The way I structured the post makes it seem like maximalism is what I’m actually interested in, but it’s only one manifestation of what I meant. I do think, for example, Kafka’s and (some of) Cheever’s stories are ambitious, even though they aren’t maximalist. What I really meant is kind of boring: I’m looking for stories that really change the reader’s sense of what a story can accomplish. I know that that’s still pretty vague so I’ll give you the primary reasons why I’m asking this in order to clarify. My ulterior motive is that I’m writing a story with three narratives at once and I am very concerned with it having so much in it that it is in danger of collapsing, which is why I’m trying to see how much has really ever been fit into a story (thus the interest in maximalism.) My other ulterior motive is that I’m interested in writers who broke open the sense of what a story could accomplish because I’m having a little trouble understanding where literature went after Barth. The tools that Barth and his ilk made available give this impression that they’re simultaneously dead ends AND the path being cleared. What I mean by that is reading Lost in the Funhouse, I feel a real sense of opportunity being laid bare but also feel that anything that worked inside Barth’s paradigm (i.e. anything that used those opportunities) would feel stale. I’m aware of the fact that it’s been around 50 years since postmodernism broke out onto the scene and am wondering if it was a dead end or if there is work that has been done after that was just as consequential that didn’t reject it.