Bringing together established Fitzgerald scholars from the United Kingdom, Europe and North America, this collection offers eleven new readings of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1934 novel, Tender is the Night. While The Great Gatsby continues to attract more attention than the rest of Fitzgerald’s oeuvre combined, persistent, if infrequent, writings on Tender is the Night from the 1950s onwards indicate that, like Gatsby’s green light, Fitzgerald’s fourth novel continues both to perplex and intrigue. In addition to the inevitable biographical interpretations, the novel has, in myriad readings, been viewed as: a marriage novel, a text of disturbed psychology, a text nostalgically marking the passing of a talent and a time, an outdated “Jazz Age” story, and “the great novel about American history”. This new collection of essays opens criticism of Tender Is the Night to a new generation of scholars providing new ways for readers to appreciate this complex, compelling, and profound work. Contributors include editors of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, the general editor of the Cambridge Edition of Writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald, members of the Fitzgerald Society Executive, and the directors of the biennial F. Scott Fitzgerald conference. The book will be published to coincide with the biennial F. Scott Fitzgerald conference in July 2007 'Can't we put it in writing?' : some short precursors to Tender is the night / Bonnie Shannon McMullen -- Tender is the night, 'jazzmania', and the Ellingson matricide / James L.W. West III -- Sanatorium society : the 'good' place in Tender is the night / Linda De Roche -- 'Some fault in the plan' : Fitzgerald's critique of psychiatry in Tender is the night / William Blazek -- An 'unblinding of eyes' : the narrative vision of Tender is the night / Laura Rattray -- Si le soleil ne revenait pas : Swiss clockwork gone mad in Tender is the night / Marie-Agnes Gay -- 'A unity less conventional but not less serviceable' : a narratological history of Tender is the night / Kirk Curnutt -- American Riviera : style and expatriation in Tender is the night / Michael K. Glenday -- 'Out upon the Mongolian plain' : Fitzgerald's racial and ethnic cross-identifying in Tender is the night / Chris Messenger -- Gender anxiety : the unresolved dialectic of Fitzgerald's writing / Faith Pullin -- Tender is the night and the calculus of modern war / James H. Meredith -- Reading Fitzgerald reading Keats / Philip McGowan
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