interesting article from James Woods on endings in novels (and works of art in general).
what great works have great endings? what is a great ending? something cathartic, or a culmination of a projected arc? or what Woods calls the 'negative endings" of chekov, where the ending is one that "frustrate[s] our sense of tidy form by refusing to end:
"And then it began to rain."
i think it's telling, however, that woods cites as examples endings from films -"before sunset" is completely redeemed, in his opinion, by a beautiful ending - and in the music of Mahler, Wagner, Beethoven and Schubert.
the idea that interests me immensely here - and it's perhaps an obvious one to you voracious readers, but not so much to me - is that the entire novel can be seen as one long ending: that the first word of a book is the first word of the ending of the book.
Of course, the basic conundrum that attends any organic process is that in one's beginning is one's ending: the entire length of a novel or symphony can be said to be a kind of drawn-out ending.
and then:
Perfect endings, whether of the open Chekhovian kind, or of the positive and closed kind, are rare and to be cherished. One of the most beautiful last lines must occur in To the Lighthouse: "Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision." For that is what we want to be able to say at the close of every novel. Lily has finished her painting; and Woolf has now finished her open and fluid novel, which we, as readers, have helped to "paint". In this case, we have all indeed had our vision.
what do we expect from them? are we more often than not disappointed by the ending of a book? what endings do you particularly like and why?
― jed_ (jed), Thursday, 19 January 2006 02:49 (nineteen years ago)
― tom west (thomp), Thursday, 19 January 2006 05:44 (nineteen years ago)
the citation of the russian critic is funny, cuz it's quite recognisable as being the same thing as the typical-indie-film-anti-ending-ending: and then he goes on to the bloody linklater film.. i would quite like it if someone who knows the thing woods is citing (josh?) could explain if woods is cheating.
viz the first-line-as-first-last-line, and wagner: one of the operas makes a point of not revealing what key it is in for as long as possible at the beginning, which seems akin to what woods says he does deferring resolution.
― tom west (thomp), Thursday, 19 January 2006 06:00 (nineteen years ago)
what i suppose i expect in novel endings is to have some kind of formal-slash-rhetorical closure that ties up with the emotional-slash-thematic closure - this is kind of the signpost of "hey, kid, you're looking at the end of a novel. the end of a goddamned novel, kid." - i dunno if this is at all clear! obviously it assumes certain things about the reading experience ppl have with novels that i dunno if mine is standard or what: i suppose i should furnish examples, which i might do later. but i don't really think that this is a hard thing to do, write an ending that satisfies this kind of sense of closure. i'm not sure it's a praiseworthy thing, either: not sure that as readers we ought to be thus catered to. (which, oh my, that woolf one is giving the reader a fucking reacharound is what it is doing, good lord)
i'm curious if negative endings are those which try and actively deny that kind of closure (zazie in the metro, maybe?) vs those which don't provide cosy narrative closure but pretty obviously accomplish a formal closure, a "thematic" closure - i don't like a buncha the terms i'm using, here.
― tom west (thomp), Thursday, 19 January 2006 06:13 (nineteen years ago)
and now i am going to stop posting to this thread, sorry.
― tom west (thomp), Thursday, 19 January 2006 06:17 (nineteen years ago)
'art's founding conceit...' strikes me as backwards but maybe that's just me hoping to hear something more adornoish: that art's founding conceit is that it DOES end, unlike life. (thus the false formality of so many closed forms, thus the 'realistic' feel of the novel form, etc.)
(but to really make sense of that i would have to say why it's ONLY a conceit.)
― Josh (Josh), Thursday, 19 January 2006 17:16 (nineteen years ago)