Kimball has written that the central influence on his writing is not literary at all. It is rather "the shortgrass storytelling style of the prairie community I was born into and [I] attempt to translate that into a literary style. . . . My dad was one of the best storytellers of that tradition, but only one of many—hence my interest [in] and love of multiple narrators" (private e-mail, 11/6/ 00). From that folk tradition, Kimball developed the seemingly random, communal stream of consciousness structure of Harvesting Ballads which carried over in everevolving form to his second novel, Liar's Moon. But he has confessed to several literary models, including James Joyce—mainly the use of the stream of consciousness technique in Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. Both works also include revelations about works of literature based on other works of literature, and Kimball employs this technique as well. Kimball...