UNIVERSITY OF WINCHESTER Negotiating Endings in Contemporary Fiction: Narrative Invention and Literary Production Caroline Wintersgill ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9909-6473 Doctor of Philosophy June 2020 This Thesis has been completed as a requirement for a postgraduate research degree of the University of Winchester. DECLARATION AND COPYRIGHT STATEMENT Declaration: No portion of the work referred to in the Thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. I confirm that this Thesis is entirely my own work. I confirm that no work previously submitted for credit has been reused verbatim. Any previously submitted work has been revised, developed and recontextualised relevant to the Thesis. I confirm that no material of this Thesis has been published in advance of its submission. I confirm that no third party proof-reading or editing has been used in this Thesis. Copyright Statement: Copyright © Caroline Wintersgill 2020, Negotiating Endings in Contemporary Fiction: Narrative Invention and Literary Production, PhD Thesis, pp. 1 – 300, ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9909-6473 This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgment. Copies (by any process) either in full, or of extracts, may be made only in accordance with instructions given by the author. Details may be obtained from the RKE Centre, University of Winchester. This page must form part of any such copies made. Further copies (by any process) of copies made in accordance with such instructions may not be made without the permission (in writing) of the author. No profit may be made from selling, copying or licensing the author’s work without further agreement. 3 4 UNIVERSITY OF WINCHESTER ABSTRACT Negotiating Endings in Contemporary Fiction: Narrative Invention and Literary Production Caroline Wintersgill ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9909-6473 Doctor of Philosophy March 2020 This thesis is a theoretically and empirically informed account of endings in contemporary fiction. Its central claim is that for the critic, writer, publisher and reader, endings are a privileged site where different ways of making meaning in the literary text converge and where literary judgements are made. Its contribution is in seeking to enable dialogue between critical, popular and practice-based perspectives by developing a methodological approach that reconstructs the styles of reasoning at play in these perspectives. Part One examines the role of endings as a locus of critical attention alighting on particular moments in critical history where debate on endings has come to the fore. It outlines the contribution of narratology in establishing a set of critical descriptors and turns to reader- response theory to examine how we might assess the experience and discourse of literary publics on endings. The research suggest that the voices of ‘ordinary’ readers and the literary industry have been occluded in the debate. Part Two presents original empirical research investigating how endings are conceived, discussed and valued outside the academy, from the perspective of creators, producers and consumers of literary fiction. The research data comprises qualitative interviews with novelists and representatives of the literary industry and mixed methods research with book groups, comprising questionnaires and focus groups. From this research I draw a practice-based lexicon, distinct from (though overlapping with) literary-critical discourse on endings. In Part Three both critical vocabularies and practice-based discourses are deployed in close readings of novels by Naomi Alderman, Kate Atkinson, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan and Wyl Menmuir. These readings highlight central questions emerging from the research including the role of endings in the definition of literary fiction, the author’s responsibility to the reader and the concept of ‘landing’ as an alternative to critical preoccupations with ‘closure’ and ‘completeness’. Key words: contemporary fiction, literary fiction, endings, closure, narrative, publishing, readers. 5 6 LIST OF CONTENTS DECLARATION AND COPYRIGHT STATEMENT ..........................................................................3 ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................5 LIST OF CONTENTS ....................................................................................................................7 LIST OF TABLES..........................................................................................................................9 LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................9 PART ONE: THINKING ABOUT ENDINGS ................................................................................ 11 Introduction: Endings, Closure and the Craft of Fiction.................................................... 13 Chapter One – Literature Review I: Literary and Literary-Critical Perspectives on Endings and Closure ........................................................................................................................ 23 Chapter Two – Literature Review II: Reader Response and New Methodologies ............ 43 Chapter Three – Methodology: Researching Authors, the Literary Industry and Readers ........................................................................................................................................... 61 PART TWO: INVESTIGATING ENDINGS .................................................................................. 75 Introduction to Part Two ................................................................................................... 77 Chapter Four – Endings and Authors: The Craft of Closure .............................................. 79 Chapter Five – Endings and the Fiction Industry: Modes of Professional Reading ........ 105 Chapter Six – Endings and Readers: Storytelling and Authenticity at the Book Group .. 143 Chapter Seven – The Role of Endings in the Creation, Production and Reception of the Novel................................................................................................................................ 175 PART THREE: READING ENDINGS......................................................................................... 201 Chapter Eight – Analysing an Ending: A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson ......................... 203 Chapter Nine – Reading Endings: Responsibility, Genre and Landing in Ian McEwan, Wyl Menmuir, Kazuo Ishiguro and Naomi Alderman ............................................................. 221 Conclusion: Endings, Text and Context in Contemporary Literary Studies .................... 253 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 259 APPENDICES ......................................................................................................................... 277 Appendix 1: Author Interviewees ................................................................................... 277 Appendix 2: Questions to Authors .................................................................................. 279 Appendix 3: Literary Industry Interviewees .................................................................... 281 Appendix 4: Questions to Agents and Editors................................................................. 285 Appendix 5: Reading Group Survey Questions ............................................................... 287 Appendix 6: Background Data from Reading Groups ..................................................... 291 7 8 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: What are the Groups Reading? ............................................................................. 145 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Which Aspects are Discussed? ............................................................................. 147 Figure 2: How Do Endings Affect Overall Judgement? ........................................................ 136 Figure 3: What Kind of Endings Do Reading Groups Value? ............................................... 159 Figure 4: The Friendly 'Divvying-Up' of Material Culture (Childress 2017) ......................... 178 Figure 5: Three Interdependent Fields of Creation, Production and Reception (Childress 2017) .................................................................................................................................... 180 9 10 PART ONE: THINKING ABOUT ENDINGS 11 12 Introduction: Endings, Closure and the Craft of Fiction Central Research Questions What is the relationship between the closure of a story and the ending of a novel in contemporary literary fiction? How do literary publics (both readers and the literary industry) experience and talk about endings? What role does this response play in the process of literary creation? Are endings one of the features that signals the distinction between ‘literary’ fiction and ‘commercial’ fiction (including genre fiction)? The central claim of this thesis is that endings matter, for critics, for authors and for readers (whether professional literary readers or the reading public). They matter for a range of reasons: some of which, like the first of the questions above, point inwards, to the text itself: