Books with Shite Endings

So I just finished reading Irvine Welsh's "Filth" and felt compelled to make this thread. If you've read it you'll know why, the book totally jumps the shark at the end when the reader discovers

I mean, just fuck you Mr. Irvine Welsh, I was so enjoying the character you had constructed and then you throw it all away in one final insane, coke-fueled but nonetheless cliche-filled (apart from the tapeworm) climax, effectively obliterating all that came before it.

Last time I remember being so disappointed with a book's ending was Stephen King's "It". That probably takes first place on the list of "pretty good books with atrociously, insanely, suicidally bad endings". For those who have read it and need a reminder

Amerika and Deal Souls, innit

dunno, i don't tend to think of books in terms of endings or structure, where like, the plot is paramount and determines if the book is good or not. i guess i'm not very plot oriented. maybe a lot of what i've read doesn't hold up in those terms. i can't think of any endings i've hated. if i manage to get through a novel at all i'm going to like all of it because i'm extremely critical from the get go. i can give you a large list of terrible openings.

mein kampf

indeed, too bad it had to end.

Wouldn't call Filth an unhappy ending by any stretch of the imagination. The character was a disgrace.

The Bible sorta goes off the rails in the last chapter after the author discovers shrooms

  On 1/1/2014 at 12:58 AM, LimpyLoo said:

Amerika and Deal Souls, innit

explain why, this thread is doomed to die anyway cuz it's about books, might as well give a bit more grist

  On 1/1/2014 at 1:08 AM, zaphod said:

dunno, i don't tend to think of books in terms of endings or structure, where like, the plot is paramount and determines if the book is good or not. i guess i'm not very plot oriented. maybe a lot of what i've read doesn't hold up in those terms. i can't think of any endings i've hated. if i manage to get through a novel at all i'm going to like all of it because i'm extremely critical from the get go. i can give you a large list of terrible openings.

really? well anyway, then give a list of a few terrible openings, that sounds good

  On 1/1/2014 at 1:21 AM, Schlitze said:

Wouldn't call Filth an unhappy ending by any stretch of the imagination. The character was a disgrace.

you missed my point. My point was, by any standard, the ending was a failure, in that up til that point the book had trod the fine line between reality and caricature, but then it just went "full Hollywood" or something, like an (even more retardedly "hyper real") Wes Anderson rip-off.

And anyway I disagree with you, I don't think the character was a disgrace. I guess Welsh is just too nice a guy at heart or something, but he made the character pretty endearing despite the vulgarity. A less entertaining author who really wanted to make a vile and reprehensible character would have had his character's inner monologue be something like "I hate niggers, bitches are only good for sucking cock", but Welsh made his character much more clever so that, while the sentiment is pretty much the same, the delivery is usually pretty hilarious (I guess if he hadn't, no-one would have read the book, so there's that...). Also there are the (very occasional) flashes of humanity which make you realize there's more to the character than meets the eye.

  On 1/1/2014 at 1:34 AM, Cryptowen said:

The Bible sorta goes off the rails in the last chapter after the author discovers shrooms

lol

  On 1/1/2014 at 3:10 AM, lumpenprol said:

 

  On 1/1/2014 at 12:58 AM, LimpyLoo said:

Amerika and Deal Souls, innit

explain why, this thread is doomed to die anyway cuz it's about books, might as well give a bit more grist

 

Oh sorry, dumb joke...those two books were unfinished.

Up the Walls of the World

i've never read another book where all the characters dying horribly would've been a more satisfying ending

  On 1/1/2014 at 3:10 AM, lumpenprol said:

 

  On 1/1/2014 at 1:34 AM, Cryptowen said:

The Bible sorta goes off the rails in the last chapter after the author discovers shrooms

lol

 

  Quote

 

 

Nineteenth-century agnostic Robert G. Ingersoll called Revelation "the insanest of all books."^[85] Thomas Jefferson omitted it, along with most of the Biblical canon, from the Jefferson Bible, and wrote that at one time he considered it as "merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams."^[86] Friedrich Engels claimed that the Book of Revelation was primarily a political and anti-Roman work.^[87]

It was most controversial and thus the last book added to the NT yet, as pointed out in this article, is the core of most radical evangelical nonsense concerning Middle Eastern politics. Fucking organized religion. It's a batshit and surreal allegory of Roman oppression of Jews and Christians that the Catholic Church capitalized on. The Biblical canon is all hand-selected and tailored to begin with.

Fun read though.

  On 1/1/2014 at 1:08 AM, zaphod said:

dunno, i don't tend to think of books in terms of endings or structure, where like, the plot is paramount and determines if the book is good or not. i guess i'm not very plot oriented. maybe a lot of what i've read doesn't hold up in those terms. i can't think of any endings i've hated. if i manage to get through a novel at all i'm going to like all of it because i'm extremely critical from the get go. i can give you a large list of terrible openings.

i think this is the sole reason i disagree so much on your opinion in film, i love plot. plot is my main factor in how much i enjoy a film or novel, cinematography, artwork, meaning, acting, relevance, historical accuracy, all come second. i consume novels like crack, i often read 4 a week, and maybe its just a lack in my intelligence or appreciation of prose and literature, but i never end up liking books that dont really go anywhere. i think for the same indefinable reason i dont enjoy any poetry.

The Beach

American Psycho

I haven't read many books.

I stopped reading anything by Robert Jordan when I was about 15 or so, but I recently looked in to the later novels. After reading the wiki for the final book, "A Memory of Light", I had an IRL lol. The final line from the book is ""...riding down south and smoking his impossible pipe."

wat

  On 1/1/2014 at 7:18 AM, messiaen said:

 

  On 1/1/2014 at 1:08 AM, zaphod said:

dunno, i don't tend to think of books in terms of endings or structure, where like, the plot is paramount and determines if the book is good or not. i guess i'm not very plot oriented. maybe a lot of what i've read doesn't hold up in those terms. i can't think of any endings i've hated. if i manage to get through a novel at all i'm going to like all of it because i'm extremely critical from the get go. i can give you a large list of terrible openings.

i think this is the sole reason i disagree so much on your opinion in film, i love plot. plot is my main factor in how much i enjoy a film or novel, cinematography, artwork, meaning, acting, relevance, historical accuracy, all come second. i consume novels like crack, i often read 4 a week, and maybe its just a lack in my intelligence or appreciation of prose and literature, but i never end up liking books that dont really go anywhere. i think for the same indefinable reason i dont enjoy any poetry.

 

weird, my opinions on movies are all over the place. i don't even really like "art films". i actually am a lot more nitpicky about plot in movies than i am in books. just more of a dick in general about films. maybe that's what you don't like? that i'm kind of an asshole? probably.

impossible pipe is a lol. i stopped with jordan when brandon sanderson took over. all his books are kind of lame though, not sure how i powered through thousands of pages of that shit.

I mean, the pipe should have at least looked like this:

Maybe I am missing something.

That pipe could, with care, be executed in the physical world. Hence not impossible.

Need to get some MC Escher pipe shit going on.

it's a metaphor for his micropenis

  On 1/2/2014 at 5:58 PM, zaphod said:

it's a metaphor for his micropenis

What if it's a metaphor for his macropenis?

The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim by Jonathan Coe, by some fucking distance. It's a fairly touching book until the final chapter in a moment of astonishing post-modern wankery when the main character accidentally meets the author who explains why he was inspired to write the story. The fictional character is aghast and asks "but, how will it end?" and then Coe explains "like this" and clicks his fingers and the character out of existence. End of book, and somewhere M. Night Shyamalan stands and applauds with tears streaming down his cheeks.

Everyone Poops

Jurassic Poop: What Dinosaurs Left Behind

All About Poop

Atlas Shrugged

Scared to Poop: A Guide to Overcoming Constipation and Stool Withholding in Children

  On 1/3/2014 at 12:35 AM, baph said:

Scared to Poop: A Guide to Overcoming Constipation and Stool Withholding in Children

That was a classic and fully deserved the Bruckheimer-Bay Award for Scatalogical Research.

  On 1/3/2014 at 12:21 AM, tec said:

The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim by Jonathan Coe, by some fucking distance. It's a fairly touching book until the final chapter in a moment of astonishing post-modern wankery when the main character accidentally meets the author who explains why he was inspired to write the story. The fictional character is aghast and asks "but, how will it end?" and then Coe explains "like this" and clicks his fingers and the character out of existence. End of book, and somewhere M. Night Shyamalan stands and applauds with tears streaming down his cheeks.

lol

The ending of Infinite Jest was pretty annoying, although some could argue that its part of what makes the book unique.

you mean "it was raining out of a low sky and the tide was way out"? that's one of my favorite endings to anything ever.

never got the hype about irvine welsh, read trainspotting, pretty forgettable.