Distant Drummer

The Editors: Jamal Assadi, Assistant Professor, is Chair of Teacher Administration and of the English Department at the College of Sakhnin for Teacher Education in Israel. He received his Ph.D. in modern American fiction from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne in England. In addition to numerous articles in professional journals, he is the author of Acting, Rhetoric, & Interpretation in Selected Novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Saul Bellow (Peter Lang, 2006), Practicum Guide (2006), and children stories.William Freedman is Professor Emeritus of English Literature at the University of Haifa and a teacher in the English Department at the College of Sakhnin for Teacher Education in Israel. He has published two books of literary criticism, an oral history of baseball fans, numerous critical and theoretical essays, and poetry in various literary journals and reviews. Most recently, he has published a collection of his poems, Being Them All (2006).

• Contents: Jamal Assadi: Introduction – Bonnie Shannon McMullen: «This Tremendous Detail»: The Oxford Stone in the House of Gatsby» – Nicole Guetin: Icons and Myths in The Great Gatsby – Michel Viel: Translations as Instruments of Analysis: The Great Gatsby in French – Somdatta Mandal: Of Celebrity Status, Posthumous Publications, Scholar’s Choice, and the American Novel: A Case Study of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Trimalchio – Horst Kruse: The Anxiety of the Diver: F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Swimmer Motif – Elisabeth Bouzonviller: The Frontiers that Artists Must Explore – Marie-Agnès Gay: Vision and Loss in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night – Pascale Antolin: F.S. Fitzgerald’s Lists as Lexical Playfields in Tender Is the Night – Patricia Fra-López: Fitzgerald’s Professional Women: Jenny Prince in ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ and Helen Avery in ‘Magnetism’ as Antecedents of Rosemary Hoyt in Tender is the Night – Andrew Hook: Scott Fitzgerald’s Current British Reputation.

«The essays in ‘A Distant Drummer’, written in the second language of most of these contributors, provide fresh readings of ‘The Great Gatsby’ and ‘Tender Is the Night’ from notable contemporary Fitzgerald scholars in England, France, Germany, Scotland, India, and Israel. The editors of this collection note that each essayist hears in this most American of writers ‘a distant drummer’ and responds with original insights into the ideas and aesthetics in Fitzgerald’s novels. The result is an exciting new volume with global appeal.» (Cathy Barks, Associate Director of the University Honors Program, University of Maryland, College Park)«This new collection of essays about F. Scott Fitzgerald by a distinguished group of foreign scholars (with the exception of one American scholar residing abroad) is an important contribution to Fitzgerald studies. The essays, remarkably, find new dimensions in familiar works, such as ‘The Great Gatsby’ and ‘Tender Is the Night’, and offer penetrating analyses of the stories, translations of Fitzgerald, and the historical era with which he was so closely associated. This collection will undoubtedly become an important resource for anyone – general reader or scholar – interested in this great writer.» (Ruth Prigozy, Professor of English, Hofstra University; Executive Director, F. Scott Fitzgerald Society)