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.