Modern American Short Story Sequences: Composite Fictions and Fictive Communities Contributor(s): Kennedy, Maxwell F. (Author), Kennedy, J. Gerald (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0521430100 ISBN-13: 9780521430104 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $114.00 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: January 1995 Annotation: Its status as a genre unto itself often disputed, the short story sequence is a hybrid organism which defies the stereotypes imputed to more conventionally recognized forms of narrative, such as the short story and the novel. By resisting precise definition, it lays down a critical challenge to decode its perplexing formal ambiguities. Modern American Short Story Sequences meets this challenge by suggesting an entirely new means of inquiry. Gathering together eleven new full-length essays, this book is an invitation to reconsider the short story sequence as a tradition proper, one formed in the twentieth-century crucible of American literature and one whose very inscrutability continues to provoke intense debate in the realm of fiction studies. |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | American - General |
Dewey: 813.010 |
LCCN: 94027032 |
Physical Information: 0.92" H x 6.23" W x 9.32" (1 lbs) 240 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: 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. |