The End Is Not The Means

I read an article http://tinyurl.com/lx5nt4g in which the novelist, Kristopher Jansma, explored the issue of finding the proper ending for a novel. He was plagued by the question of leaving the ending ambiguous, or of tying things up in a neat knot—one that would leave the reader “satisfied.”

The article referenced Aristotle, and Rowling, and quoted Chekhov and Vonnegut, saying among other things, “a novel aims not to represent just a slice of life, but the whole of it. We need more than just...