Identityand the acclaimedLove and Death in the American Novel, is back withTyranny of the Normal, a set of nine essays written during the previous quarter century that explore his iconoclastic views on the whole notion of normality--and by extrapolation political correctness--that plagues our modern discourse. This is not your typical view of the world. "Deep within the under-mind of all of us there persists a desire to murder the disabled," he avers in one essay; in another he argues that the inevitable ambivalence we all feel over the birth of a child (love and hate) but are afraid to own up to, could be mitigated if we "reinstitute some form of permitted ritualized 'abuse' of the young." Still, his goal is less to shock and titillate than it is to point out that by pretending we no longer fear those things that are different, a tendency that is part and parcel of the human condition, we are only making matters worse.