The end.

This week, I've read the final novel in several detective/police series. I just finished The Troubled Man, Henning Mankell's final novel in the Kurt Wallander series; I also read the last novels in Robert B. Parker's Spenser and Jesse Stone series. On hand, I also have a new novel by Ian Rankin, whose final Inspector Rebus novel I read a while ago. I'm thinking about these final gestures--the final novels of the Rankin and Mankell series were decisions by the writers, who had, I'm guessing, come to feel these characters and the constraints surrounding their stories as a burden; Parker died last year, so these books were the last ones in the pipeline, (although I guess there's another Spenser novel that is "finished by" an assistant or something).

I found the experience of reading the Mankell novel to be unexpectedly upsetting, moving and sad, but also disturbing. I hope I'm not giving anything away when I say that Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus simply retired from police work in the final novel, but the fate of Wallander is not as straightforward (no spoilers here). I had to stop reading The Troubled Man for a little while this afternoon, because I realized that while I wanted to experience the resolution of the plot--what, after all, did become of the missing man, and who was he really?--I was not ready to say goodbye to Wallander, even though I found him to be a fairly frustrating character.

In the case of the Parker novels, and the character of Spenser specifically, I experienced something else again. I began reading his novels at another part of my life entirely, twenty-five years ago now. I always got around to reading the new novels as they appeared in my local library. After awhile, I knew that none of them would blow my mind, but the books were reliable in this sense: Spenser's voice was consistent, always; Parker knew and loved the great oeuvre of American hard-boiled; and he had a set of ideas to work through, about masculinity, about loyalty, about love, even. There was enough interest for me--and evidently for a lot of people, since he wrote dozens of books--that it felt like a small, if limited, delight to revisit the character, his scenes, his associations.

When I read that Parker had died, I felt a loss, personally. I read the last Spenser novel in the spirit of elegy, and in that regard, the experience of reading it was enhanced, or at least affected. (If you want to get a sense of how other crime fiction writers regarded Parker, read here and here.)

I am interested to know what my fellow Mankell-reading compatriots think of the final Wallander novel. It put me in mind of a wonderful B-movie-ish movie directed by George Romero, The Dark Half. (I loved that movie so much I bought it--in VHS!--but I did just discover in the course of my internet "research" on The Dark Half that both Siskel and Ebert could not recommend it. Tragic.) In the film, a writer who publishes literary fiction under his own name, but pulp novels under a pseudonym, writes what he hopes will be his very last pulp novel, then ceremoniously, and publicly, conducts a mock funeral for his pseudonymous "other half." It will not surprise you to know that, since the original story is written by Stephen King, the other half does not stay buried, and havoc--non-literary havoc--ensues.

I wonder, I wonder: will Mankell miss Wallander? Will the writer be sorry, finally, that his relationship with this long-time character, perhaps his other, has ended?

A minute to spare . . .

I got my last grade turned in at 11:59 p.m. Ha.

Notes on "last grades":

a. it was really only my last possible grade, since there are students I am still (still!) hounding for last assignments. I can't stand it when they were good students and then something . . . whatever! happens, and there's no portfolio or whatnot. I can't stand it!

b. Microsoft Outlook ate a comment, a lovely, long, thoughtful comment, that I wrote for a student writer because it thought it needed to log off. I have some choice words for Microsoft Outlook, but since my lovely aunt may occasionally read this blog, I will just say: I have some choice words for you, Microsoft Outlook, so you better stay out of my way or else cough up that comment you ate.

c. I must reconstruct the above comment, plus write some more for a few more students. But hey, the grades are in! And they're high!

d. High grades = character flaw on part of teacher? Discuss.

e. All my grading bones and muscles are achy and tight.

Open Letter to End of the Semester Evaluation of Students:

End of the Semester Evaluation of Students, you loom over every interesting, writerly, inventive idea I have to make writing pleasurable or compelling. You and your rheumy eyes, your hacking cough, your irritating standards.

I hate you, End of the Semester Evaluation of Students. You make me feel weak. When you are near--and when are you NOT near, E.o.t.S.E.o.S.?--you fill me with self-doubt. You are nothing but a self-fulfilling monologue: "They cannot write. They cannot write. No one will believe that this is writing. Think of what the Others will say when they know that you said this student could write! This student cannot write. None of your students can really write." Really, you could be an endless loop of yourself. You, perhaps more than any other Presence in my professional life, End of the Semester Evaluation of Students, conjure up a factory, in which my teaching is just another (sing it with me now) brick in the wall.

End of the Semester Evaluation of Students, why don't you just do all the grading yourself and leave me out of it? The way you go on, it seems like that's what you'd rather, anyway. In any case, I am now officially giving you the cold shoulder. When I think of my students and their writing, I will think of the funny or beautiful things they wrote--intentional or not--and how words always wiggle and do acrobatics, instead of staying under control the way you pretend they do and can, if I had only taught the students how to write rather than how not to write, which is what I apparently do, according to you, End of the Semester Evaluation of Students. Well, how about this: I gave a bunch of high grades! So chew on that, old man, Mr. Professor of They Can't Write, Ph.D. No matter what you say, I'm the one pushing the A button to signify all the writing they can or can't do.

And now? The semester is over. I hope you're going somewhere gloomy for vacation, because you really wouldn't enjoy a lovely location, where people don't care about the writing they can't do, just as in the rest of their lives they only worry about their writing maybe eight percent of the time. Unlike me, being loomed over by you.

Stop the looming. I quit you, End of the Semester Evaluation of Students: I quit you I quit you I quit you! So stop bothering me.

Sincerely,

Professor H.T. Megastore