False Endings

As some of you may know, I'm finally reading The Hobbit. Before taking on this surprisingly tedious endeavour (I really should have read it approximately 15 years ago), I was reading Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman. As I read this book a few months ago, I was listening to Metric's album Synthetica for the first time. Just as the album ended I realized I had come to the end of a chapter. This seemed a very minor coincidence in timing and did not register as more than a brief realization until I turned the page and quickly learned that the silence in my headphones signified the end of the book despite the collection of unread pages still remaining before the back cover.

I'm going back to tell this anecdote because I heard on the radio that this week is Pet Peeve Week. When people or situations that right now I couldn't actually reference require me to state a pet peeve, I can usually only think of one standby: when people say "seen" instead of "saw," but that's not really a pet peeve - I absolutely hate when people make that mistake. It insults me to my very core. Truthfully, I don't think I have any pet peeves because for me that term isn't a strong enough representation of how I feel about such scenarios. I'm either indifferent toward something (which is rare) or very passionate (or at least very passionately vocal) about something. A false ending in a book falls into the latter category.

A false ending is when the extras at the end of a book trick you into believing there is still more of the actual story to be enjoyed when you've reached the book's true ending. These extras include, but are not limited to, appendices or indexes, and excerpts from other books by the same author or publisher. The deception is not one I take lightly and it leaves an indelible mark on my otherwise enjoyable experience of the book.

On the surface, my anger toward these endings does center on the deception - the feeling of being duped - but I think the greater issue is the lack of closure that is created. Reading a book is an emotional investment, and we subconsciously prepare for the end. We feel the story arc winding down, the necessary loose ends are tied, the right amount of answers are left unknown so we feel the lives of the characters continue long after we return the book to the shelf, and we get ready to say goodbye. The promise made by the those extra pages gives us hope for just a little bit more before the end. Maybe there will be a epilogue. But then, when the end comes earlier than you anticipated, you are deprived of experiencing the true closure of the story.

I like to be prepared, and I like to be in control. When I read a book, I want to be surprised and moved by what the author has written, not by the book's tricky construction. An apocalypse, I should think, would bring about similar issues of closure. We would prepare for the end, but then suddenly find ourselves needing to cope with a post-apocalyptic existence that we assumed was merely a distant hope (or fear). Thinking about life beyond the end is a slippery slope but, alas, there's still something to be said for always being prepared...