I have a bunch of student paper drafts, some MA project descriptions and a nearly completed draft of an MA thesis to read and prepare feedback for and a talk to prepare and oh dear, I can’t think straight. Which is a pity, because the discussions around yesterday’s post about endings and endless stories and World of Warcraft and Lost are fascinating and demand thought.

I can at least quote a bit of Diane Greco’s response that made me smile.

Brooks thinks the end of a story should make sense of its beginning. That this feeling of understanding is what signals “the end” of the story. Aha! That’s the moment, the end. Tout comprende. A perhaps wishful idea. I can see how it might be comforting. But other comforts are also available: repetition, perhaps mastery. Onyxia, as Jill points out, always comes back. She’s playing Freud’s game, fort/da; and so are we. You may lose, or she might, but nothing is ever really lost — a point ironically underscored by the title, in Jill’s post, of the TV series that never ends, in which the loss represented by an actual ending is precisely what is not on the menu.

Not that I can think of more to say right now. See you on the other side of those papers.