endings & beginnings

I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.  --The Secret History, Donna Tartt

Beginnings are everything. And the beginning of a great novel is no exception. To be sure, there are plenty of good books out there with so-so openers, but if you find yourself holding a book with a riveting first paragraph, snatch it up because you know it will be a good one.

I used to think if you fell from grace it was more likely than not the result of one stupendous error, or else an unfortunate accident. I hadn't learned that it can happen so gradually you don't lose your stomach or hurt yourself in the landing. You don't necessarily sense the motion. I've found it takes at least two things and generally three things to alter the course of a life: you slip around the truth once, and then again, and one more time, and there you are, feeling for a moment, that it was sudden, your arrival at the bottom of the heap.  --A Map of the World, Jane Hamilton

But this is not to say that endings are less important. In many ways, they are far more important for the end is what will remain in the memory the longest. And for me personally, a bad or even mediocre ending can ruin an otherwise perfectly amazing book.

I finished Still Aliceand although I loved it in so many ways, the end was a bit of a disappointment. But it seems I'm destined to be unhappy with endings lately. Before Still Alice, I carried around Laura Kasischke's The Raising with me for 4 days. Now, I will freely admit that what sold me on the book was one reviewer having compared it to Donna Tartt's Secret History--my favorite novel of all time. And, though it was no Secret History, I thoroughly enjoyed the first 3/4th of the book. I literally couldn't put it down, stayed up late and neglected my family for days because of it. And then it just ended. I thought surely someone had torn out the final chapter. Imagine a murder mystery full of twists and intrigue only to find there was no murder and no explanation either

Honestly, I have no problem with an unhappy ending because it lines up with what I know to be true about the world. And I am nothing if not looking for truth. (I love what Azar Nafisi says in Reading Lolita in Tehran: “What we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.”) But even if in Real Life we do not always find closure, I do want to see it in my literature. At the very least a tying up of lose ends or some meaning I can begrudgingly take with me back into the world I live in.

I picked up a pencil and held it over a sheet of white paper, but my feelings stood in the way of my words. Well, I would wait, day and night, until I knew what to say. Humbly now, with no vaulting dream of achieving a vast unity, I wanted to try to build a bridge of words between me and that outside world, that world which was so distant and elusive that it seemed unreal.

I would hurl the words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human.  --Black Boy, Richard Wright

Which all leads me back to beginnings, because I must start again at some point. Maybe I'll play it safe and stick to something reliable the next time around. Or maybe I'll take another chance on finding a new favorite, so worth the struggle: the glossy coolness of the front cover, the familiar and comforting smell of the pages inside--pristine or worn--and those first words that make the pulse race and everything else around you fade just a little more into the background.

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. I say 'one chooses' with the inaccurate pride of a professional writer who--when he has been seriously considered at all--has been praised for his technical ability, but do I in fact of my own will choose that black wet January night on the Common, in 1946, the sight of Henry Miles slanting across the wide river of rain, or did these images choose me? --The End of the Affair, Graham Greene

So, which do you prefer: a good beginning or a good ending? And which do you think is most telling of how a book will turn out to be as a whole?

Comments

[pilar]

I can completely empathize with the emotional and mental downfall of a disappointing ending. It is utterly traumatic to get to the end and have such a let down. I often wonder if it is because the process of catharsis is not completed. Like you, I adore The Secret History. I am always hopeful that I will find another book that was so complete.

[ROJAS21Catalina]

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[Sara]

I always want a good beginning as well as ending, greedy i know. But most often I read for pleasure and to escape. Nothing too dark and deep for me for life offers enough of that as it is. I shall have to read The Secret History! I've been looking for more favorites, for I re-read mine all of the time.