APPEL, Alfred, Jr. 1934-

PERSONAL: Born January 31, 1934, in New York, NY; son of Alfred and Beatrice (Hoffman) Appel; married Nina Schick, September 1, 1957; children: Karen Appel Oshman, Richard James. Education: Attended Cornell University, 1952-54; Columbia University, B.A., 1959, M.A., 1960, Ph.D., 1963.

ADDRESSES: Home—717 Greenleaf Ave., Wilmette, IL 60091. Office—Department of English, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60201.

CAREER: Columbia University, New York, NY, instructor in English, 1961-62; Stanford University, Stanford, CA, assistant professor of English, 1963-68; Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, assistant professor, 1968-69, associate professor, 1969-74, professor of English, 1974, currently emeritus professor of English. Military service: U.S. Army, 1955-57.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America, Philological Association of the Pacific Coast.

AWARDS, HONORS: Guggenheim fellow, 1972; Best Creative Essay Award, Arts Council of Illinois, 1974; Rockefeller Foundation fellow, 1976.

WRITINGS:

A Season of Dreams: The Fiction of Eudora Welty, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1965.

(Editor) John DeForest, Witching Times, College and University Press (New Haven, CT), 1967.

(Editor) Vladimir Nabokov: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall (New York, NY), 1969.

(Editor and contributor) The Annotated Lolita, McGraw (New York, NY), 1970, revised and updated, Vintage Books (New York, NY), 1991.

(Editor with Charles Newman) Nabokov: Criticism, Reminiscences, Translations, Tributes, Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 1970.

Nabokov's Dark Cinema, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1974.

(Editor, with Simon Karlinsky) The Bitter Air of Exile: Russian Writers in the West, 1922-1972, revised edition, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1977.

Signs of Life, Knopf (New York, NY), 1983.

The Art of Celebration: Twentieth-Century Painting, Literature, Sculpture, Photography, and Jazz, Knopf (New York, NY), 1992.

Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce, Knopf (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to books, including Nabokov: The Man and His Work, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 1967; The Single Voice, 1969; A Book of Things about Vladimir Nabokov, 1974;Vladimir Nabokov: A Tribute, 1979; and Nabokov's Fifth Arc, 1982. Contributor to periodicals, including Denver Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS: Alfred Appel, Jr., emeritus professor of English at Northwestern University, is the author of books on literature and music. Perhaps his best-known work is Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce, which discusses the influence of jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and Billie Holiday on American culture. As David Yaffe wrote in the Nation, jazz artists "changed the way Americans think about language, race, style and gender." Appel links jazz to other artistic fields, finding its influence on visual art, literature, and philosophy. Yaffe wrote, "Appel is an entertaining and learned reader, and it is a treat to walk through his record collection bookshelves and art prints and get his witty and beguiling asides on them."

In Commentary, Terry Teachout explains Appel's thesis that "classic jazz (1920-1950) . . . is indeed part of 'the great modernist tradition in the arts.'" Teachout continued, "Hitherto known mainly for his writings on Vladimir Nabokov, Appel is a highly knowledgeable connoisseur of jazz and the visual arts. Jazz Modernism is a somewhat idiosyncratic work, both in its richly allusive style and in some of its terminology. Still, it is to the best of my knowledge the first sustained attempt by any critic, musical or otherwise, to locate jazz in the larger context of modernism."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Antioch Review, summer, 1993, review of The Art of Celebration: Twentieth-Century Painting, Literature, Sculpture, Photography, and Jazz, p. 472.

Booklist, September 1, 2002, Donna Seaman, review of Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce, p. 36.

Chronicle of Higher Education, November 4, 1992, review of The Art of Celebration, p. A12.

Commentary, Terry Teachout, review of Jazz Modernism, p. 49.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 1992, review of The Art of Celebration, p. 1095.

Library Journal, October 15, 1992, Joan Levin, review of The Art of Celebration, p. 66; August, 2002, James Perone, review of Jazz Modernism, p. 96.

Nation, October 21, 2002, David Yaffe, review of Jazz Modernism, p. 31.

New Statesman, August 29, 1975.

New York Times Book Review, December 20, 1992, Nicholas Fox Weber, review of The Art of Celebration, p. 10; December 5, 1993, review of The Art of Celebration, p. 42; June 6, 1993, review of The Art of Celebration, p. 34.

Publishers Weekly, August 24, 1992, review of The Art of Celebration, p. 68; July 8, 2002, review of Jazz Modernism, p. 40.

Saturday Review, December 18, 1965; June 13, 1970.

Times Literary Supplement, May 16, 1975.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), October 11, 1992, review of The Art of Celebration, p. 6.

Washington Post Book World, June 14, 1970.*