From the short story collection to the fragmented novel - and back again

In my paper I propose to analyse the recent trend in contemporary fiction of producing composite or fragmented texts in order to join together the perspectives, stories and lives of different, previously or ostensibly unrelated, individuals. Books of this kind are, for instance, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004), Rachel Cusk’s Arlington Park (2006), Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin (2009), Ali Smith’s There but for the (2011), Zadie Smith’s NW (2012), Donal Ryan’s, The Spinning Heart (2013), and Simon Van Booij, The Illusion of Separateness (2013). I will look at the different ways these contemporary texts have been approached by critics and the different labels they have received – networked novel, short story cycle, novel-in-stories – and the different perspectives these labels imply. I will make a case for recognizing the influence of the short story on these composite works and argue that they deserve to be considered within the context of the tradition of the short story cycle. I will also investigate whether it’s useful to make a firm distinction between the short story composite and composite novel in the case of these texts and whether they can indeed be distinguished in terms of the different poetics they operate: a poetics of collection vs. a poetics of diffraction (cf. René Audet 2013). Finally, I will focus on the thematic import of these fragmented or composite books and, in particular, on the question of human connection and community which these texts raise. This contemporary concern will also be placed in the context of the short story cycle’s particular aptitude for representing community, as witnessed by many late-nineteenth- andstatus: publishe