エスニシティの新たなる地平 : 新しいユダヤ系アメリカ文学の可能性 : ポストモダン・ユダヤ系アメリカ作家とのインタビュー

This issue includes my interviews with three Postmodern Jewish American Writers: Raymond Federman, Harold Jaffe and David Matlin. I held these interviews from December 17 to 19, 2007, as a part of my research project from 2005 to 2008, supported by the Japanese government's Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research under the title: "The New Horizon of Ethnicity: Postmodern Jewish Characteristics in American Literature." As part of the same project, I also interviewed Walter Abish on December 25, 2005.

I translated these four interviews into Japanese and with a short introduction to each writer, published them in Kenkyusha's The Rising Generation from May to August, 2008. They interested many Japanese scholars and some of those scholars asked me to publish the English version of the interviews. As I have already published the English version of Abish's interview in Hiroshima Studies in English Language and Literature in March, 2007, I collected here the English version of the remaining interviews, those with Federman, Jaffe and Matlin.

These interviews were first transcribed by myself from my recording. Then they were carefully revised by the respective writers and myself. As we spent much time revising them, I believe that the final version of any interview clearly expresses its writer's literary intention. On the other hand, I am afraid that the process of careful revision erased some aspects of their personalities which were apparent during the interviews. This is why I added a note on my memory of the writer to each interview. I hope that it will supply personalities missing in the final versions of the interviews, and that with the summary of the writer's achievement at the beginning, it will help the reader understand the content of the interview and the writer's activity better than before.