Now I’m not the resident Yankees fan here. That crown belongs to Miriam. In fact, I’m not even a Yankees fan at all. I’m a Mets fan—may God help me. But come on, how could you not love that moment? Jeter, a class act, the last vestige of the old New York Yankees, the embodiment of clutch, comes up with a big hit in the bottom of the ninth to win the game, his last game in pinstripes. You couldn’t write a better ending.

“Where fantasy becomes reality.” That’s what the announcer said after Jeter’s last ever walk-off hit. I must have watched that clip fifty times. And I got goose bumps every time. But I’m not entirely sure why.

Usually I hate storybook endings. For some reason, whenever I encounter a happy ending at the end of a book, I always feel cheated, taken for a fool. Perhaps I’m a pessimist, but I don’t think happily ever after ever really happens. Books that end that way aren’t realistic. Storybook endings just don’t happen in real life.

Except they do. It certainly did for Derek.

So why then do readers often criticize fairy tale endings? Does good literature always need to end in tragedy and despair? And if so, what does it say that a good book must leave you feeling hopeless?

I am curious to learn what our readers have to say about storybook endings. Love them? Hate them? Does it depend on a case-by-case basis, and if so, why do some storybook endings work and others don’t? Sound off in the comments!

Walter White. Heisenberg.

It’s not a new story. Well, not completely. Breaking Bad is, at its core, the story of a man who, little by little, loses himself to the darkness within. The progression is always gradual, and the trick is making it seem natural, but some of the greatest (and by greatest, I mean my favorite) characters in literature wage this type of internal struggle. As readers, we love emotional turmoil. We can relate to it. It’s what defines us as human beings.

Some of my favorites:

Rand al’Thor from Robert Jordan’s THE WHEEL OF TIME series is driven insane as the series progresses.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is literature’s greatest detective, yet Holmes is a struggling drug addict and habitual tobacco user, habits that threaten his trademark deductive capabilities.

LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding. Pick a character, any character.

There’s a few. Let’s hear others. Who are your favorite characters?

I remember many years ago being rewarded for my persistence and dedication in reading Faulkner’s maddeningly brilliant The Sound and the Fury by the very last line (of what it turned out was an appendix added to the book years later; I didn’t know this at the time so for me it was the last line): “They endured.”  That phrase has stayed with me for decades now. (Yowsa! Feeling old here.)  Its simplicity is its power and it left me in awe of someone who could have crafted such a fierce and uncompromising book and ended it so exactly right (the actual first last line is pretty great too; check it out).

I have a hard time remembering what I had for breakfast (and it’s the same thing every day), but some of my all time favorites:

“After all, tomorrow is another day.” – Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Isn’t it pretty to think so.” – Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“She called in her soul to come and see.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Vladimir: Well, shall we go? Estragon: Yes, let’s go.  [They do not move.]” – Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

And, of course, I surveyed the DGLMers.  Some of them ignored my e-mail (as they do) and some came back with:

Stephanie, Jim, and Lauren: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

And Lauren: “He loved Big Brother.” – George Orwell, 1984

And Jim: “When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust.” – Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Rachel: “yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.” – James Joyce, Ulysses

Jessica: “She runs.” – Nadine Gordimer, July’s People

What are your favorite last words and why?

Last weekend I saw Inception, a film that I mostly enjoyed; I could have done without the alpine fortress/firefights on skis, the relentless soundtrack, and the director’s obvious desire to offset tricky ideas with cool special effects (Thinking got you down? Watch this!) but unlike many audience members, I did like the ending. It was, I thought, a niftily ambiguous conclusion, and it called to mind a polite but on-going discussion I’m having with a writer I know, whose novel features an ending that I find indeterminate but unsatisfying. How a book ends matters to me—if the resolution feels forced, artificial, or worse yet, phoned in, I feel cheated, and perfectly entitled to hurl the offending volume across the room.

While mulling over endings, both ideal and infuriating, I noted that The Millions has a terrific article on this very subject. This is the wonderful thing about the internet, one need not go far to discover that the same ideas you’ve been kicking around in an inchoate, undisciplined sort of way have been thought-through, researched, and then recorded, in clear, lively prose. Or such was my experience with Literary Endings: Pretty Bows, Blunt Axes, and Modular Furniture.  In it the, author creates a taxonomy of possible endings, cites examples of these different approaches, and offers up some of her favorites. To my her list I’d add: Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People; Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca, Scott Turow’s clever twist in Presumed Innocent; Ian McEwan’s Atonement; Clea, the whole fourth installment of Lawrence Durell’s Alexandria Quartet, in which all manner of hazy details snap into sharp and shocking focus. My husband offered up Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Bleak, but kick-in-the-stomach effective.

Your favorite endings? Least favorite endings?