I wasn't incredibly into The Memory of Running, with its misleading title (it ought to be called The Memory of Biking, as you know if you've ever overheard Berit and my pre-class conversations.) However, I didn't hate the ending.
Artistically, it made sense. It had to end pretty much directly after Smithy gets to Bethany's body. You can't continue the 1960s narrative after that point, and while you could have continued the 1990 narrative, to do so would have been stupid and anticlimactic. The 1990 narrative is linked to the 1960s narrative. The 1990 narrative provides the framework (Smithy's x-country musings) into which we see the 1960s narrative. The 1990 narrative needs the 1960s narrative to give it oomph, and as the explanation for the bike ride in the first place.
So the ending wasn't abrupt, it was clean. I would have hated seeing anything to do with Norma and Smithy's return home and the "aftermath". Nobody cares. Speaking of Norma, she needed to be there to symbolize Smithy's transition to some sort of life in the present. If she hadn't been there, she would have seemed perfunctory, and her presence in the rest of the book would become an annoyance rather than necessary buildup.
Yes, it was corny to have her enter the way that she does. But the fact that it's not ultra-realistic isn't really a problem. We read to divorce ourselves from reality, and the corny ending is much more seamless than Norma coming in at a later time and having to explain herself (because, in McLarty's ending, the necessity for an explanation is drowned out by the serendipity of her arrival). Imagine:
"Over the beach, kites rose and soared side to side, and Bethany did, too, held only by string to the earth, and she dove and dipped and finally broke free of us, trailing the string behind. I stopped running and watched as my sister drifted up into a clear evening sky. When I finally wrenched by gaze from where she had disappeared, I saw a figure gliding toward me. Not gliding, rolling, her red hair shining in the setting sun.
'Norma?' I whispered, and broke into a run.
'Smithy! I wanted to get here earlier, but there was a storm over Chicago and they delayed my connection by two hours and then they changed the gate, but by the time I figured it out, they were boarding and I couldn't get my wheelchair down to terminal C that fast, so I had to catch the next flight to LAX. They were refueling the plane, so we had to sit on the tarmac for 85 minutes, and when I finally arrived in California, they lost the bag of clothing I had packed for you, it somehow got sent to Toronto, Canada, and the woman in front of me in line at the baggage claim help desk couldn't speak English and took forever. Then I had to wait 20 minutes for a cab that is wheelchair accessible, and some mail truck of full of cocaine had wrecked all over I-10 W and it took two hours to get through.'"
Plus, the shining sunset Hollywood ending fits with the nostalgia of the rest of the book. If you don't like that, fault the book as a whole, not just the ending. For me, the worst part about the ending was Bethany flying off like a character in a Far Side comic.
I agree with you that I'm glad the book ended when it did. The problem I had with the ending was not really how perfect it was, it was that Norma showed up at all. I do agree that Norma was a significant part of the story, but I feel like it would have been more satisfying for Smithy to conclude/grieve/start his new chapter on his own, without Norma's influence. It might have even been better if it was a phone call, instead of in person. I do like your alternative ending though!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that the ending wasn't that bad, and the first time I read it through I really didn't notice a lot of the complaints brought up in class, I just thought it was a little cheesy. Sure it isn't the most realistic what with Norma's perfect timing, but the whole book is a little unrealistic for someone to be able to bike across the country using the money from someone he's barely talked to in 30 years, not really going through much withdrawal for an alcoholic chain-smoker, getting hit by a truck and shot, and living on a diet of basically just bananas. We're reading a novel, we can't expect everything to be exactly realistic. Also, your alternate ending was beautiful :)
ReplyDeleteI think the ending was timed right, some aspects of it just seemed too perfect. I thought that Smithy's journey as a whole was not at all perfect, and so it seemed wrong to have an ending that was. You're alternate ending kills me, by the way. Oh, the realities of air travel.
ReplyDeleteNice post, Katie! I like your alternate ending for the Memory of Running. I agree, the ending was Hollywood perfect, but much of the novel was like that. I didn't think Smithy would ever be able to make the cross country bike trip.
ReplyDeleteWell . . . the title doesn't refer to the *memory* of biking, since he's biking throughout the present-tense story (the biking is the stimulus of memory). He does "remember" biking as well as running, but the title alludes specifically to the thing with the family dog having his "balls cut off," as young Smithy puts it. "Running" comes to stand for that whole active, enthusiastic engagement with the world that we see in Smithy as a kid, which Bethany warns him not to lose. Biking becomes the thing that eventually brings him back to running--which happens in the final scene of the novel, when he runs with Norma along the boardwalk! (How much neater could it be?)
ReplyDeleteAnd a novel about a guy like Smithy *running* across the country would have strained credulity.