Atwood's Murder in the Dark (1983), in which "Happy Endings" first appeared, contains short pieces that playfully focus on language, perception, and storytelling.

French-Canadian author Marie Claire Blais has published her journal, American Notebooks: A Writer's Journey (1996).

John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse (1968) is a collection of short experimental pieces in which the author explores the creative process.

Argentian writer Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch(1963) questions traditional narrative progress and endings with this open-ended novel set in the expatriate world of Paris.

Carol Anshaw' s Aquamarine (1992) opens at the 1968 Summer Olympics as a young swimmer falls in love for the first time. Then the novel shifts to 1990 and shows the three different paths that its heroine could have chosen.

Pale Fire (1962) by Vladmir Nabokov consists of a long poem and commentary on it by an insane intellectual in a parody of literary scholarship...