Saturday, July 2: Mississippi Mud
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
by John M. Floyd
Question: How do you feel about stories with unresolved endings?
Rick DeMarinis, in his book The Art and Craft of the Short Story, says: “Chekhov, Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, among others less well known, created a new trend: the open-ended story, the story in which plot is almost nonexistent and character is everything.” He goes on to say: “By open-ended I mean that the ‘resolution’ of the story is not dramatically conclusive.”
I understand why some like that kind of thing. The best fiction reflects real life, and in real life things are almost always unresolved. And I can appreciate as well as the next guy a gut-wrenching, soul-searching drama that makes us take a long hard look at ourselves and our problems. But I also enjoy the dumb, escapist, I-know-it’s-a-fantasy-but-who-cares kind of entertainment. I like it when E.T. finds his way home, and Chief Brody kills the shark, and Rocky somehow does “go the distance.”
Opposite extremes
There are always exceptions to this “unplotted and unresolved” concept. Some stories don’t have much of a plot but do have definite endings. Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is an example. It’s a tale of sad and disillusioned people who get together for a holiday in Spain, and while there’s plenty of levels of conflict there’s no clear plotline — but when all’s said and done, the male and female leads somehow wind up together. It’s anyone’s guess whether they’ll stay together — to say they have issues is an understatement — but they’ve finally found each other again.
Other stories have wonderful, clear, edge-of-your-seat plots and vague endings. One of these was No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. I loved the novel and the film, but a friend of mine who went with me to see it in the theatre told me afterward, “That damn movie didn’t end. It just stopped.”
That’s entertainment . . . or is it?
DeMarinis again: “The readers of magazine fiction fifty years ago wanted tidy endings. They wanted wholesome, life-affirming entertainment. They didn’t want to be confused, or disturbed, or left hanging. But contemporary short story writers disturb and confuse and leave you up in the air.”
Actually, I usually do want entertainment, wholesome or not, life-affirming or not, and I usually don’t want to be overly confused or left hanging. I’m confused enough as it is; I don’t need to have mind-numbing fiction adding to my problems. But maybe that’s just me. (As I have admitted before, anyone who enjoyed Blazing Saddles more than Schindler’s List might have an unconventional view of what’s good and what’s bad. Who except me would choose — in this case at least — Mel Brooks over Spielberg?)
The end justifies the scenes
I sometimes find myself liking or disliking a movie based on the way it ends. I realize that’s not fair, but if the ending is satisfying, I’m usually pleased with the story as a whole — and I think it has a better chance of being satisfying if it’s straightforward and understandable and resolved. Especially if it’s a mystery/crime story.
And since we’re talking about clarity, let me clarify something. A satisfying and resolved ending doesn’t have to be a “happy” ending. In the movie Witness, the guy didn’t get the girl; she stayed on the farm, he went back to the city. It wasn’t necessarily the way I wanted it to end, but it was the way it had to end. It made sense. Same thing applies to Casablanca, Butch Cassidy, The Green Mile, Cool Hand Luke, etc.
This area of discussion reminds me of Elmore Leonard’s reply years ago, when asked in an interview why his short stories had never appeared in The New Yorker. “My stories,” he answered, “have endings.”
Give ’em hell, Dutch.
One piece of writing advice handed to me way-back-when was “The reader is paying you to tell them a story. At the end of it, they don’t want to suddenly find out that they have to come up with an ending themselves; that’s your job as the writer, the one they paid you to do.”
It’s a view I myself subscribe to as well.
Great topic, great piece.
When my daughter was in high school I took her to our town’s big theatre because they were doing a special showing of one of my favorite movies: Picnic at Hanging Rock. On the way home the conversation went like this.
“But they don’t tell you what happened!”
“That’s right.”
“But they don’t tell you what happened!”
etc.
The first story I ever had published had, I thought, a pretty clear ending: one character was planning to wait two years (for a good reason) and then do something nasty to the other.
But one friend of mine immediately asked “what happened NEXT?” I assured her that I didn’t know.
Every time I saw her for months she asked “What happened NEXT?”
I finally told her that the next day the characters won the lottery and moved to Paris. For some reason she didn’t find that satisfying.
But as Westlake noted the question “What happened NEXT?” is what keeps authors in business.
I think a story without a satisfying ending is a lot like an open safety pin: there’s no closure and it’s difficult to swallow.
Satisfaction is paramount, and I tend to find bleak endings (or non-endings) found in some spy and horror novels less than satisfying. I understand the message of On the Beach, but the crew wandering a dying planet they helped kill is difficult to stomach.
Then there are obscure endings. I usually like endings that make me work, but some are far out. I can’t say I’m fond of the film Blowup, but I got what happened. It’s all there if one looks for it.
The film 2001 had a couple of problems. Early audiences filed out of the theatre before the actual ending, but even those who remained found the ending a bit obscure. A few edits later, the movie is considerably more understandable.
Although I usually prefer firmly tied-up endings, I wrote ambiguity into the plot of ‘Quality of Mercy’. Readers came up with more plot twists than I had in mind, but I liked that.
Thanks, guys — good thoughts. I agree that a satisfying ending is the only important thing, regardless of whether all is resolved or not.
The odd thing about On the Beach, Leigh, is that we already knew what the ending would be throughout the entire novel (and movie too). It was almost more of a character study of the players. I did enjoy it, though, and I usually don’t particularly like depressing stories.
I like an ending open or not to at least make sense. If the protagonist gets away with murder of the villian for the time being but is haunted by it or as in Dexter that he feels justified, I’ll come back to see what’s next. By the way, Brooks and Blazing Saddles rock!
Cindy, I first saw B.S. (the initials are probably appropriate) in the fall of 1974, at a theatre in Westwood, CA, and I STILL belly-laugh every time I watch certain scenes in that movie. Brooks was one of a kind.
I like a real ending, too.