The Ending

[John McFetridge]

A recent article in McLeans Magazine (kind of Time or Newsweek for Canada) was called, Dead: happily-ever-after endings and included:

“Romance is not seen as high literature right now,” says Russell Brown, professor emeritus of English at the University of Toronto. The Jane Austen ending, in which the couple wanders off into the figurative or literal sunset after much hardship, has apparently become passé in the age of cynicism and conceit. “Modernists didn’t trust closure, and contemporary authors have opted for an even looser definition of an ending. It’s not as much happily-ever-after as it is nothing-ever-after,” Brown says.

The whole article can be read here.

Now, I guess happy endings for couples in crime fiction are quite rare, but there is usually some kind of closure in that the crime gets solved.

So, is there too much closure in crime fiction?

[I. J. Parker]

Oh, dear God, no, on the Evanovich love-triangle. That is exactly the same in every book. She's a romance author. That means you have to have a heroine who drools over her super-masculine hero throughout the book. In this case, the heroine drools over two heroes. Actually, Barbara Cartland, whose heroines were always virgins until the last page, would consider Evanovich depraved, but the liberated woman prefers to drool over any number of hunks and read about sex with as many as is feasible.

[Jon Loomis]

A certain amount of closure is obviously one of the conventions of the mystery form; that's been somewhat less true of literary fiction since the moderns came along and shook everything up. Generally speaking, there's not a lot of neat closure in real life, so it can seem artificial (sometimes laughably so) when we see it in fiction. They lived happily ever after? Really? Closure's one of the things I'm interested in playing with as a writer of crime fiction--do we always have to solve the crime? Do we always have to catch the bad guy? Are there ways to create open endings that still feel satisfying to readers? I'd be interested in reader input on this one.

I'm also curious about the interplay here between the related notions that everyone who likes literary fiction is a pompous, preening know-it-all, and the fear that best-selling genre is all being written for the Lowest Common Denominator, whoever they are. If those things were true, seems to me there'd be precious little territory in between for crimespacers to inhabit.

[Pepper Smith]

I left my third book very open-ended in some ways, and I haven't had any reader complaints about it. Most everyone I've heard from has seemed satisfied with it.

As to pompous, preening know-it-all vs. Lowest common denominator-- I think the vast majority of us are somewhere inbetween. That said, the loudest voices on either side of an issue are usually the ones that are heard, and when all you hear from the loudest voices is how pitifully inadequate the other side is, even if you're somewhere in the middle, you're going to have some sort of reaction. For many people, it really isn't as easy as just shrugging it off. We put so much of ourselves into what we write, the criticisms can feel extremely personal, as if the one who said them feels we're not worth the space we take up or the air we breathe. And because those voices are loudest, they end up representing the group as a whole, rather than being the lone voices of people with extreme positions.

We really do need to stop listening to the extremes and worry about the middle a bit more.

[I. J. Parker]

Oh, that's so true about everything in life.

[Dana King]

I really opened a can of worms with the "artistic masturbation" comment.

I never meant to imply all literary fiction was like that, nor that people who enjoy literary fiction are all pompous know-it-alls. I guess I'm sensitive to those attitudes because I was once in a workshop where I was the token middle-brow crime fiction writer in a group with lterary aspirations who wrote stories that often didn't go anywhere but were artfully crafted. I eventually won them over, but I may well be obverly sensitive to anything that carries even a whiff of condescension, which I sensed in the article John referred us to.

[John McFetridge]

I was curious about the article's attitude outside of Canada. We have a somewhat insular literary community and as the article mentioned a certain "type" of book wins our literary awards just about every year.

The losing of middle-ground seems to be common in many areas these days. TV with its hundreds of channels is now much more a niche market than it used to be.

Is there much crossover for books? Is there much middle-ground?

[I. J. Parker]

If you eventually won them over, you did a hell of a job.

[John Dishon]

That's the problem: you sense condescension where there isn't any. I really don't know how you got that out of the article linked to above.

Also, you didn't imply that all literary fiction is like that. I think you made your point pretty clear. I think a lot of confusion happens because some people assume other motives or meanings to what a commenter writes rather than just replying to what was actually written. It's hard to have an honest discussion when people are looking for reasons to get offended.

[John McFetridge]

Who are you talking to here? Crimespace doesn't always line up responses clearly.

I just used the article as a jumping off point to talk about endings. It's true, I haven't read many happy endings in literary fiction lately but I have read a lot of crime novels in which the crime gets solved but the characters are still unhappy. In Ian Rankin novels could you ever call the endings happy for Rebus?

It's become just another convention of the genre.

[I. J. Parker]

Well, I for one like that. In fact, CONVICT'S SWORD ends miserably. That's what life does to people. And yes, my agent, who works with commercial fiction, wasn't altogether happy. But this is still my best Akitada novel. And I think any novel, whether literary or genre, should represent life as it is.

[Jack Getze]

Life is miserable? Really?

[John McFetridge]

It often is for people directly affected by crime.