Thanks Jim. Bookmarked!
So I can see how this might be an unusual (but interesting) choice and not super-practical for most stories. However, I can easily imagine stories where the IC doesn’t meet the MC until after the first act turn (especially in a third-person novel where you’re switching POVs). Knowing you can do that is extremely useful.
It’s been a long time since I read it and I never saw the movie. If I remember correctly, there’s an implication of reincarnation of a single character (or maybe more than one?), throughout the stories, and probably an IC perspective throughout as well e.g. I don’t think each story is a separate throughline.
A few of Milan Kundera’s books have a kind of loose structure that’s neither a novel nor a short story collection, and I’ve wondered if they might fit but I can’t think of a good example. The only one I can really remember right now though is The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which probably doesn’t fit either – Unbearable Lightness almost certainly has two complete storyforms with the two sets of lovers (Tomas and Teresa and Sabina and Franz) (I would love to analyze that one sometime…)