I can't say, I experienced it very much. The only case that comes to mind is C.S. Lewis "Till We Have Faces" in which the author switches from polytheism to monotheism on the last two pages for not reasons not explained in the text. It is C.S. Lewis, so it's kind of clear why that happens, but I think it doesn't add anything to the Christian allegory going on in the novel, in fact, it kind of detracts from it. But that's not so much a phantom ending, but rather a quibble.
Phantom endings in HP are much more interesting, since at this point the real ending is unknowable to the readers. So every phantom ending can be mistaken at this point for the real ending. I have a phantom ending of HP in my head since I first read Harry's sorting and my reading of the rest of the books strengthened it, rather than weakening it.
There was our hero - who had bullied before, who had been mistaken for weak because of his appearance all of his life, because of false reports from a source of authority (Dudley), when nothing could be further from the truth; who (as we find out later) is destined to fight a madman who simply took his prejudices too far - and there he is and decides that at least 40 people must be unpleasant/evil after looking at them for a few seconds. I think it is exactly this attitude of Harry's what prompts an Ursula Guin to declare HP "mean-spirited", although it is the hypocrisy that's the worst of it, not the mean-spiritedness.
If this kind hypocrisy - "don't judge people by their ancestry, judge them for the house-colours" - continues to the end of the seventh book, then Rowling simply messed up her message. She invalidates her own point about prejudices. And that is not a case for inventing phantom endings, but rather for criticism; criticism that would be totally valid IMO. It wouldn't be such a big point of potential criticism, if Rowling hadn't chosen to condemn her bad guys (Voldemort, the DEs, the Dursleys) on the basis of their prejudices. But as she has, condemning her work for employing such a big double-standard, would be perfectly valid.
So I guess the point is not "how something should be", but how it should be in order to be good or (in case of your Tolkien example) perfect.
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Date: 2005-03-14 06:42 pm (UTC)I can't say, I experienced it very much. The only case that comes to mind is C.S. Lewis "Till We Have Faces" in which the author switches from polytheism to monotheism on the last two pages for not reasons not explained in the text. It is C.S. Lewis, so it's kind of clear why that happens, but I think it doesn't add anything to the Christian allegory going on in the novel, in fact, it kind of detracts from it. But that's not so much a phantom ending, but rather a quibble.
Phantom endings in HP are much more interesting, since at this point the real ending is unknowable to the readers. So every phantom ending can be mistaken at this point for the real ending. I have a phantom ending of HP in my head since I first read Harry's sorting and my reading of the rest of the books strengthened it, rather than weakening it.
There was our hero - who had bullied before, who had been mistaken for weak because of his appearance all of his life, because of false reports from a source of authority (Dudley), when nothing could be further from the truth; who (as we find out later) is destined to fight a madman who simply took his prejudices too far - and there he is and decides that at least 40 people must be unpleasant/evil after looking at them for a few seconds. I think it is exactly this attitude of Harry's what prompts an Ursula Guin to declare HP "mean-spirited", although it is the hypocrisy that's the worst of it, not the mean-spiritedness.
If this kind hypocrisy - "don't judge people by their ancestry, judge them for the house-colours" - continues to the end of the seventh book, then Rowling simply messed up her message. She invalidates her own point about prejudices. And that is not a case for inventing phantom endings, but rather for criticism; criticism that would be totally valid IMO. It wouldn't be such a big point of potential criticism, if Rowling hadn't chosen to condemn her bad guys (Voldemort, the DEs, the Dursleys) on the basis of their prejudices. But as she has, condemning her work for employing such a big double-standard, would be perfectly valid.
So I guess the point is not "how something should be", but how it should be in order to be good or (in case of your Tolkien example) perfect.