Bad endings

J. Robert Lennon writes that he is “rarely disappointed by a book’s ending. Almost never, in fact. If I like a book all the way through, I almost always like the way it ends, too . . .”

I know what he means, sort of, but what about The Bonfire of the Vanities? I loved that book while I was reading it, but the ending was so weak that, for me, its lameness sort of leaked backwards into the body of the book, so that, once it was all over, I didn’t retrospectively like the book at all! Partly this was because what I liked about the beginning and middle of the book was the sense that I was seeing all these different facets of the world, and somehow the ending took something away from this.

4 thoughts on “Bad endings

  1. Please explain:

    1) What about the end of BOTV didn't you like? The courtroom fight scene? Or the epilogue?

    2) How does the end leak back into the earlier portions of the book? I can see how that might work with some narratives, but I'm finding how any ending could detract from Wolfe's wonderful descriptions of 80's NYC and its colorful cast of characters, including all the scenes that don't rely on the end at all (ex. the dinner party scene, the 'steam control speech', etc.).

  2. Anthony,

    I can't remember the details, but I think I recall feeling that the book just stopped. The flaw in the ending leaked backward into the book because one thing I liked in the first half of the book was how Wolfe was showing us a whole world and how it all fit together. When, at the end, it didn't really fit together, this was a letdown and made me feel like he hadn't had the full picture that he was implying at the beginning. It's not that I was looking for a pat ending that resolved all loose ends, I just didn't think the ending made much sense. But I don't remember that much about it anymore.

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