Again, a great analysis on endings. Side stepping the happy/sad question to Truthful or forced.
Also a new look at the writer and also the reader who wishes for something uplifting in the face of the given "data" ( love this word- makes it so scientific) of the beginning and middle of a story. This idea is new to me, ie not slavishly staying with the data, but looking for a geode that could be transformed into anything. Like a clue in a mystery story. Here is where fiction begins, I think, fiction- not fantasy.
I applied this idea to Joe in our recent Gilded six bits story, ie clues for predicting Joe's response, and on looking, felt there was a certain warmth in the character of Joe, who trusts his Missie with his hard earned money, who trusts Otis, and so trustfulness, which in my cynical mind became gullibility, transformed into faith and a willingness to trust again, even in the face of infidelity from Missie.
And so, even when surprised by his actions, I somehow was also moved by it. ( Why was I moved ?)Because, all along I had sympathized with his gullibility/ trustful nature and felt for him. So his actions in the end are not out of sync with the data of the story after all! And the ending is enormously satisfying.....
I liked so much that Joe laughed when he discovered the two in bed. It seemed so real and such a wonderful break in the tension. There was the shock and the ridiculousness of the scene he witnessed and it seemed a kind of wonderful grace that Joe could laugh and that he still wanted breakfast.
It's always laugh or cry. Sometimes, our emotions get mixed up and we don't know which way to respond. i feel like Joe laughed, not because he found anything funny or ridiculous, but perhaps because his feelings were just so intense, it was impossible in that moment to know how to respond.
My mom and I both tend to laugh in sad or highly emotional situations. Like funerals or telling someone something tragic. It’s awful because it feels so wrong. But it’s true, our emotions get mixed up. Maybe our defense mechanisms muddle things as well.
i have had this happen to me several times. It's really awful when it happens because the reaction appears so inappropriate when, in fact, it simply means I'm overwhelmed with emotion.
Thought provoking post KG. You make a link between 'data' and science but, I think, you may also find it useful to bear in mind that 'data' can be quantitative or qualitative in character. I don't think that it would be possible to gather data that would ever allow a meaningful prediction of how Joe is going to respond the actions that transpire in the story. I'm sure, building on the style of George's describing the dialogues that go on between himself and his emerging story, that Zora Neale Hurston must have really wrestled with just how to get her story to end with an uplift (which I tend to think was her goal from the get-go in settling to write 'The Gilded Six Bits).
I doubt that Hurston had the difficulty you're describing, unless she'd finished the story other than the way she did, and felt the need to go back and change what she'd written earlier in the narrative. It is the values that she imputes to Joe in the early scenes that makes the ending work. He is fundamentally generous, which makes him err (vis-a-vis Slemmons) on the side of credulousness, and in the end to come back as he does to the way he values generosity. He is true to the nature that he developed in his lifetime to this point.
Or could she be, Tim, the bird trapped in the birdcage - archetypically of a 'misogynistic' design - that he (in one of my readings, no more than that) be the somewhat older than her caught and trapped her in?
That Joe is true to his nature I think that few can doubt, but as to where his 'being true' might carry him and this story is, I'm still inclined think, Zora was working out as the words she thought morphed out on the page(s) she was, at particular times. working on.
Hmmm.... I think he is. At least I read more evidence of his generous but naive nature than of misogynistic design. Needless to say, there is plenty of misogyny in the world but in this case I think it is embodied in Slemmons.
To pick-up on a turn of phrase that has played its way in conversation of 'The Gilded Six Bits, Part 3'-supposedly final' but with George, Newsletter originator and narrator par excellence, frankly, who, quite, knows - I realise that I've been, enjoyably, shootin' spitballs 🙀.
And to say, also, "Yes Tim I tend to agree. this richly complex short fiction is, essentially' simple: a tale of love lost and, subsequently, slowly, love regained, in the real but fictional terroir of Z N Hurston's 'Eatonville'.
Be readin' you down along the long and unwinding road we are fellow travelling, along George's genially provocative guidelines.
Agree that data is qualitative in stories and narration, it is still data or the "given" which is what the word data means ( Latin?). I don't know about Hurston's method, wrestling with an idea. Often the idea is hidden from the writer, there is just a feeling you have and you circle that feeling , hunting its meaning. And that's how the writer builds suspense as he himself struggles with it. Then the detailed description gives clues. dialogue gives clues to the writer and reader. And voila! discovery in the ending. When an ending is satisfying, it is the right ending...... I think I am beginning to understand when writers say that writing is a process of discovery..... anyway I enjoyed your comment as it led to this clarification in my own thinking...
That's a big part of what I seem to be get out of Story Club too, that is what you express as "I think I am beginning to understand when writers say that writing is a process of discovery". It's not so much that I didn't know this before but rather that now this insight is much more internalised... almost to the extent that I'm looking forward to writing a story about which I may start out with clear intentions in the, all but, certain knowledge that what the story turns out to be and to be about will be at some variance with what my early thoughts.
I just heard Tom Stoppard interviewed on The New Yorker Radio Hour. He mentioned the direction in which he had hoped to take his latest play… “But it didn’t work out that way, of course. Each play has to find its own architecture.” Sounds like he was in dialogue with the work!
A few, more, moments' rumination and I'm with your suggestion David: Zora got a story start and kept on writing to find out what happened. Which is, perhaps, why 'The Gilded Six Bits' is so very surprising? Because it is not merely 'realistic' but actually 'as lived life is'?
Let the story decide! I love this. I have just had two stories published - both are about young people in medical situations in the Jim Crow South. The first is "sad." Everybody loses. When I got to finishing the second, I found it also a downer. And I didn't want that. I couldn't change how it was a downer, because even in a story, maybe especially in a story, which has a completed and finite shape - what is, is. But I could change the main character's next moves, her determinations. I did this almost without thinking. Certainly not to change the sadness of the basic event, but to take that story one step further for the narrator, giving her a resolution with more power. And thanks to this Office Hour essay by George (by George!) I get to see what I've done! And now, describing it helps me make it even more a conscious act. Hurray!
Two 'Hurrays' and a 'Cheers' to you Sallie for getting two stories published but also for evidencing the way that the ideas and concepts that George offers us in writing his Newsletters really do 'cash out' in practice. "Let the Story Decide" strikes me as having a parallel in the stable yard of memorable phrases "Let the Writer Decide". It's been a great, and consistent, feature of George's approach to running Story Club that he shows and involves his readers never tells us what we should do.
Again: congratulations Sallie, and thanks for sharing.
A writing teacher of mine once said “a story occurs when an interior mental landscape becomes a gesture in the physical world.” And Janet Burroway says (may be paraphrasing) stories occur between moments of disconnection and connection.” And, I think, the disconnect is what a lot of stories we read gravitates towards. I think it’s also telling that disconnect and sad endings feel more “truthful” to our experiences, universally, perhaps, than “happy endings.” Anyways, I’ve always personally admired happy endings, or endings that end on that rare moment of connection. It’s a pretty rare thing. Stories I can think of that do this that I like include “Fireworks” by Richard Ford, “News of the World” by Paulette Jiles, and “The Trip Back” by Robert Butler, all stories that center on honest moments of connection
I think we distrust happy endings because we know that life goes on beyond that ending. And that there will be more ups and downs. Some joy, some grief.
Like when movies end with the characters finally getting together and wed. But we humans know that a wedding isn’t an end, but another beginning. And so we joke about those sentimental happy ever afters and praise the happily never afters.
What I love about the Gilded Six Bits is that even the happy ending resists feeling like happily ever after and instead just feels hopeful. We are shown their humanity and ability to make mistakes. But love is there. It’s a thread that we feel might continue through future ups and downs. It’s happy while seeing a broader truthfulness about life.
That's a quote I'll hope sticks with Eric - "stories occur between moments of disconnection and connection"- and one that fits well when offered up against the way the story unfolds in 'The Gilded Six Bits': essentially (and way to simplified in some senses) starts connected > twists through shocking disconnection > ends in surprising reconnection.
Thanks to you and Sallie for signposting us to other stories that you fell evidence the points you make.
Gosh, I haven't heard anyone mention Caroline Gordon in ages. I'm thinking of "The Brilliant Leaves." This, in turn, brings to mind Jean Stafford & "In the Zoo", one of the most devastating stories ever.
Eric, I can relate to both of your references from writing teachers, and I agree with you that the disconnect is the direction that many stories gravitate toward. After all, it's the moment in life that surprise is experienced, and that a character is likely to be called to take action that isn't conditioned by previous experience. Possibilities are rampant! Thanks for your observations...
I appreciate this question and the deep-dive answer, which caused me to think again about the goods and bads that occur for characters I'm writing about. The way you speak about the truth, George, I see it as going further than an accurate accounting of events, by developing into an interior reckoning with a character's values. Happy or unhappy is going to be a designation based upon each character's attitudes about experiences and events.
It's helpful to think of my own life, which in terms of age is probably over 80% complete; there have been astounding positives and negatives over the years, but without sugar-coating it, it has been a good life. I want to die knowing that overall, I've done work that was resonant with others' growth, gave the best that was possible at any time, and made amends, as much as possible, for the times my best wasn't enough. That's my version of the truth you speak about.
"The Gilded Six Bits" addressed the growth (or not) of character when difficulties arose in happy lives, and Joe, especially, stepped up and matured as a result. A positive ending was inspiring and well-deserved.
Really lovely post and as soon as I started reading, I had a feeling the axiom of truth/untruth would be invoked, as it's a compass I try to use myself!
Also, I had a good chuckle at the final image, as I had a short story published last week that, yes, is about a coffin maker! (Though it is a story of death and grief, I hope it's uplifting in that truthful way). Cheers!
Read it; like it; loved the notion of 'our first necronaut'; and found myself thinking ...
> of a morning spent strolling, years ago, about the Athenian Acropolis on which so many dead vestiges and columned ruins of Classical Greece, such as The Parthenon stands
> of queuing less far back in time, in Moscow's Red Square in the mid-1990s, to pass by Lenin's Preserved Body Entombed in its Veritable Glass Sacrcophagus
> of a day watching, off and on, via TV and Google, the Ritual Funeral recently occasioned by the death of Queen Elizabeth II, She Who Had Been Monarch Every Day Since Before My Birth.
Mmm ... Martin ... here was I ... a Still Saunderian Pond until reading the Signpost to Your Story ... that Plopped 'Her Five Farewells' as a Pebble to Perturb ...
Do you think the same is going to turn out to be the case with AI Clone Bots?
Everyone wired-up identically and behaving identically until some metaphorical pebble plops in a metaphorical pond nearby and the ripples which, appear to a human eye, to radiate gently out from the point of impact to the pond edges connect with a passing Crew of Gen X Clone Bots with all the subtlety of a Trans-Pacific Tsunami making landfall in the East having travelled over a 2500-mile fetch from its origin in a seaquake in the West?
'Action > Experience > Reaction > Evolution' is the notion. Question: is this applicable to homo-sapiens first wired-up by a Blind Watchmaker aka as God and to clone-bots first wired-up by a Bunch of Brilliant Winderkinds aka Scientists?
.Oh boy Mr Snider. I'm in Brittany just now, early October Saturday sunshine is radiating in the overarching Skysphere and I've managed to get a 4G Signal up and running the PMHS (Personal Mobile Hot Spot) that I need to set up via Sim2 to get online due to 'The Theft'! ... what a connective trip Mr Cahill's story seems to have kick started?
Ah but reality calls as I am summoned to get with doing the bed linen laundry so that we can continue to have fresh beds in which we can continue to be assured there are no biting-bug-bastards landed in the beds with gnasher sharpening technologies and appetites to taste beast blood and chew chunks of human beans.
See what you've tripped me into David ... yes I think if not tonight then tomorrow evening we'll be screening 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' 😱
An excellent writing prompt: "Watch someone sloppily and carelessly make the worst birthday cake ever."
One thing I like to think about when it comes to endings (and writing in general) is that if you get to the end of your story and it isn't working or isn't saying what you set out to say, usually the problem is in your beginning. The start of a story holds a kernel of the ending. And then a story unspools, leading inevitably to its ending (which, somehow, should still surprise). So, questioner, if your story has a happy ending, it was probably there in your first sentences. That's the truth of your story leading you all the way through. "Truthful" vs "forced," as George says. If you now change it because you don't like happy endings, you are fooling with the truth that you already set on the page. You'll need to go back in and re-work bits and pieces (or more) so that your story naturally leads to the sad ending that you prefer or that you think the world prefers. (I don't.)
With academic papers I’ve edited, I almost always tell the writer to take their conclusion and make it their introduction (their thesis). Academic writing has a different purpose, but I like the idea of taking the end and comparing it to the beginning to find the consistent truth.
Your point is well taken. Hurston gives Joe a fundamental generosity, and both characters a positive if somewhat naive outlook on life. Joe restores himself to the values that Hurston describes in him in the early part of the story. That's what makes it so true.
So many stories present a character, or characters, as fundamentally altered by events, not always for the better. It has been refreshing to read one in which the characters become more fundamentally themselves as a result of how they handle being taken down a few notches.
Reading your post, and the carry through conversation between yourself and David has brought the opening four lines written by Khalil Gibran to mind:
“Your children are not your children.
They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you."
Not intending to be trite but rather, humbly, sharing the thought that 'stories' could be substituted for 'children' (maybe even adding another couple of purposefully tweaking word substitutions) meaningfully in the context of our endeavours here in Story Club. What seems to be true of outstanding short literary stories is that they are so because they have found expression through the spirit, passion and talent of their authors rather than merely being penned to meet the prevailing tastes and preferences of the marketplace that is publishing.
I find myself bawling like a baby when someone finds their inner strength and overcomes their situation- whether they win or lose. Or actually someone recognizing when someone has been pushed to the limit and is in the verge of perhaps doing something wrong - and that observer still sees the good in that person. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.
So much makes me bawl these days. At least stories that feel truthful. People overcoming something is definitely one. Moments of forgiveness and reconciliation. Moments of deep love or grief - or the mix of the two.
I read a book a few years ago and I absolutely sobbed through two chapters. Serious ugly crying. I must’ve gone through an entire box of Kleenex. The first chapter I sobbed out of grief. The second from sweetness. I’m welling up now as I type this remembering those chapters.
Increasingly, I'm tempted to conclude that people find satisfaction in stories whose "mechanics" are discernible to them, and fit into their existing notion of "how it works." Ultimately, stories are models of the world, and we've learned everything we know about living from stories, since the beginning. There is a subtle joy in *recognition*, and pattern-matching is the most fundamental activity of the life process, from planaria to PhDs. One of the reasons music is so widely enjoyed is that it affords paths to pattern recognition within multiple time-windows. Repetition (recognition of a pattern) at high frequency is "pitch." At lower frequencies it's "timbre." At still lower ones, "melody." And this is being carried out by centers all over the brain, so tiny doses of endorphins appear all over the place as we recognize the tune, the chorus, the instruments, the meter, the theme, the genre, the composer, the era, and all the similarities to a bazillion other pieces of music. I think this is happening with language in general, and with stories in particular. Although, from this perspective (which I can't disregard), everything is a story. Absolutely everything, because each act of perceiving is a micro-story.
Not at all off-topic. Making a story "truthful" must mean that it follows steps that are rooted in the natural world including the critical idea of "selection." Sounds to me like you are familiar with writings such as Gerald Edelman's *Neural Darwinism* and his brilliant work on neuronal group selection (which might explain your point about music), consciousness, and how we happen to have a mind in our brain. All brilliant stuff.
Thanks. Yes, Neural Darwinism does seem appropriate. It's easy to forget that the cells of the body aren't entirely structural, but have a very real "life" of their own. So natural selection and grouping must be taking place. Somehow the whole thing is moderated to a central purpose, but the number of layers of "delegation" is almost unfathomable. The intelligence is evident even at the molecular level -- I can never shake those videos of molecular mechanisms walking along larger molecular structures. These things aren't thinking, but they sure are behaving!
As for pattern recognition, even the simplest life-forms have to be built for that -- a single-celled amoeba bumps into something, "tastes" it, and *recognizes* food or non-food, and then engulfs it or pulls away. It's all chemical, but at that level it's all chemical in the eye or any other sense.
Thanks. And thanks for your paternal bio a few years ago on NPR. After recognizing your name, I listened to it again, and found it wonderful and fascinating.
Hard???? Yeesh. Freakin' impossible! But the story went a long way. It shows that people are complex and deep and should never be dismissed. And it's a relief to see the encyclopedia at Archive.org.
So many amazing things happened because of that podcast, including meeting Brewster Kahle and staff at Internet Archives when I brought them a copy of the encyclopedia. Speaking of endings, some of what was said at the end wasn't accurate, but it did tie it all together from a "story" standpoint.
I’ve been working on a story for months that I haven’t been able to finish. I had all these ideas about why I couldn’t finish —It’s the last story in my book; I was bored; etc The ending just wouldn’t get written. Then this morning I thought of a different ending. Out of nowhere. I immediately realized that’s why I couldn’t finish the story. Because my intended ending wasn’t right. But I had no idea that was the problem. I sat right down and finished the story.
You are not alone Elizabeth in realising that "I have some work to do". What I'm relishing is the feeling that I may, just perhaps, have got a whole lot more insight and understanding of this short literary fiction writing malarkey is actually all about than I ever had before.
It'll be lovely, should either or both come to pass, to hear of the "ah ha" moment(s) that come when you find, doubtless having struggled (George never seems, or rarely seems, not to have to struggle with bringing his stories to their best ending, being the outturn that is truest to each story), yourself satisfied with a story ending and saying "ah ha" that's the downbeat or uplift ending that crystallises what the story I've been writing has actually been about ... who'd have thought it?"
Great response. thanks George. This is a question I wrestle with a lot. Sometimes I think I might write two different endings and send both out and see which is taken. But then I wonder if that shows a lack of artistic integrity.
Oh I don’t know Frances. I had a writing teacher once have the class write our same story in 1st and 3rd person, then from a minor character’s perspective, then as a lyric poem, in blank verse, and then as a play. It was an exercise in searching for form. I think Ian McEwan’s brilliant “Atonement” writes both a happy and horribly tragic ending into his story. Write it both ways and see what resonates. Malamud’s The Natural as book ending or as movie ending? Both quite appealing. Is one truer than the other. I think so, but in the end they’re both riveting.
I think that in each case of "re-writing" the story in 1st / 3rd person, etc., or in re-writing and finishing just one story, requires attention to the many different ways of paraphrasing Shakespeare: "This above all: to thine own self [story; character; action, etc.] be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false..."
The Natural was one of my required readings in high school Am Lit and it was painfully obvious when some classmates opted to watch the film instead of reading the book :)
Personally, I was angry when I saw the movie for myself. I wished they'd named it something else! I was surprised to learn that Malamud was fine with it.
I think it was my wake up call to the fact that books and movies are quite different - and the business and the audience are so very different. Malamud probably was fine with it all the way to the bank!
Wordsworth wrote two versions of his noted poem 'Daffodils' Frances. Sometimes readers don't know this but when they find out they rarely, if ever, nitpick about lack of artistic integrity. Response, in my admittedly limited experiences, is much more likely to celebrate the opportunity to compare.
I agree with Lee below, Frances. Write two or twenty different endings, see what speaks to you. I do believe that the story calls the shots, that it'll lead you to the ending, but nothing says a story has to offer only one definitive ending. And I don't think this shows a lack of integrity on your part or the story's. I think a story is more malleable than that. Others here can offer many examples of alternate endings, I'm sure, but the one that pops immediately to mind is Fowle's The French Lieutenant's Woman.
Same. Sadly, many of the old movies I watched with my father don't hold up--not at all! Anyway, I hope you're feeling better, Lee! The air is terrible here, too, so welcome to smoky Seattle.
Yeah. This smoky air is surprising but it’s been beautiful otherwise. I am much better, thank you. Just have to kick the last bit of lingering cough, more annoying than anything.
The studios made as many bad movies as good way back when as they do these days. People get paid a lot of money to make bad movies. Heck, I’m ready for my closeup for the going rate! Need my face done first, Stacya!
Well, I've seen The Graduate so many times, it's ridiculous. That's probably the movie I've re-seen the most times, though a few others come close. My husband and I re-watch a lot of movies. The other night, we watched The African Queen again. It's so great! We did a Hitchcock thing for awhile--rewatched several. Kurosawa is a favorite for rewatching. Anything with Bogart. We did a bunch of spaghetti westerns this past summer--Clint Eastwood! We watched the original Planet of the Apes a couple of months ago. Also Butch Cassidy. And I saw Tootsie again not too long ago. (My late mom's favorite movie, so I always watch it in her memory. I love Bill Murray in that movie.) And on and on. I'm sure I'll think of others after I hit Post. How about you?
There's something familiar about this question which I believe showed up in the form of a comment recently, though I can't recall exactly where & in what context. I was thinking then, but didn't say, that up or down, happy or sad, it seems to me that the story calls the shots, that a story's ending isn't determined so much as it arrives & that when it does you'll know it & that it'll be in accordance with what preceded it on the page. At least that's how it's been for me, "earned" I believe is the correct term. Comment or question, I'm glad for it & for the benefit of George's, as usual, clarifying response. Thanks, Clubber & thanks, George!
"I’d imagine it could be uplifting to watch a person energetically building a beautiful coffin." - Cash, making a coffin for Addie in As I Lay Dying?
A wonderful mini-treatise on endings, George. Thank you! You write: "I really value a story that authentically praises the good – I feel this to be, somehow, a higher-order artistic accomplishment." There was a time when I thought the ending of Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera was one of the most passionate, yet truest, endings of all of literature - love held off for decades was still there, despite the body's inability, wasted from longing and age, to consummate what it so fervently desired. And it was fine, it was okay, nevertheless.
I taught the O'Connor and Oates stories as a pair for years - and I'll quibble. I taught them as positive endings, that the bad guy doesn't win, and I think you can, in the worlds that both O'Connor and Oates build, make a strong argument that the grandmother and Connie end up on the better side of things in the end. Maybe not without suffering, maybe not without sacrifice or pain, but for a true outcome, they can be looked at as rising to their occasions and willingly, voluntarily overcoming their own selves, even if just for a moment, to shine - even if just for a moment. And I think you can make that argument without squinting at the text or contorted it or calling it ambiguous. Without subtext, sure, the bad guy wins. But subtext is what helps a story rise to that higher order reading. It's a quibble, I'll admit, but a worthwhile one.
For the questioner - great question, thank you for that! I speak for myself, that happy endings are fantastic and welcome - if earned and true, from someone who has written many stories with downer endings noting that trend in serious literature.
I think that some writers get endings wrong for a couple of reasons:
One is that the ending hasn’t revealed itself to them yet, which causes fear. Another kind of fear is being ‘too clichéd’. I think a lot of writers end up with unhappy endings because they feel that happy endings are too expected and too common, and if their story doesn’t have any real weight and they are insecure about that (often for a good reason), then an ending that is ‘too expected’ will reveal how weak the story actually is, so a twist or a tragic ending masquerades that fact, or so they hope (it never does).
Another reason might be that their story just doesn’t have an ending, so they fabricate one.
But I can’t think of a more feckless way to make up for a weak story than by giving it a twist ending or a tragic ending just to try to make it different. A writer who does that has lost their way and is in danger of going completely in the wrong direction.
It might sound a little paradoxical, but I think the best choice is to give the readers what they expect. What they are hoping for. What they are wishing for. Regardless of what’s ‘trendy’ in the marketplace. But it’s also important to give them doubt and worry about whether things will go the way they wish. You want them in suspense until you reach the resolution phase—with their fingers crossed.
Happy or sad or anywhere in between, I have a hard time thinking that any well-crafted story ever really "ends" anyway, as it may continue on in the mind of the reader for some time (hopefully the case). In other words, the reader takes it all in and then walks around for days with their own "what ifs" and "what might've beens." Engaged, affected, afflicted, changed. Accepting or resisting. Aside from that, George's expert analysis also makes me ask myself a big question: what is the purpose of a story—and stories—anyway? Hell if I know.
Like Rosanne said, it's built into us. Our brains, our senses, our central nervous system, is all built to gather information from our environment and find patterns in it. You go across this plain, eat this fruit but not that, and watch out for large brown things that roar. At some point we were able to say this to others, then after that, we were able to recount what we did to others, and it took off from there as the beasts became more powerful but we were still able to slay them, much to our listeners' amazement. That's why I think what we do literally goes back to the dawn of human consciousness. Storytelling is as old as mankind itself. Not a bad thing to take pride in...
I think I always knew this, that stories are hard-wired into us, but it wasn't until I took a class with Lynda Barry that it was confirmed for me. Jane Smiley also has somewhere an essay about the inescapable nature of gossip, another story form, &, to give it a good name, also lays claim to its built-in-ness.
The purpose, Ashley? I think it's biological, literally implanted & therefore inescapable. We can't not tell stories anymore than we can't not eat, at least not for long.
Again, a great analysis on endings. Side stepping the happy/sad question to Truthful or forced.
Also a new look at the writer and also the reader who wishes for something uplifting in the face of the given "data" ( love this word- makes it so scientific) of the beginning and middle of a story. This idea is new to me, ie not slavishly staying with the data, but looking for a geode that could be transformed into anything. Like a clue in a mystery story. Here is where fiction begins, I think, fiction- not fantasy.
I applied this idea to Joe in our recent Gilded six bits story, ie clues for predicting Joe's response, and on looking, felt there was a certain warmth in the character of Joe, who trusts his Missie with his hard earned money, who trusts Otis, and so trustfulness, which in my cynical mind became gullibility, transformed into faith and a willingness to trust again, even in the face of infidelity from Missie.
And so, even when surprised by his actions, I somehow was also moved by it. ( Why was I moved ?)Because, all along I had sympathized with his gullibility/ trustful nature and felt for him. So his actions in the end are not out of sync with the data of the story after all! And the ending is enormously satisfying.....
I liked so much that Joe laughed when he discovered the two in bed. It seemed so real and such a wonderful break in the tension. There was the shock and the ridiculousness of the scene he witnessed and it seemed a kind of wonderful grace that Joe could laugh and that he still wanted breakfast.
It's always laugh or cry. Sometimes, our emotions get mixed up and we don't know which way to respond. i feel like Joe laughed, not because he found anything funny or ridiculous, but perhaps because his feelings were just so intense, it was impossible in that moment to know how to respond.
My mom and I both tend to laugh in sad or highly emotional situations. Like funerals or telling someone something tragic. It’s awful because it feels so wrong. But it’s true, our emotions get mixed up. Maybe our defense mechanisms muddle things as well.
i have had this happen to me several times. It's really awful when it happens because the reaction appears so inappropriate when, in fact, it simply means I'm overwhelmed with emotion.
Defense mechanisms! That’s in there in a big way, I think.
Possibly he was in shock? The reasons for his laughter would be I think quite complex, but I like that he went warm instead of cold, his saving grace.
Completely missed that nuance..... good point!
Love the complicated characters!
Joe’s warmth—a combination of optimism and love?—is the wind that sails that story.
I love this look at Joe.
Thought provoking post KG. You make a link between 'data' and science but, I think, you may also find it useful to bear in mind that 'data' can be quantitative or qualitative in character. I don't think that it would be possible to gather data that would ever allow a meaningful prediction of how Joe is going to respond the actions that transpire in the story. I'm sure, building on the style of George's describing the dialogues that go on between himself and his emerging story, that Zora Neale Hurston must have really wrestled with just how to get her story to end with an uplift (which I tend to think was her goal from the get-go in settling to write 'The Gilded Six Bits).
I doubt that Hurston had the difficulty you're describing, unless she'd finished the story other than the way she did, and felt the need to go back and change what she'd written earlier in the narrative. It is the values that she imputes to Joe in the early scenes that makes the ending work. He is fundamentally generous, which makes him err (vis-a-vis Slemmons) on the side of credulousness, and in the end to come back as he does to the way he values generosity. He is true to the nature that he developed in his lifetime to this point.
"He is fundamentally generous ..."? Is he?
Or could she be, Tim, the bird trapped in the birdcage - archetypically of a 'misogynistic' design - that he (in one of my readings, no more than that) be the somewhat older than her caught and trapped her in?
That Joe is true to his nature I think that few can doubt, but as to where his 'being true' might carry him and this story is, I'm still inclined think, Zora was working out as the words she thought morphed out on the page(s) she was, at particular times. working on.
Hmmm.... I think he is. At least I read more evidence of his generous but naive nature than of misogynistic design. Needless to say, there is plenty of misogyny in the world but in this case I think it is embodied in Slemmons.
Hi Tim.
To pick-up on a turn of phrase that has played its way in conversation of 'The Gilded Six Bits, Part 3'-supposedly final' but with George, Newsletter originator and narrator par excellence, frankly, who, quite, knows - I realise that I've been, enjoyably, shootin' spitballs 🙀.
And to say, also, "Yes Tim I tend to agree. this richly complex short fiction is, essentially' simple: a tale of love lost and, subsequently, slowly, love regained, in the real but fictional terroir of Z N Hurston's 'Eatonville'.
Be readin' you down along the long and unwinding road we are fellow travelling, along George's genially provocative guidelines.
Rob
Agree that data is qualitative in stories and narration, it is still data or the "given" which is what the word data means ( Latin?). I don't know about Hurston's method, wrestling with an idea. Often the idea is hidden from the writer, there is just a feeling you have and you circle that feeling , hunting its meaning. And that's how the writer builds suspense as he himself struggles with it. Then the detailed description gives clues. dialogue gives clues to the writer and reader. And voila! discovery in the ending. When an ending is satisfying, it is the right ending...... I think I am beginning to understand when writers say that writing is a process of discovery..... anyway I enjoyed your comment as it led to this clarification in my own thinking...
That's a big part of what I seem to be get out of Story Club too, that is what you express as "I think I am beginning to understand when writers say that writing is a process of discovery". It's not so much that I didn't know this before but rather that now this insight is much more internalised... almost to the extent that I'm looking forward to writing a story about which I may start out with clear intentions in the, all but, certain knowledge that what the story turns out to be and to be about will be at some variance with what my early thoughts.
True, very true, theory comes into practice brick by brick..
I just heard Tom Stoppard interviewed on The New Yorker Radio Hour. He mentioned the direction in which he had hoped to take his latest play… “But it didn’t work out that way, of course. Each play has to find its own architecture.” Sounds like he was in dialogue with the work!
Maybe that was her goal. Or maybe she wanted to find out what happened?
A few, more, moments' rumination and I'm with your suggestion David: Zora got a story start and kept on writing to find out what happened. Which is, perhaps, why 'The Gilded Six Bits' is so very surprising? Because it is not merely 'realistic' but actually 'as lived life is'?
Absofrickinglutely!
Let the story decide! I love this. I have just had two stories published - both are about young people in medical situations in the Jim Crow South. The first is "sad." Everybody loses. When I got to finishing the second, I found it also a downer. And I didn't want that. I couldn't change how it was a downer, because even in a story, maybe especially in a story, which has a completed and finite shape - what is, is. But I could change the main character's next moves, her determinations. I did this almost without thinking. Certainly not to change the sadness of the basic event, but to take that story one step further for the narrator, giving her a resolution with more power. And thanks to this Office Hour essay by George (by George!) I get to see what I've done! And now, describing it helps me make it even more a conscious act. Hurray!
Two 'Hurrays' and a 'Cheers' to you Sallie for getting two stories published but also for evidencing the way that the ideas and concepts that George offers us in writing his Newsletters really do 'cash out' in practice. "Let the Story Decide" strikes me as having a parallel in the stable yard of memorable phrases "Let the Writer Decide". It's been a great, and consistent, feature of George's approach to running Story Club that he shows and involves his readers never tells us what we should do.
Again: congratulations Sallie, and thanks for sharing.
Congratulations on your publications, Sallie!
Thanks, Melissa.
Yes, congratulations! Hoping to read them sometime!
A writing teacher of mine once said “a story occurs when an interior mental landscape becomes a gesture in the physical world.” And Janet Burroway says (may be paraphrasing) stories occur between moments of disconnection and connection.” And, I think, the disconnect is what a lot of stories we read gravitates towards. I think it’s also telling that disconnect and sad endings feel more “truthful” to our experiences, universally, perhaps, than “happy endings.” Anyways, I’ve always personally admired happy endings, or endings that end on that rare moment of connection. It’s a pretty rare thing. Stories I can think of that do this that I like include “Fireworks” by Richard Ford, “News of the World” by Paulette Jiles, and “The Trip Back” by Robert Butler, all stories that center on honest moments of connection
I think we distrust happy endings because we know that life goes on beyond that ending. And that there will be more ups and downs. Some joy, some grief.
Like when movies end with the characters finally getting together and wed. But we humans know that a wedding isn’t an end, but another beginning. And so we joke about those sentimental happy ever afters and praise the happily never afters.
What I love about the Gilded Six Bits is that even the happy ending resists feeling like happily ever after and instead just feels hopeful. We are shown their humanity and ability to make mistakes. But love is there. It’s a thread that we feel might continue through future ups and downs. It’s happy while seeing a broader truthfulness about life.
just feels hopeful. That's good.
I love “happily never after.” And everything else you said!
That's a quote I'll hope sticks with Eric - "stories occur between moments of disconnection and connection"- and one that fits well when offered up against the way the story unfolds in 'The Gilded Six Bits': essentially (and way to simplified in some senses) starts connected > twists through shocking disconnection > ends in surprising reconnection.
Thanks to you and Sallie for signposting us to other stories that you fell evidence the points you make.
And "Dogs go Wolf," by Lauren Groff. And many by Caroline Gordon.
Gosh, I haven't heard anyone mention Caroline Gordon in ages. I'm thinking of "The Brilliant Leaves." This, in turn, brings to mind Jean Stafford & "In the Zoo", one of the most devastating stories ever.
Eric, I can relate to both of your references from writing teachers, and I agree with you that the disconnect is the direction that many stories gravitate toward. After all, it's the moment in life that surprise is experienced, and that a character is likely to be called to take action that isn't conditioned by previous experience. Possibilities are rampant! Thanks for your observations...
I appreciate this question and the deep-dive answer, which caused me to think again about the goods and bads that occur for characters I'm writing about. The way you speak about the truth, George, I see it as going further than an accurate accounting of events, by developing into an interior reckoning with a character's values. Happy or unhappy is going to be a designation based upon each character's attitudes about experiences and events.
It's helpful to think of my own life, which in terms of age is probably over 80% complete; there have been astounding positives and negatives over the years, but without sugar-coating it, it has been a good life. I want to die knowing that overall, I've done work that was resonant with others' growth, gave the best that was possible at any time, and made amends, as much as possible, for the times my best wasn't enough. That's my version of the truth you speak about.
"The Gilded Six Bits" addressed the growth (or not) of character when difficulties arose in happy lives, and Joe, especially, stepped up and matured as a result. A positive ending was inspiring and well-deserved.
Really lovely post and as soon as I started reading, I had a feeling the axiom of truth/untruth would be invoked, as it's a compass I try to use myself!
Also, I had a good chuckle at the final image, as I had a short story published last week that, yes, is about a coffin maker! (Though it is a story of death and grief, I hope it's uplifting in that truthful way). Cheers!
Would like to read that one!
Oh thanks! If anyone would like to read, it's here:
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/her-five-farewells/
Cheers!
Read it; like it; loved the notion of 'our first necronaut'; and found myself thinking ...
> of a morning spent strolling, years ago, about the Athenian Acropolis on which so many dead vestiges and columned ruins of Classical Greece, such as The Parthenon stands
> of queuing less far back in time, in Moscow's Red Square in the mid-1990s, to pass by Lenin's Preserved Body Entombed in its Veritable Glass Sacrcophagus
> of a day watching, off and on, via TV and Google, the Ritual Funeral recently occasioned by the death of Queen Elizabeth II, She Who Had Been Monarch Every Day Since Before My Birth.
Mmm ... Martin ... here was I ... a Still Saunderian Pond until reading the Signpost to Your Story ... that Plopped 'Her Five Farewells' as a Pebble to Perturb ...
👍
I love how a story can send each person off on their own connective trip.
Do you think the same is going to turn out to be the case with AI Clone Bots?
Everyone wired-up identically and behaving identically until some metaphorical pebble plops in a metaphorical pond nearby and the ripples which, appear to a human eye, to radiate gently out from the point of impact to the pond edges connect with a passing Crew of Gen X Clone Bots with all the subtlety of a Trans-Pacific Tsunami making landfall in the East having travelled over a 2500-mile fetch from its origin in a seaquake in the West?
'Action > Experience > Reaction > Evolution' is the notion. Question: is this applicable to homo-sapiens first wired-up by a Blind Watchmaker aka as God and to clone-bots first wired-up by a Bunch of Brilliant Winderkinds aka Scientists?
.Oh boy Mr Snider. I'm in Brittany just now, early October Saturday sunshine is radiating in the overarching Skysphere and I've managed to get a 4G Signal up and running the PMHS (Personal Mobile Hot Spot) that I need to set up via Sim2 to get online due to 'The Theft'! ... what a connective trip Mr Cahill's story seems to have kick started?
Ah but reality calls as I am summoned to get with doing the bed linen laundry so that we can continue to have fresh beds in which we can continue to be assured there are no biting-bug-bastards landed in the beds with gnasher sharpening technologies and appetites to taste beast blood and chew chunks of human beans.
See what you've tripped me into David ... yes I think if not tonight then tomorrow evening we'll be screening 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' 😱
Stay out of there, McMurphy!
I really love the way you use language and metaphor. I will read it again more slowly at some point and get back to you. Very vivid on so many levels!
Thank you so much!
An excellent writing prompt: "Watch someone sloppily and carelessly make the worst birthday cake ever."
One thing I like to think about when it comes to endings (and writing in general) is that if you get to the end of your story and it isn't working or isn't saying what you set out to say, usually the problem is in your beginning. The start of a story holds a kernel of the ending. And then a story unspools, leading inevitably to its ending (which, somehow, should still surprise). So, questioner, if your story has a happy ending, it was probably there in your first sentences. That's the truth of your story leading you all the way through. "Truthful" vs "forced," as George says. If you now change it because you don't like happy endings, you are fooling with the truth that you already set on the page. You'll need to go back in and re-work bits and pieces (or more) so that your story naturally leads to the sad ending that you prefer or that you think the world prefers. (I don't.)
With academic papers I’ve edited, I almost always tell the writer to take their conclusion and make it their introduction (their thesis). Academic writing has a different purpose, but I like the idea of taking the end and comparing it to the beginning to find the consistent truth.
Your point is well taken. Hurston gives Joe a fundamental generosity, and both characters a positive if somewhat naive outlook on life. Joe restores himself to the values that Hurston describes in him in the early part of the story. That's what makes it so true.
So many stories present a character, or characters, as fundamentally altered by events, not always for the better. It has been refreshing to read one in which the characters become more fundamentally themselves as a result of how they handle being taken down a few notches.
That sounds super helpful.
Agreed
Reading your post, and the carry through conversation between yourself and David has brought the opening four lines written by Khalil Gibran to mind:
“Your children are not your children.
They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you."
Not intending to be trite but rather, humbly, sharing the thought that 'stories' could be substituted for 'children' (maybe even adding another couple of purposefully tweaking word substitutions) meaningfully in the context of our endeavours here in Story Club. What seems to be true of outstanding short literary stories is that they are so because they have found expression through the spirit, passion and talent of their authors rather than merely being penned to meet the prevailing tastes and preferences of the marketplace that is publishing.
Love that Gibran passage! I think you are spot on here!! (Language’s longing for itself?)
My point exactly, better formed and expressed by thee than me (or at least my fuzzy 'ole mind) had yet clarified got round to clarifying so well.
Clarifying the ghee over here, boss! (That’s the magic of the Story Club!)
The kernel of a happy ending within the beginnings of a story - I can’t help but think of O’Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi.”
Do we need a balance of happy and unhappy endings, with which to think more deeply, and feel all there is to feel?
We each need what we each need. I like stories that just plain make me feel.
Yes! And I suppose each person’s ratio of need for story types varies vastly. (I think I am most moved when the happiness and sadness both peak.)
I find myself bawling like a baby when someone finds their inner strength and overcomes their situation- whether they win or lose. Or actually someone recognizing when someone has been pushed to the limit and is in the verge of perhaps doing something wrong - and that observer still sees the good in that person. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.
So much makes me bawl these days. At least stories that feel truthful. People overcoming something is definitely one. Moments of forgiveness and reconciliation. Moments of deep love or grief - or the mix of the two.
I read a book a few years ago and I absolutely sobbed through two chapters. Serious ugly crying. I must’ve gone through an entire box of Kleenex. The first chapter I sobbed out of grief. The second from sweetness. I’m welling up now as I type this remembering those chapters.
Right. Which book?
This brings to mind Bill Murray finally stepping out of his preconceptions in Groundhog Day.
Increasingly, I'm tempted to conclude that people find satisfaction in stories whose "mechanics" are discernible to them, and fit into their existing notion of "how it works." Ultimately, stories are models of the world, and we've learned everything we know about living from stories, since the beginning. There is a subtle joy in *recognition*, and pattern-matching is the most fundamental activity of the life process, from planaria to PhDs. One of the reasons music is so widely enjoyed is that it affords paths to pattern recognition within multiple time-windows. Repetition (recognition of a pattern) at high frequency is "pitch." At lower frequencies it's "timbre." At still lower ones, "melody." And this is being carried out by centers all over the brain, so tiny doses of endorphins appear all over the place as we recognize the tune, the chorus, the instruments, the meter, the theme, the genre, the composer, the era, and all the similarities to a bazillion other pieces of music. I think this is happening with language in general, and with stories in particular. Although, from this perspective (which I can't disregard), everything is a story. Absolutely everything, because each act of perceiving is a micro-story.
Phew. Am I off-topic, or what?
Not at all off-topic. Making a story "truthful" must mean that it follows steps that are rooted in the natural world including the critical idea of "selection." Sounds to me like you are familiar with writings such as Gerald Edelman's *Neural Darwinism* and his brilliant work on neuronal group selection (which might explain your point about music), consciousness, and how we happen to have a mind in our brain. All brilliant stuff.
Thanks. Yes, Neural Darwinism does seem appropriate. It's easy to forget that the cells of the body aren't entirely structural, but have a very real "life" of their own. So natural selection and grouping must be taking place. Somehow the whole thing is moderated to a central purpose, but the number of layers of "delegation" is almost unfathomable. The intelligence is evident even at the molecular level -- I can never shake those videos of molecular mechanisms walking along larger molecular structures. These things aren't thinking, but they sure are behaving!
As for pattern recognition, even the simplest life-forms have to be built for that -- a single-celled amoeba bumps into something, "tastes" it, and *recognizes* food or non-food, and then engulfs it or pulls away. It's all chemical, but at that level it's all chemical in the eye or any other sense.
If going off-topic is this interesting, please go off!
Thanks. And thanks for your paternal bio a few years ago on NPR. After recognizing your name, I listened to it again, and found it wonderful and fascinating.
It was hard to capture his life in 55 minutes, but the story was moving and didn't stray too far off track. Loved the sound design, too.
Hard???? Yeesh. Freakin' impossible! But the story went a long way. It shows that people are complex and deep and should never be dismissed. And it's a relief to see the encyclopedia at Archive.org.
So many amazing things happened because of that podcast, including meeting Brewster Kahle and staff at Internet Archives when I brought them a copy of the encyclopedia. Speaking of endings, some of what was said at the end wasn't accurate, but it did tie it all together from a "story" standpoint.
I'm just relieved that the encyclopedia now exists in more than one place!
I’ve been working on a story for months that I haven’t been able to finish. I had all these ideas about why I couldn’t finish —It’s the last story in my book; I was bored; etc The ending just wouldn’t get written. Then this morning I thought of a different ending. Out of nowhere. I immediately realized that’s why I couldn’t finish the story. Because my intended ending wasn’t right. But I had no idea that was the problem. I sat right down and finished the story.
I always thought your story Victory Lap and Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been were siblings (or twins separated at birth and a few decades)
Each requires the other?
So much to consider. Including being reminded of 'earned' endings. And the realization that I have some work to do. Thank you.
You are not alone Elizabeth in realising that "I have some work to do". What I'm relishing is the feeling that I may, just perhaps, have got a whole lot more insight and understanding of this short literary fiction writing malarkey is actually all about than I ever had before.
This is an "ah ha" for me as I've always struggled with endings. Thank you!
It'll be lovely, should either or both come to pass, to hear of the "ah ha" moment(s) that come when you find, doubtless having struggled (George never seems, or rarely seems, not to have to struggle with bringing his stories to their best ending, being the outturn that is truest to each story), yourself satisfied with a story ending and saying "ah ha" that's the downbeat or uplift ending that crystallises what the story I've been writing has actually been about ... who'd have thought it?"
Great response. thanks George. This is a question I wrestle with a lot. Sometimes I think I might write two different endings and send both out and see which is taken. But then I wonder if that shows a lack of artistic integrity.
Oh I don’t know Frances. I had a writing teacher once have the class write our same story in 1st and 3rd person, then from a minor character’s perspective, then as a lyric poem, in blank verse, and then as a play. It was an exercise in searching for form. I think Ian McEwan’s brilliant “Atonement” writes both a happy and horribly tragic ending into his story. Write it both ways and see what resonates. Malamud’s The Natural as book ending or as movie ending? Both quite appealing. Is one truer than the other. I think so, but in the end they’re both riveting.
I think that in each case of "re-writing" the story in 1st / 3rd person, etc., or in re-writing and finishing just one story, requires attention to the many different ways of paraphrasing Shakespeare: "This above all: to thine own self [story; character; action, etc.] be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false..."
The Natural was one of my required readings in high school Am Lit and it was painfully obvious when some classmates opted to watch the film instead of reading the book :)
Personally, I was angry when I saw the movie for myself. I wished they'd named it something else! I was surprised to learn that Malamud was fine with it.
I think it was my wake up call to the fact that books and movies are quite different - and the business and the audience are so very different. Malamud probably was fine with it all the way to the bank!
Wordsworth wrote two versions of his noted poem 'Daffodils' Frances. Sometimes readers don't know this but when they find out they rarely, if ever, nitpick about lack of artistic integrity. Response, in my admittedly limited experiences, is much more likely to celebrate the opportunity to compare.
I agree with Lee below, Frances. Write two or twenty different endings, see what speaks to you. I do believe that the story calls the shots, that it'll lead you to the ending, but nothing says a story has to offer only one definitive ending. And I don't think this shows a lack of integrity on your part or the story's. I think a story is more malleable than that. Others here can offer many examples of alternate endings, I'm sure, but the one that pops immediately to mind is Fowle's The French Lieutenant's Woman.
Polanski famously changed the ending of Chinatown from the original script. And a classic was born.
I watched that again during the pandemic, it's still so relevant. Even the stuff about California and the water...
I watch it once a year. It’s in my top 5. And growing up in L.A. and my dad later working at MWD, it’s in the blood, so to speak. Or the fishpond.
Bad for glass.
Same. Sadly, many of the old movies I watched with my father don't hold up--not at all! Anyway, I hope you're feeling better, Lee! The air is terrible here, too, so welcome to smoky Seattle.
Yeah. This smoky air is surprising but it’s been beautiful otherwise. I am much better, thank you. Just have to kick the last bit of lingering cough, more annoying than anything.
The studios made as many bad movies as good way back when as they do these days. People get paid a lot of money to make bad movies. Heck, I’m ready for my closeup for the going rate! Need my face done first, Stacya!
We just watched it again too. So good!!!
Are there other movies you revisit periodically, Mary?
Well, I've seen The Graduate so many times, it's ridiculous. That's probably the movie I've re-seen the most times, though a few others come close. My husband and I re-watch a lot of movies. The other night, we watched The African Queen again. It's so great! We did a Hitchcock thing for awhile--rewatched several. Kurosawa is a favorite for rewatching. Anything with Bogart. We did a bunch of spaghetti westerns this past summer--Clint Eastwood! We watched the original Planet of the Apes a couple of months ago. Also Butch Cassidy. And I saw Tootsie again not too long ago. (My late mom's favorite movie, so I always watch it in her memory. I love Bill Murray in that movie.) And on and on. I'm sure I'll think of others after I hit Post. How about you?
Talk about disturbing endings. But it had to be that way.
Oh, that ending! So tough. But so good. "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."
Mind blown. I had no idea! And thank goodness he changed it, I can't imagine it ending any other way.
I know. It's the perfect (if tragic) ending!
There's something familiar about this question which I believe showed up in the form of a comment recently, though I can't recall exactly where & in what context. I was thinking then, but didn't say, that up or down, happy or sad, it seems to me that the story calls the shots, that a story's ending isn't determined so much as it arrives & that when it does you'll know it & that it'll be in accordance with what preceded it on the page. At least that's how it's been for me, "earned" I believe is the correct term. Comment or question, I'm glad for it & for the benefit of George's, as usual, clarifying response. Thanks, Clubber & thanks, George!
"I’d imagine it could be uplifting to watch a person energetically building a beautiful coffin." - Cash, making a coffin for Addie in As I Lay Dying?
A wonderful mini-treatise on endings, George. Thank you! You write: "I really value a story that authentically praises the good – I feel this to be, somehow, a higher-order artistic accomplishment." There was a time when I thought the ending of Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera was one of the most passionate, yet truest, endings of all of literature - love held off for decades was still there, despite the body's inability, wasted from longing and age, to consummate what it so fervently desired. And it was fine, it was okay, nevertheless.
I taught the O'Connor and Oates stories as a pair for years - and I'll quibble. I taught them as positive endings, that the bad guy doesn't win, and I think you can, in the worlds that both O'Connor and Oates build, make a strong argument that the grandmother and Connie end up on the better side of things in the end. Maybe not without suffering, maybe not without sacrifice or pain, but for a true outcome, they can be looked at as rising to their occasions and willingly, voluntarily overcoming their own selves, even if just for a moment, to shine - even if just for a moment. And I think you can make that argument without squinting at the text or contorted it or calling it ambiguous. Without subtext, sure, the bad guy wins. But subtext is what helps a story rise to that higher order reading. It's a quibble, I'll admit, but a worthwhile one.
For the questioner - great question, thank you for that! I speak for myself, that happy endings are fantastic and welcome - if earned and true, from someone who has written many stories with downer endings noting that trend in serious literature.
I think that some writers get endings wrong for a couple of reasons:
One is that the ending hasn’t revealed itself to them yet, which causes fear. Another kind of fear is being ‘too clichéd’. I think a lot of writers end up with unhappy endings because they feel that happy endings are too expected and too common, and if their story doesn’t have any real weight and they are insecure about that (often for a good reason), then an ending that is ‘too expected’ will reveal how weak the story actually is, so a twist or a tragic ending masquerades that fact, or so they hope (it never does).
Another reason might be that their story just doesn’t have an ending, so they fabricate one.
But I can’t think of a more feckless way to make up for a weak story than by giving it a twist ending or a tragic ending just to try to make it different. A writer who does that has lost their way and is in danger of going completely in the wrong direction.
It might sound a little paradoxical, but I think the best choice is to give the readers what they expect. What they are hoping for. What they are wishing for. Regardless of what’s ‘trendy’ in the marketplace. But it’s also important to give them doubt and worry about whether things will go the way they wish. You want them in suspense until you reach the resolution phase—with their fingers crossed.
Happy or sad or anywhere in between, I have a hard time thinking that any well-crafted story ever really "ends" anyway, as it may continue on in the mind of the reader for some time (hopefully the case). In other words, the reader takes it all in and then walks around for days with their own "what ifs" and "what might've beens." Engaged, affected, afflicted, changed. Accepting or resisting. Aside from that, George's expert analysis also makes me ask myself a big question: what is the purpose of a story—and stories—anyway? Hell if I know.
For one thing, I think stories help us understand life. Or some truth. We let our subconscious near the surface to tell us our secrets.
I’ve often thought of poets and storytellers (and artists in general) as our modern day prophets.
I love that.
Like Rosanne said, it's built into us. Our brains, our senses, our central nervous system, is all built to gather information from our environment and find patterns in it. You go across this plain, eat this fruit but not that, and watch out for large brown things that roar. At some point we were able to say this to others, then after that, we were able to recount what we did to others, and it took off from there as the beasts became more powerful but we were still able to slay them, much to our listeners' amazement. That's why I think what we do literally goes back to the dawn of human consciousness. Storytelling is as old as mankind itself. Not a bad thing to take pride in...
I think I always knew this, that stories are hard-wired into us, but it wasn't until I took a class with Lynda Barry that it was confirmed for me. Jane Smiley also has somewhere an essay about the inescapable nature of gossip, another story form, &, to give it a good name, also lays claim to its built-in-ness.
The purpose, Ashley? I think it's biological, literally implanted & therefore inescapable. We can't not tell stories anymore than we can't not eat, at least not for long.
"Truth in her dress finds facts way too tight, in fiction she moves easily" Rabindranath Tagore.
So lovely and spot on!
When a story takes over your consciousness for a few days (or months) you know the writer really hit her stride.