“Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
That’s how it ended.
After finishing Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, I met with a familiar feeling—disappointment. Not in the novel, but in the fact of it being over. All stories end, naturally, and we know that going in. But we do not ever seem to be quite prepared enough for their fate. A thousand times I’ve flipped the final page, and a thousand times plus one I’ve turned that first page again. I love a truly good story, no matter in what medium it might arrive. Characters come alive, and their motivations though sometimes unclear and erratic always draw me in. I go back and back again, and every time, they end, dissolving into their own fiction.
Isn’t it quite curious? The truly good stories we grab onto. We are so excitable, ready to get to the next page always eager for what new events and developments these new pages might hold. We lap up the sentences with savage thirst, and just when we have begun to figure this device out, settle in, and get comfortable, the author decides the story is done. No cliffhanger to be resolved later, no sequel to follow, simply done. The story has been told, and that is that.
But that is the curious thing with these beautiful stories these wonderful storytellers have left us. They’ve told the story just as it should be told as they felt it in their bones. This veritable truth is precisely why we love it so much. Their feeling resonates with our feeling, and we love them for it. We do not want the story to end because in it we feel some connection however fleeting, and we want to harness this feeling because we fear losing it. But the pages beg to be flipped through, and the only thing that we can do is let the story end in its own way, in its own time as it always intended to. We bid it farewell, and we try again, curiosity anew.
That’s how it ended.
After finishing Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, I met with a familiar feeling—disappointment. Not in the novel, but in the fact of it being over. All stories end, naturally, and we know that going in. But we do not ever seem to be quite prepared enough for their fate. A thousand times I’ve flipped the final page, and a thousand times plus one I’ve turned that first page again. I love a truly good story, no matter in what medium it might arrive. Characters come alive, and their motivations though sometimes unclear and erratic always draw me in. I go back and back again, and every time, they end, dissolving into their own fiction.
Isn’t it quite curious? The truly good stories we grab onto. We are so excitable, ready to get to the next page always eager for what new events and developments these new pages might hold. We lap up the sentences with savage thirst, and just when we have begun to figure this device out, settle in, and get comfortable, the author decides the story is done. No cliffhanger to be resolved later, no sequel to follow, simply done. The story has been told, and that is that.
But that is the curious thing with these beautiful stories these wonderful storytellers have left us. They’ve told the story just as it should be told as they felt it in their bones. This veritable truth is precisely why we love it so much. Their feeling resonates with our feeling, and we love them for it. We do not want the story to end because in it we feel some connection however fleeting, and we want to harness this feeling because we fear losing it. But the pages beg to be flipped through, and the only thing that we can do is let the story end in its own way, in its own time as it always intended to. We bid it farewell, and we try again, curiosity anew.