Literary work composed of smaller sub-works

Kind of a strange question, I guess... I'm wondering if there is any classic or acknowledged work in the English literary canon that tells a complete story through a set of apparently unrelated sub-stories that turn out to paint a whole picture together. This would be different than, say, an anthology or some other type book with thematically-related stories, but otherwise unconnected. This was in part inspired by some analyses I've been reading on Moby Dick. One essay explained that Herman Melville was using the story of Ahab and Moby Dick as a throughline to loosely connect what amounts to a series of essays that combine with the story to create a tale of man vs God. I'm aware of books in epistolary format, such as Dracula, but I'm not sure what kind of format I'm referring to in my search. The essay I mentioned on Moby Dick referred to that book as an "Anatomy" book. The only reference I could find to "anatomy"as a literary device was the site for the Encyclopedia Britannica. There the definition was "the separating or dividing of a topic into parts for detailed examination or analysis". Maybe that is what I am looking for, but there don't seem to be many books in modern English that follow that idea. I'm not even sure Anatomy as a literary device is the thing I am trying to find, or if such a thing exists. If anyone has any thoughts, I would appreciate it. Thank you!

Walking on Glass, by Iain Banks.

Theres some modernist and post-modernist works that do that which makes it harder to label them as part of the literary canon but are generally well respected. Its reasonably common in these styles because the styles by definition are experimenting with the style and structure of established novels. Something like the excellent Invisible Cities is a series of fictional descriptions and vignettes that comes together to form one larger message and then you've also got books like the Ulysses which might meet your requirement a bit tighter as it follows loosely connected people in loosely connected lives.

This is in no way part of the literary canon, but maybe Cerebus the Aardvark is worth a look, particularly the "phonebook" editions. Wikipedia has an entry on the author, Dave Sim, and in it mentions that "Babylon 5" writer J. Michael Straczynski was inspired by Sim's style when writing Staczynski's own show. Sim apparently developed an ability to write very multilayered stories across long arcs composed of mostly standalone installments. I'd love to know how to plan out something like that, but maybe it was just an adhoc strategy that evolved over time.

>>5820 Two rules that JMS stuck to throughout Babylon 5 were: 1. Always have both temporary and permanent plans for getting rid a character when introducing them, to avoid loose threads in long-running stories when actors became unavailable. For example, Talia secretly being a sleeper agent for the Psi Corps, or Sinclair being assigned to a diplomatic post on Minbar. 2. Provide answers to Big Questions from time to time, and use those answers to ask more Big Questions. For example, the reason for the Minbari surrender at the Battle of the Line being that Minbari souls were being reincarnated into human bodies, and Minbari do not harm Minbari. It was a satisfying and conclusive answer as to why, but also raised the question of how Minbari were being reborn as humans in the first place.

I don't know if this is what you mean but there is a trilogy of stories by Brian Aldiss concluding with The Worm That Flies. I read that one alone before discovering the other two, which you can look up the names of because I can't remember. The first two are clearly connected, the third not so obviously because it's so strange but it becomes clearer eventually.