REVIEW: Richard Bausch's 'Unfinished' Stories

I read somewhere that the ending of a story or novel is successful when it both culminates and continues the preceding text. Or, as Flannery O’Connor describes the same concept, a working ending is one that “gains altitude.” I’m intrigued by the concept of an ending that accomplishes two seemingly contradictory tasks simultaneously—that a conclusion continues a story even as it ends it.

There’s one kind of ending that I’ve been thinking about since I read through The Stories of Richard Bausch: the “unfinished” ending. That is, the ending in which at least one of the primary points of tension remains unresolved. Bausch seems to like this device. In “What Feels Like the World,” we never learn whether Brenda makes the vault. In “The Fireman’s Wife,” we never see Jane leave Martin. Even in “Someone to Watch Over Me,” the tension between Marlee and Ted is never resolved; it’s merely delayed.

“Unjust” is Bausch's tale of Coleman, a man accused of sexual harassment. The incident is likely to lose him his job. It creates tension with his wife Peg—and there are textual hints that Peg has reason to be upset. Meanwhile, Coleman’s daughter, whose name-change hasn’t helped her stagnant Hollywood career, returns for the first time in three years. She’s carrying the child of a scruffy husband with whom she cannot stop arguing. Both baby and husband are a surprise to her parents.

Neck-deep in the pressure, Coleman escapes the house and walks outside. He sees his neighbor once again verbally abusing his son. This is Coleman’s catalyst. He charges across the backyards and hits the guy, causing the young son to weep and feebly fight back. The story ends like this:

"Everett," Peg says, crying. "Please."

And now Wilkins’s wife shouts from their porch. 'I’ve called the police. Do you hear me, Everett Coleman? I’ve called the police. The police are on their way.'

Coleman walks across to his own yard and on, toward the house. Wilkins is being helped up, wife on one side, the boy on the other. Peg, still crying, watches them, standing at the edge of the gravel lane. Janine/Anya and Lucky are a few feet behind her, arm in arm, looking like two people huddled against a cold wind. Peg turns and looks at him, and then the others do, too.

"I’m waiting here," he shouts, almost choking on the words. "Just let them come."

"God," Peg says.

"I’m waiting," he calls to her, to them. To all of them.

And we’re left waiting too. The big blasts that Bausch hits us with in the text, the ones that appeal to our instincts for suspense, are never resolved. By ending where he does, we must conclude that the real story is not about the conflict over harassment charges, or even about the fate of his marriage, or his relationship with his daughter. Ultimately, as Coleman acts out against the threat he feels from everyone around him, the ending illustrates that his instinct to defend and preserve himself is the heart of the story, rather than any of the aforementioned plot elements themselves. The ‘unfinished’ nature of the story underscores the family’s missed connections, or the fundamental sense of absence that drives the story.

Bausch’s primary preparation for the ‘unfinished’ ending is to maintain a theme of things unfinished throughout the text. Early on, for example, we see it manifest in Coleman and Peg’s home, the foreground of the story ... "a streaked, unformed, slapdash confusion." We see the unfinished setting spill into how the characters directly relate to each other. Incomplete conversations are ubiquitous in this story, and, like the unfinished setting, they function to better prepare for an ‘unfinished’ ending.

And another thing: tense. The present tense successfully captures the uncertainty of the story "Unjust" in a way that past tense could not. Use of the past tense would make moot the major tensions of each story by default of being in the past. These stories work to make us alert to the unfinished; their very themes rely on the unfinished (as in, unfinished lives). Past tense would apply a sense of the ‘finished’ to the stories, and thus undercut Bausch’s efforts. Instead, Bausch’s point-of-view choice results in a sense of the past and present merging upon each other—a sense, I might note, that I’ve been working to create in a story of mine that uses the same third-person present-tense as these two.

Comments

[chicaloungin]

I just bought this collection a few weeks ago and it sits waiting for me to read, read, read it. I'll finish ZZ Packer and take a gander. Your post has me all tickled and inspired!

[kate]

A really thoughtful critique of Bausch here. I'll be back to read more.