Sequels

There was a piece in the paper yesterday that said that we should all stop grumbling about sequels in the movie business because, like them or not, they are here to stay.

There is a certain sense to that.

But there is something else too. The sense of an ending—that is to say, the ability to let a story end—is something peculiar to a certain kind of writer and culture.

Samuel Richardson, for example, had a very hard time ending his book Pamela. The book concerned Pamela's attempt to overcome Mr. B's desire to use her as a mistress and have him accept her as his love and wife. But poor Richardson could never really convince himself that he had reached an end. Pamela could, and did, marry Mr. B but she could never be sure that he wouldn't put her aside for another woman more of his social stature.

One of the reasons a lot of us think Jane Austen is a better writer than any of her contemporaries is because she reaches ends that can stand alone. You don't worry that Darcy is going to get rid of Elizabeth. Not because it is impossible that this could happen. There is no love, no courtship, now vow that can ever guarantee that a marriage should endure. And no one person can so love another that they can be absolutely certain that that other person might not turn against them some day.

So, why are Austen's endings solid and Richardson's ending not? And, given my current reading, why is the ending to Brideshead Revisited satisfying while the endings of A Dance to the Music of Time and to A la recherce du temps perdu not satisfying. For, as I remember it, Powell's masterpiece is wonderful but gets less and less satisfactory as it comes to the end.

It seems to me that the reason may have something to do with the writer and something to do with the culture. For, if we consider Jane Austen, we can see that one of the things that distinguishes the current era is a desire to make sequels to her stories. People want to know how it goes on and some writers have dutifully produced sequels for publication. To have a satisfactory ending, you don't need just a good writer capable of writing a convincing ending, you need a culture that believes that people have real ends worth aiming their lives at.

So, if we live in an era in which there is no point in complaining about sequels because they are inevitable then we may as well stop complaining but we should also recognize that we live in a  debased culture and we should start looking at other cultures and other eras of our own culture to find something better.