Modern American Short Story Sequences: Composite Fictions and Fictive Communities

ISBN-13: 9780521430104 / Angielski / Twarda / 1995 / 240 str.

J. Gerald Kennedy (Louisiana State University)

Opis

This book gathers together eleven essays on important American short story sequences of the twentieth century. The introduction elucidates problems of defining the genre, cites notable instances of the form, and explores the implications of its modern emergence and popularity. Subsequent essays discuss illustrative works by such figures as Henry James, Jean Toomer, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Wright, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, John Updike, Louise Erdrich, and Raymond Carver. Each essay also considers implications of form and arrangement in the construction of composite fictions that often produce the illusion of a fictive community.

Spis treści

Introduction J. Gerald Kennedy; 1. Henry James's Incipient Poetics of the Short Story Sequence: The Finer Grain (1910) Richard A. Hocks; 2. Toomer's Cane as narrative sequence Linda Wagner-Martin; 3. Hemingway's In Our Time: the biography of a book Michael Reynolds; 4. Wright writing reading: narrative strategies in Uncle Tom's Children John Lowe; 5. The African-American voice in Faulkner's Go Down Moses John Carlos Rowe; 6. Meditations on nonpresence: re-visioning the short story in Eudora Welty's The Wide Net Susan V. Donaldson; 7. Nine Stories: J. D. Salinger's linked mysteries Ruth Prigozy; 8. Cheever's Shady Hill: a suburban sequence Scott Donaldson; 9. John Updike's Olinger Stories: new light among the shadows Robert M. Luscher; 10. Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine: narrative communities and the short story sequence Hertha D. Wong; 11. From Anderson's Winesburg to Carver's Cathedral: the short story sequence and the semblance of community J. Gerald Kennedy.