James Wood and Why the Endings of Great Novels Disappoint
James Wood’s "How Fiction Works" is due out in England next month, July in North America. (via Bookfox, via Bookdwarf) Here’s the rapturous blurp from Random House:
"In the tradition of E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel and Milan Kundera’s The Art of the Novel, How Fiction Works is a scintillating and searching study of the main elements of fiction, such as narrative, detail, characterization, dialogue, realism, and style. In his first full-length book of criticism, one of the most prominent critics of our time takes the machinery of story-telling apart to ask a series of fundamental questions: What do we mean when we say we ‘know’ a fictional character? What constitutes a ‘telling’ detail? When is a metaphor successful? Is realism realistic? Why do most endings of novels disappoint?"
Bookfox says that if "most endings of novels disappoint, you’re reading the wrong novels." I’d say many great novels suffer from disappointing endings. Not necessarily because of content or plot, but simply because they just sputter out. The Brothers Karamazov, The Red and the Black, Crime and Punishment and London Fields all come to mind. They all stand proudly atop the mountain of my favourite books, and they all fall off at the end. I read somewhere that Dostoevsky was always under pressure from publishers to meet deadlines, so that explains part of it. I look forward to Wood explaining the rest.
btw. I wish he’d given the blurb editor some writing lessons: "scintillating and searching study"? Really.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:19 PM
Maybe I’m reading the right books because the only way endings disappoint me is that they let me know there’s going to be more. Sometimes they can be a blessing for the selfsame reason.I really hate sweeping statements like that. I’m not saying that endings are the easiest things to write (I mean, when is a good stopping point?) but let’s not generalise, eh?
January 8th, 2008 at 9:13 PM
Some books with ’satisfactory’ endings do come to mind, Don Quixote for example, Pride and Prejudice perhaps. I found the ending to J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace quite elegant. Forster’s death and marriage are most often used to satisfy Frank Kermode’s human desire to impose order…create a sense of an ending. Readers and writers most often accept that these form driven endings will have to do. But they’re pat. Boring. Predictable. Alternatively we’re left hanging with open ended conclusions…equally dissatisfying. I think it’s natural not to want a book that you’re engaged with to end. As you say, the only consolation is that there are in most cases more books by the same author that you can jump back into.
January 11th, 2008 at 5:39 PM
I recall reading somewhere that Russell Banks starts with the ending in mind, maybe that’s not a bad approach. ("Continental Drift" is a particular example where everything in the novel builds towards the ending).
January 11th, 2008 at 5:56 PM
And in Amis’s Time’s Arrow time runs backwards…and then there are those serialized Victorian novels that are filled with mini-endings throughout: the to-be-continued cliff hangers.
January 16th, 2008 at 9:57 PM
Though as far as fiction mirroring, or indeed being a parallel universe to our life, apart from death, when could we possibly say our life ever really reached an ending. I don’t think it possible to have ended Brothers Karamazov in a way that could be considered satisfactory, apart from going on for a few thousand more pages. Its very scale means any closure is impossible- scale in its philosophical sense as well as simply scale of characters and events.
I also disagree somewhat with Crime & Punishment’s disappointing ending, though it is common to consider it should have ended with Raskolnikov’s confession. I find it an impressive, & such differently toned, unveiling of the life that Raskolnikov had potentialised for himself, through his opening the crack towards submission to truth. And this of the essence of Dostoevsky vision of life, and in no sense offering a fake silver lining.
Perhaps the problem is in ourselves if we are trying to get the novel to do too much; Nietzsche said something like "I am a railing over the stream, I am not however your crutch."
January 16th, 2008 at 11:23 PM
Perhaps I shouldn’t have said disappointing…abrupt would be a better word, especially in C&P. I didn’t object to the Christian proselytizing, just to the way the reader is hustled and shoved out the door. Similar problem with The Red and the Black. Both searing great novels, with honkin great flaws at the end.