Epilogue
This brief summary reviews the argument for various late styles, none of which exactly fits a pattern. Each among the quartet of short story writers whose work has been assessed in this book (Alice Munro, Andre Dubus, Joy Williams, and Lydia Davis) differs dramatically from an earlier self as well as from the others. And in closing the book with a discussion of Robert Coover’s minimalist “A Sudden Story”—a piece written in what could be termed Coover’s middle period—we realize how even the very shortest of stories has the capacity to summarize an entire centuries-long tradition.