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My Angerona
I’ve been thinking a lot about happy endings these days — these days when literary fiction can seem so gloomy.
In our own list, much of Goodnight, Texas makes me grin. So does Devils in the Sugar Shop ; in fact, all of Timothy Schaffert’s books do. Both of the Nancy Zafris novels we’ve published have left me smiling, coyly. Luli, the endangered heroine of Hick, does, too, despite the dark and disturbing places she takes us through. And the outrageous novels of Marc Estrin often make me laugh out loud along the way, including the ones that leave me melancholy — like Vonnegut still does.
(I re-read Cat’s Cradle on Saturday. Does it have a happy ending?)
For as long as I’ve been paying attention, there have been writers like Vonnegut and Heller, who don’t flinch but make you smile anyway with the rich reach of their humanity.
The other strain of literary fiction was always wider, though — even in the Crazy-Wisdom 1960s. Perhaps this is simply because it’s true that life is easy, comedy hard. But I imagine most of us melancholic readers would argue that the richness of Hemingway’s sadness (for quick instance) didn’t come to the fore because it was easy. To folks like us, there has always seemed to be a purebred romanticism in the literary book that ends with a return to real, ongoing life, with strings loose, questions unanswered, and trajectories unknown.
Readerly folks didn’t used to have to defend such endings. I think readers once assumed a genuine reward in the sweet sadness or even homesickness they could feel when at the final page of a moving novel they had to let a character go on without them. Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day comes first to mind, for some reason, but there are endless examples. I love such worlds; they are real and close-heart human. That feeling is what I look for first in a manuscript.
But sometimes, these days, it seems that “serious” fiction must swing between two absolute resolutions: tight-bowed, happy relief, and sadness too deep for hope. Maybe that’s the inevitable result of the faltering moment we’re in. And, of course, literary fiction should capture its time — or some time.
Indeed, maybe all this is the reason that so many of the manuscripts we see today are historically set. For a while I thought this might be because, in this historical moment, we need to know who we are and what has made us. But I’m beginning to think that the old-fashioned, sweet melancholic look at the vicissitudes of just living might be hard to pull off right now without seeming either irresponsible or self-absorbed.
So I’m asking: If we turn aside the collective discomfort of the age, must we step all the way to those tightly clasped and still smiling yes-yes endings? I mean, does the wish for the painless resolution — the collective dance up the road into the setting sun — seem now to some writers and editors like a requirement? If we choose not to duck into the back of the smoking cave, must we all dance together in the sparkling morning light? Or is there, maybe, still room for that sweet old smoky homesickness, a raised glass, and a long, nodding moment of knowing quiet? Is there time for reflection past the last paragraph?
Me, I’ve been thinking a lot about happy endings these days, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.
Fred Ramey
posted 3/27/07
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