(no subject)

[cleolinda]

AHHHHHHHH! I KILL YOU, FABER! I KILL YOU DEAD!

(Did I seriously just miss something? Is my copy of Crimson Petal just missing a large number of pages? THE BOOK HAD NO ENDING! I DENY THAT IS AN ENDING!)

Comments

[girlfromsouth.livejournal.com]

Nope, it's just like that. I hate it for that reason. That's just...it. SUCKS. GAH.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

WHY? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? WHY WOULD YOU WRITE AN 800+ PAGE BOOK AND JUST STOP WRITING?

[word-herder.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming it can't be that the writer became bored after 800 pages?

[srallen.livejournal.com]

Isn't that the Dave Barry school of writing shining through?

"And then they all got hit by a train and died..."

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

See, but that would be an ending. This guy, he doesn't even bother to say, "...and so then, whatever, they all died in a fiery blast." It's seriously like he just quit writing with two or three chapters to go.

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Never read any Neal Stephenson, Cleo.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Heh.

*blink*

[srallen.livejournal.com]

Quoi?

You mean like he just sent out the first draft of the manuscript with a sticky note on it saying "hang on, I got a bit more"?

Kneecapping's too good for some people...

[unexplored.livejournal.com]

I had a similiar reaction when I read the book last year.

Pissed for days I was.

Re: *blink*

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Imagine if Lord of the Rings stopped with Aragorn and everyone outside the gates and Frodo and Sam running up Mt. Doom. Do they make it? Do they die? We don't know! We don't know!

(GAHHHHHH.)

Re: *blink*

[srallen.livejournal.com]

OK. That made my brain itch.

I need to lie down now.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh English grad student person, didn't Dickens pull a stunt like that, i.e. not ending a book? And then some other folks (well, lots of other folks) ended it for him? The book, I mean, not Dickens. He was already ended, which was his excuse.

- Andy Perrin

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

'The Mystery of Edwin Drood'. It's a whodunnit, which presumably makes things even more frustrating for readers.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

You seemed to be enjoying it so much that I didn't want to warn you. Definitely a first novel; he may do better next time round.

Still, there's a lot of good stuff in it. I especially like all the riffs on Great Victorian Novel Tropes--the Madwoman in the Attic, the Poverty-Stricken Young Nanny, the sub-Dickensian rescue-the-prostitute thang, the glimpse of Mighty Struggle between Pastoral English Past and Industrial Revolution Future. Last time I saw anyone try this was John Fowles in "The French Lieutenant's Woman"--which is a better book, all in all (and you sure can't complain that *it* has no ending).

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Oh, now, Cryptonomicon had a great ending. The jury's still out on the Baroque Cycle, because he hasn't published vol 3.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

The worst part is? I don't even think it was his first:

"But commonplace expectation is no help when it comes to Michel Faber's strange and unsettling first novel..." (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0156011603/qid=1091746912/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/102-3870142-1134547?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)

[catinatuxsurfin.livejournal.com]

thats kinda sorta how the ending to "the village" is, it just sorta cuts off....disappointing to the extreme.

[snowking.livejournal.com]

The ending where it just stopped? That one?

Not as bad as the end of The Diamond Age which made me want to slap him in the head. I love the man's writing but... DAMN!

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

No, I believe it's his third. He has at least three out.

[threerings.livejournal.com]

You know what's funny? I totally blocked that book out of my memory. I remember that I liked it, liked it, liked it, then hated it, but I didn't remember why. Apparently, this is why. But I barely have any memory of the book. Irresponsible authors need to be hunted down. Maybe not killed, just locked away so they cannot write again.

[suitcasegnome.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read the short story "The Lady or the Tiger"? Now, THAT is frustrating, because the author makes an (dumb, sorry, lame) excuse for not writing the ending, then proceeds to write a sequel of sorts, which EXPLAINS. NOTHING.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

I frequently want to slap him in the head. Like Pynchon, he's completely self-indulgent. I couldn't get past p. 2 of The Diamond Age, so I'll take your word for that one.

But I could mount a grand case for the end of Crpt being complete and sufficient and even thoroughly unified and dramatic. But it would involve a lengthy dissertation on alchemy and the Opus Magnum, which I don't think I should do in Cleolinda's LJ, somehow. ;-)

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Hunh. Go figure. So much for cutting the guy some slack. It sure read like a first novel.

Oh well, it'll make a great movie, and then you can do the 15-minute version and stop at 14 minutes.

That'll show him.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Didn't Faber help write the last episode of Angel?

[coconut-zebra.livejournal.com]

Anyone read the Green Rider books by Kristen Britain? The first one completely set up for the sequel, the sequel came out about 5 years later......and it had NO ENDING. The funny thing is, the book ends (and I use that word loosely) at the very bottom of the page, so when you turn over to a blank page, you do a complete double-take, then realize that that was supposed to be the end and curse Kristen in many languages and throw the book across the room. She's slimily good at setting herself up for another book deal.

[alitaorg.livejournal.com]

so wrong. so. wrong.

[virtuistic.livejournal.com]

That's totally how I felt about Of Mice and Men too. But this one sounds more severe, and thus, I will avoid it. hah.

[nabsq.livejournal.com]

Oh goody. I was planning on reading Crimson Petal (preferably before it's tainted by Monkeyface Dunst's involvement in any way) ... now I don't have to.

[edda.livejournal.com]

From what of his I've read, Snow Crash is still the best. The Diamond Age started off interestingly but the plot got a little too complicated and frankly the heroine was--well, definitely written by a guy.

But Hiro Protagonist was funner that fun, and I love Neal for that.

[edda.livejournal.com]

I wondered what you'd make of it. I got to the ending--it wasn't a big investment for me either way, because I read it over a long period of time--and thought, "Is this a High Literary thing? Or did he just totally drop the tea tray there?"

[maeritrae.livejournal.com]

Am I the only person who thought that Neal Stephenson actually puts endings in some of his books?

I mean, not Snow Crash. Not even a little bit. I thought I'd torn out the last few pages by accident. Cryptonomicon wasn't too bad though. You don't get the sense that everything's over, but rather that the characters have gone on to do other things that you don't really need to know about. Like they lived out good lives after the final pages, and he's not trying to fob you off with a happy ending. Maybe the two people who end up together only stay together for a few months, and then split up, or maybe they're together for the rest of their lives. You don't need to know.

But I felt that Diamond Age actually tied everything up in a neat little package...not that I can point to individual cases here, because giving away the last few pages just might count as a spoiler. But you knew where everyone was at the end of the book, and you knew that they had the skills and the determination and the resources to make the world a better place.

Sometimes I think that's all you really need to know.

Sorry. This seems to have turned into a bit of a rant.

I still can't wait to read the rest of the Baroque Cycle though.

[maeritrae.livejournal.com]

But Of Mice and Men has an ending...

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I want to find some kind of interview with the guy so I can find out what the hell he thought he was doing. Because "It's a High Literary thing" deserves a beating; he better come up with a better reason than that.

(At the same time, I've started doing this weird thing where, every time I talk about a writer, I imagine someone else saying the same thing about me. Like, when I freaked out that Alan Moore's about to retire. "Oh no you don't! You still owe me League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #3, bitch!" If someone said that I "owed" them something, I would slap them, i.e., me. I think I need to lie down now.)

[virtuistic.livejournal.com]

Not one that I will acknowledge. The entire book was pointless because of that ending. It's like there was a good story in there somewhere, and then Steinbeck forgot what he was going for and just threw an "ending" on in 3 minutes.

Note, I just said that's how I felt about it. There technically is one... when the writing stops anywhere, that's technically an ending... but I didn't feel the ending was sufficient.

post script

[virtuistic.livejournal.com]

actually... here's the entry I wrote about it, just for grins. http://www.livejournal.com/users/virtuistic/2004/07/14/

[duncanatrix.livejournal.com]

What is the title of the Lady and the Tiger sequel? I'd never heard of that.

[(Anonymous)]

Heehee!

[suitcasegnome.livejournal.com]

It's called "The Discourager of Hesitancy", and very few people know about it. I discovered it in the same book of short stories as "The Lady or the Tiger", directly after it, actually. It's the same length, and worth the read.