Print publication (antecedent)

In many of these stories, which range in length from several words to over 20 pages, Davis approaches her subject - be it a situation, an emotion, a state of bring - with almost scientific interest. Their titles reflect this: The Fish, The Mouse, Mothers, What an Old Woman Will Wear, Lost Things. These are meticulous dissections, intricate descriptions of, say, what it means to be right, or of betrayal, or the relationship of a mother and daughter. But somehow she evokes more, she pulls the reader into the stories - and they are stories - and her endings, whether it be after one paragraph or many pages, are breathtaking. 

(Source: Review in The Short Review by Tania Hershman)

"Sentence" is an entire 2,000 word story told in the form of one sentence.

It was first published in the Jan. 18, 1969 issue of The New Yorker and subsequently in the collection City Life.

Set in the near future, in a Paris devastated by revolution and disease, Empire of the Senseless is narrated by two terrorists and occasional lovers, Thivai, a pirate, and Abhor, part robot, part human. Together and apart, the two undertake an odyssey of carnage, a holocaust of the erotic. “An elegy for the world of our fathers,” as Kathy Acker calls it, where the terrorists and the wretched of the earth are in command, marching down a road charted by Genet to a Marseillaise composed by Sade.

(Source: Grove Atlantic catalog copy)

Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday, published in 1973, is the seventh novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. Set predominantly in the fictional town of Midland City, Ohio, it is the story of "two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast." One of these men, Dwayne Hoover, is a charming but deeply deranged Pontiac dealer, and extensive land and franchise owner, whose mental illness causes him to believe that a science fiction story by the other man, Kilgore Trout, is the literal truth. Trout, a largely unknown pulp science fiction writer who has appeared in several other Vonnegut novels, looks like a crazy old man but is in fact relatively sane. As the novel opens, Trout hitchhikes toward Midland City to appear at an art convention where he is destined to meet Dwayne Hoover and unwittingly inspire him to run amok.

(Source: Wikipedia entry on Breakfast of Champions)

Set in 17th century London, Sexing the Cherry is about the journeys of a mother, known as The Dog Woman, and her protégé, Jordan. They journey in a space-time flux: across the seas to find exotic fruits such as bananas and pineapples; and across time, with glimpses of "the present" and references to Charles I of England and Oliver Cromwell. The mother’s physical appearance is somewhat "grotesque". She is a giant, wrapped in a skirt big enough to serve as a ship’s sail and strong enough to fling an elephant. She is also hideous, with smallpox scars in which fleas live, a flat nose and foul teeth. Her son, however, is proud of her, as no other mother can hold a good dozen oranges in her mouth all at once. Ultimately, their journey is a journey in search of The Self. Sexing the Cherry is a postmodernist work and features many examples of intertextuality. 

(Source: Wikipedia entry on Sexing the Cherry)

Pricksongs & Descants, originally published in 1969, is a virtuoso performance that established its author”already a William Faulkner Award winner for his first novel”as a writer of enduring power and unquestionable brilliance, a promise he has fulfilled over a stellar career. It also began Coover’s now-trademark riffs on fairy tales and bedtime stories. Pricksongs & Descants is a cornerstone of Robert Coover’s remarkable oeuvre and a brilliant work by a major American writer.

(Grove Atlantic catalog copy for 2000 edition)

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (or Tristram Shandy) is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next seven years (vols. 3 and 4, 1761; vols. 5 and 6, 1762; vols. 7 and 8, 1765; vol. 9, 1767). It purports to be a biography of the eponymous character. Its style is marked by digression, double entendre, and graphic devices.

Sterne had read widely, which is reflected in Tristram Shandy. Many of his similes, for instance, are reminiscent of the works of the metaphysical poets of the 17th century, and the novel as a whole, with its focus on the problems of language, has constant regard to John Locke's theories in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Arthur Schopenhauer cited Tristram Shandy as one of the greatest novels ever written.

(Source: Wikipedia entry on The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman)