musing on narrative closure

[jrtom]

"One drawback in belonging to a race of storytellers is a tendency to forget that life isn't a story, however great the need to perceive it as one. And one of life's chiefest failings, from a storytelling perspective, is that life lacks closure."

"Closure in what sense?"

"Closure in the sense of narrative convergence, all the elements coming together, loose ends tying off neatly after a final climax. Real life is never that tidy, and it doesn't stop happening just because someone's won a victory. Where the endpaper would come in a novel, actual events are followed by more actual events."

--Matt Ruff, Sewer, Gas, and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy

Not an original thought, I'm sure, and I'm pretty sure that I've even inflicted it on my friends before (although not on LJ, as far as I can tell :> ). But worth observing . . . especially for the sake of those (occasionally me) who sometimes say, or think, "As soon as I finish school/get the kids out of the house/get out of debt/get married/etc., then my life will really start." It doesn't, of course; it just starts another chapter . . . and thinking in those terms can cause one to treat the time until the end of the chapter as something to be gotten through as quickly as possible, rather than something to be appreciated for its own sake. (Besides, those that try to insist that the universe provide or respect narrative closure are bound to be continually, or at least periodically, frustrated.)

Comments

[red-frog.livejournal.com]

The chapters overlap, too. Look at yourself: you're a new dad and a PhD all at once.

Life is poorly and unrealistically written and our screenwriters like yanking us around. :)