Twentieth-Century American Fiction in Circulation

Matthew James Vechinski is an associate professor in the Department of Focused Inquiry at Virginia Commonwealth University. He received his PhD in English and Textual Studies from the University of Washington in Seattle. His scholarship combining genetic criticism, reception study, and periodical studies has appeared in the journals Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction; Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History; and Textual Practice.

• AcknowledgementsList of AbbreviationsNote on the Text1. Linked Story Collections: Products of RepublicationIntroductionThe Textual Histories of Twice-Finished TalesIn Front of Actual AudiencesThe Trouble with GenreCalling a Collection a CollectionChapter Summaries2. Modernity and Spiritual Isolation in Winesburg, Ohio: Sherwood Anderson, Young America, and Popular Socialism Groping: Between Craft and CircumstanceSocialist Parables for The Masses"Striking Out" in The Seven Arts3. "Can all this be the same person?": Memoir and the Fragmented Self in Mary McCarthy’s The Company She Keeps"A Good Eye for Social Types"Libelous Relationality4. Stories on Tape: John Barth Massaging the Medium in Lost in the FunhouseFrom Exhaustion to Hybrid Energy: The Variable of Voice in StorytellingAmbrose as "Wandering Hero": The "Life-Pattern" of Lost in the Funhouse5. Sameness-in-Difference and Audience Share: Individuals and Communities in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck ClubAuthenticity and Idealization in Women’s Magazines Escape Routes in "The Rules of the Game"Vicarious Cultural Experiences in "The Joy Luck Club"Chinese Fairy Tales and Faked Voices Epilogue: Collections 2.0: The Imaginary Worlds of Linked Stories and the Internet Worlds of Periodicals

"While several studies have considered this form of fiction, Vechinski’s is the first monograph to read such collections with and against their original periodical versions, thinking of the earlier magazine publications not as implicit drafts to be repurposed in books, but as texts that have been ‘finished twice,’ standing as independent entities in each print medium... Vechinski’s careful attention to the reception contexts of magazine fiction sets this study apart from other scholarship on linked story collections."- John K. Young, Textual Practice (STS)