Novel Endings vs Story Endings

[Walter Cummins]

The reputation of a significant novel can survive a weak and even a bad ending. For example, Judy Berman writing “Fantastic Novels with Disappointing Endings” in Flavorwire cited a number of fictional favorites with that problem, including The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, The Secret History by Donna Tartt (“After the book’s big mystery is revealed and manipulative ringleader Henry murders his blackmailer, good-ol’-boy Bunny, the group’s dissolution and plunge into utter lunacy takes a bit too long while the characters’ outsized, artsy personalities nearly verge on self-parody”), Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (“Plenty of great novels end with a protagonist causing her own death, whether on purpose or by accident, but Yates makes the couple’s predicament so bleak and inescapable that we can guess the outcome halfway through the novel—and the lack of subtlety or surprise makes the ending feel preachy”), and Room by Emma Donoghue. I can add some of my own examples, as I suppose any reader could.

The fact that many novels, such as the works above, satisfy readers suggests that a novel’s ending is not absolutely crucial. I recall the statement by a group of European contest judges admitting that they gave first prize to a novel with a poor ending because they believed so much else about it was so strong. It’s clear that readers can spend a number of hours so happy with what they read for several hundred pages that they are willing to forgive a lapse in the final ten or twenty.

A short story, on the other hand, relies on just the right ending to succeed. Its totality takes only ten or twenty pages, with the narrative tension building on each one demanding that the conclusion offer an ideal resolution of that tension. Otherwise, it’s been a failure for reader and writer. With that need, a story is like a poem, both forms accumulating to a point where the final words—paragraph or lines—bear the full aesthetic burden.

Over the twenty years I edited a literary quarterly I remember the dozens of times I was engaged with a well-written story submission, only to be upset by a failed ending. I really wanted that story to deliver on its potential. So often story didn’t. The short story is a very demanding form that leaves no room for error.