AMHERST, N.Y. -- Daemen College President Gary A. Olson recently published a biography of a prominent scholar: “Stanley Fish, America’s Enfant Terrible: The Authorized Biography.” Considered one of the 20^th century’s most original and influential literary theorists, Fish is a legal scholar, literary critic, and public intellectual.

A columnist for the New York Times, Fish has a following well beyond the confines of the academic world and enjoys a wide lay audience of educated readers. “I attempted to create a combination of a literary biography and a more traditional account of a life,” said Olson. “I imagine an audience composed of academics interested in the progress of Fish’s career as a scholar, but also non-academics who have read one or more of his books or New York Times columns and who are curious about who he is and what he has done.”

Fish has been a larger-than-life figure in the intellectual scene over the last half century. He is intentionally provocative in his works and persistently challenges sacredly held positions, arguing, for example, that as one of his titles puts it, “There Is no Such Thing as Free Speech—And It’s a Good Thing, Too.”

Fish’s work has consistently polarized readers, and he quickly developed a reputation as the academic world’s bad boy—a true enfant terrible. His bad-boy persona led novelist David Lodge to fashion one of his key characters in his popular novels about academic life after Fish.

William Covino, president of California State University in Los Angeles, wrote that “Olson’s book is an engaging and entertaining biography that reinforces our sense of Stanley as an American original, and recalls the heyday of literary theory and criticism.”

Fish is currently the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and a professor of law at Florida International University. Olson’s book was released by Southern Illinois University Press in the first week of March 2016.