SOURCE: Goren, Lilly J. “A Man of Will.” In Seers and Judges: American Literature as Political Philosophy, edited by Christine Dunn Henderson, pp. 87-100. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2002.

In the following essay, Goren examines the theme of the tension between the United States and Europe in “The Swimmers.”

Of his short story “The Swimmers,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his editor, Harold Ober, that it was “the hardest story I ever wrote, too big for its space + not even now satisfactory. … However, its done + its not bad.”¹ Written while Fitzgerald was in Cannes, France during the summer of 1929, “The Swimmers” examines Fitzgerald's enduring theme of the tension or contrast between the United States and Europe by presenting a glimpse of a period in the life of Henry Marston, a character who would provide some of the form for Fitzgerald's subsequent novel, Tender Is the Night. Little is written...