William Gass contributes an introduction to the collection titled "Anywhere But Kansas" in which he describes the innovative fiction texts as "exploratory." He states that "explorational fiction records an often painful and disappointing journey, possibly of discovery, possibly of empty sailing: yet never toward what may lie out of sight in the self, since that is what improvisation discloses, but of what lies still unappreciated in the landscape of literature - implications unperceived, conclusions undrawn, directions everyone has failed to follow." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.