| When critics discuss the short story cycle, they point to characteristics such as consistency of setting, recurrence of characters, language and image patterns, coherence of narrative voice, thematic unity, and structural strategy, in order to argue that individual stories piece together for a specific purpose. While each of the stories in this collection was written to stand alone, their selection and ordering is directed toward a larger unity.;The stories divide into four sections: Work, Family, Love, and Friendship. In a world completely dedicated to work, the need for personal fulfillment, physical health and psychological stability, in short, compensation which stands for more than economic gain, is a primary concern. This collection suggests that, beyond work, this compensation may be found in relationships, interconnections with loved ones and friends as they help create life's meaning along the way.;A story cycle which parallels most closely the crafting of this collection is Washington Irving's Sketch Book. As writers often do, Irving inscribes himself as a character in many of his stories, convincing his readers that the narrative is indeed autobiographical. My fascination with fiction of this type has less to do with deciding whether a story is "true" than with discovering how an author persuades the reader that the experience could have occurred.;As Irving also may have done, I learned to write fiction by first attempting to produce concrete personal narrative essays. The next step involved finding areas in those essays where I could invent details, could move from the factual event into the realm of absolute invention. This led to a mild obsession with dedicating more and more space to the imagined detail, and far less to the actual fact.;Finally, just as in the chronicle of Geoffrey Crayon's search for meaning, for identity, for self-realization, much of what takes place in this collection never happened. But it is my hope that readers will believe, as Irving's readers must, that almost everything I write could, in fact, have happened. |
