First off, I have to commend
— his essay, In Defense of Happy Endings is really worth reading, hence the link to it, and his Substack more generally. It touches on really complex stuff and does it in an approachable way. I was inspired enough by the power of his assertions to write my own counter-programming, but also to try and define what I even mean by “nihilism” and “nihilistic endings,” because while I find them fascinating, I’m also not even always sure what I mean when I use the terms, or what I hope to express with them.I’m not a scholar, alright? Just a dude with a free Substack, working on what some might describe as a nihilistic novel… bear with me. If I’m wrong about terms or if I simply stop making sense, just comment and let me know.
I also have to add that if these are the quality of discussions that we’re finding on Substack — and so far, generally, it seems to be — this says a ton about Substack itself, the people it doesn’t attract, and why I’m actually excited to be in this space. I’ve only had to block two people so far… I’m sure that’ll go up, because I have no tolerance for bullshit, but only two blocks seems promising.
Ok, enough preamble.
JE’s argument goes something like this:
In real life, bad people get away with their crimes and good people suffer arbitrarily. This isn’t shocking, and it’s precisely for this reason that writing a miserable ending is neither difficult nor radical nor experimental nor even all that interesting: we know how much suffering exists, and we also know that life is more than pure suffering. There is joy. There is triumph. People can and do change.
Therefore, isn’t the truly radical story one that ends in the possibility of hope? To suggest that we can transcend ourselves?
There’s a lot to like about these statements, so let me try to explain what my problem is...
What is nihilism?
The word gets bandied about so often it’s hard to know. I don’t want to write a billion words here. “Generally speaking,” nihilism is assumed to be a belief in nothing: that there is no knowledge, there is no morality, human life has no value or meaning behind it… nihilism is a kind of purified, ultimate rejection.
This is not cynicism. A cynic believes that systems and people are only good at failing. A nihilist might believe that it doesn’t really matter if systems or people are only good at failing — in either case, there is no reason to continue to live.
Nihilistic endings suck because:
They inadvertently glamorize amoral behavior, among other things; they also write-off or ignore many reasons that nihilism itself is flawed. There are many reasons to continue to live, even if human life has no underlying meaning. Human life is intrinsically interesting, for example.
Aside from that, nihilistic endings are all over the place nowadays. The quickest way to shoehorn seriousness-of-purpose is to make everything miserable and “nihilistic.” JE is right to note this, and I totally agree.
I’m writing crime fiction as we speak, so I have some investment in nihilism and nihilistic stories. Why? Because crime, itself, is nihilism. The worst, most dangerous, most prolific and most proficient criminals commit crimes primarily because they like doing it.
I often wonder why so many people have become so deeply invested into true crime and serial killer stories. I personally believe the genres are so popular because the news is one long feast of nihilism and nihilistic behaviors.
A truly nihilistic ending would deny any lessons or knowledge; a truly nihilistic ending would reject the concept of an end, since there are also no beginnings! Mwahahahaha! “Everyone dies” is sometimes what happens in Shakespeare… but it’s almost banal. Everyone dies. Okay, and? Yes, so? It’s belaboring the obvious.
How-ever…
Messianic complex
The argument in favor of “happy” or “hopeful” or “transcendent” endings are, in my reading, essentially a messianic-monotheistic message. Judaism to Islam all have some version of it.
JE writes about life-after-death being a hopeful message. I don’t know about that.
First off, I don’t agree that that trying to reach heaven (literally or by metaphor) is necessarily a hopeful, transcendent message.
Actually, I’d argue that concepts about “heaven” are nihilistic in the extreme. If all that matters is what happens after death, what’s the point of life ? If all that matters is being saved on one’s deathbed — and that salvation is even accessible on the deathbed — what do the prior sins matter? That is nihilism.
In regards to “people can triumph over themselves and-or other obstacles,” I agree that is a hopeful ending but at some point hope and delusion are the same thing. I admit this is a cynical view. I write crime fiction for a reason. But it’s true: bad odds are bad odds for a reason, and it’s not nihilism to say this and have a story conclude with a loss, when loss is the inevitable nature of the character or situation. That’s not being bleak for its own sake.
A work that portrays terrifying human behavior is not a work of nihilism, it’s a work that portrays disturbing aspects of the human psyche that we’d rather not explore. A work showcasing the bleakest end of human interaction has to have an ending that makes sense for the story,1 and it’s unlikely to be a hopeful one, since antisocial personalities are notoriously difficult to correct through conventional therapy. 2
“Faith is the storyteller’s way of doing good.”
This quote came up toward the bottom of the essay and it bothered me enough to respond to it separately.
As I see it, a storyteller has no obligation to do anything other than tell the story.
I have no need for either dogmatic faith or faithlessness; I just reject dogma, period. I went to journalism school — a mixed blessing, for sure, but one thing I have retained and will always retain is that I go where the story goes, full stop. I do not need to be blessed or receive blessing to do any damn thing. In pursuit of a simple question — who are you, and why? — I need a problem. I need objectives. I need the pursuit of solutions. Observing these things in some sequence, is how I attempt to answer the first question. You are what you do, and what you say. I am a documentarian; I want to follow a person all the way — all the way.
That documentarian thing is something I do take as faith, actually. Yes, it is detached and arguably even amoral — but I also don’t view detachment as (necessarily) a spiritual, emotional or aesthetic problem. I can’t document a person and judge them at the same time…
Yours in thinking about stuff,
-A
Aside from being an all-time great novel and film, Clockwork is a deeply Christian story about free will and the ability to choose to do good, and if we essentially force a person to do good, is that person still a person at all? Clockwork is exceptionally violent and disturbing — and so, so far from being nihilistic. Why? Because the core of the story is belief that humanity matters; the light and dark must be wrestled with.
That said — there is reason for some hope. Current research indicates that psychopaths are both born and made, and have biological, structural deficiencies in their brains that can be rebuilt — sort of. It’s wild research, eerily reminiscent, perhaps, of A Clockwork Orange.
I'm glad you did this. It so often comes down to semantics, doesn't it? Like how I'm tempted to push back with something about how satisfaction is antithetical to nihilism.
At heart, though, we probably disagree about a few fundamentals of reality. I don't (or maybe I just refuse to?) believe that a person's story ends with death. But I also don't believe that this somehow cheapens or trivializes one single moment of anyone's life, anymore than the last chapter of a book robs any meaning from the first.
Yours in thinking, indeed. I read your essay and it reminds me how little I think about these deep things and how interesting it is when you provoke me to do it! I'll need to read this essay again, I think! It also makes me so damn eager to read the story and meet the characters you have been building.