Storytellersunplugged

Where Words Meet

An Ending is Just a Beginning

by John B. Rosenman

“They rode off into the sunset together.”

“And they lived happily ever after.”

“Thanks to you, Sheriff, Black Bart’s gang is dead and there’s peace in the valley again.”

Un-unh. Not for me.

No way, Jose.

Mike Resnick has said that writers should devote 90% of their time to a story’s opening page, but more often than not, it’s the ending that lifts my skirts. Call it the other 90%.

Another great American, AKA Tricky Dick, once declared just before he left the White House for the last time, “It’s only a beginning, always.”

Amen, Brother. That I can get into.

Okay, some of what I say tonight may not even qualify as unconventional wisdom. Simply put, I don’t like neat endings for stories or even novels. I especially don’t like them for short stories, which should be prepared to take a risk now and then. I like endings that suggest the story goes on, and hey, big things are gonna happen next, so stay tuned. I like endings that make the reader do most of the work when it comes to figuring out the story.

Even more, I like endings where you’re not quite sure what happened, what the meaning of it all is. Even endings where nothing is resolved and which make some readers ask, “What the hey? Where’s the bleepin’ conclusion? What’s the payoff?” “Does he get the girl?” “Does he find God in the end or crawl into Satan’s lap?”

My first novel, The Best Laugh Last (Treacle Press) not only cost me two jobs (that’s another story), but ends with the hero suddenly undecided if he’s going to continue his crusade against the bad guys. Maybe, in fact, he should even sell out and join them. After all, issues in life are not always clear-cut but can be murky and ambiguous. Perhaps this time he should bend or even betray his principles. While it might not be the right thing, exactly, it could be the better thing to do. Perhaps in this particular case, the ends do justify the seemingly immoral or questionable means.

Thus in The Best Laugh Last, David Newman is left kneeling in the hot street, wondering if he should compromise with evil and acquire a little power in order to help others and make the system better. “Max,” he says, speaking to his nonexistent friend who has courageously left to start a new life, “I sure hope you make it.” But we don’t know if Newman will, or what choice he will ultimately make. Some readers didn’t like that Lady or the Tiger ending, but I did, and I still do. For me, Newman will kneel there forever, and I can always wonder which door he will enter and what he will find there – the Lady of Difficult but Justified Compromise or the Tiger of Righteous Rebellion that may ultimately devour him.

No John Wayne.

No white hats and black hats.

No swell of triumphant, heart-stirring music as folks file out of the theater.

Now I don’t mean to create the impression that none of my stories has a traditional ending that wraps things up in a more or less tight, neat bow. Sometimes you have to do it that way because the story demands it, because that’s the best ending possible. But more and more often these days, it seems to me that since life isn’t wrapped up with a tidy ribbon, fiction shouldn’t be either. Life and its meaning are often complex, ambiguous, uncertain, and it’s sometimes more enjoyable for both the reader and the writer to be left with a bone which they can gnaw on forever, trying to extract the last moral and metaphysical juices.

Remember Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw? Are the ghosts really there, or is the young, beleaguered governess stark raving nuts? Whatever you do, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know!

Sometimes the ending is dictated not by the obvious issue, but by another. In my story “Going Away,” which appeared in Space and Time, Marvin tells his insensitive wife he doesn’t love her anymore and that he’s leaving. Since he’s said this before and always returned quickly, Agnes isn’t concerned. This time, though, instead of stomping out the door, he goes and lies down in the spare bedroom, where he grows smaller and smaller, farther and farther away. Soon he’s “immeasurably distant,” his head amid the stars. Yet she can still see him.

What will Agnes do? While most may feel that the main question is whether she can bring her hubby back or join him, for me the true issue is spiritual or psychological, and the significant journey occurs not across the galaxy, but within herself. Consequently, I focus on her change of heart, her gradual realization that she has been cold and selfish toward her husband. Finally she apologizes to him and “ever so slowly,” begins “to crawl after him.” Not that there seems to be much chance of success. What will she do, crawl a hundred billion light-years to reach him? What if she bashes her head against the wall or gets sucked down a black hole? Even if she achieves the impossible, what will they do out there in the Milky Way? How will they eat or pay their bills? While we may wonder about such things, we will never find out. For me, the big concern is whether she can change and find the courage to act upon her self-realization, take that first step even if it leads to oblivion.

One last example: “Unknown Gods,” which I recently wrote, is steeped in ambiguity, my favorite sauce. Holson (notice the name) is a confirmed atheist but electromagnetic stimulation of his brain starts him on a spiritual quest. Soon his toothpaste tastes funny and his dead wife shows up. Then the sky parts like the Red Sea and “a divine face, a vast, ineffable spirit” sings within him as he embarks on a cosmic excursion that makes LSD trips of my generation seem like a visit to Hardy’s. Is any of this real? Has Holson found a real, objective God? Damned if the story knows. Like Scrooge’s nighttime visitors, Holson’s transcendent visions might be no more than “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.” What’s important is that real or not, Holson experiences something that shakes him to his materialistic core. Suddenly all his old answers seem irrelevant and his former life, incomplete.

In the end, Holson escapes from a hospital, breathes “deeply of the cool dawn air,” and starts “walking toward the sun’s altar.” Are salvation and a divine presence waiting for him there, or is it just folly and madness? You, the reader, be the judge. As with many of my favorite stories, there are no easy, final answers. It’s not so much the destination that counts, it’s the process of becoming.

Just remember, folks. An ending is just a beginning. The important thing is to open yourself to change and take that first step.

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