What ever happens to Ella Price and Anna Giardino after their books end? [That's Ella Price's Journal and Anna Giardino, respectively, both by Dorothy Bryant.]
Of course in one sense they just cease to exist. But we are supposed to imagine them as real people, and the endings of the books seem right. So what is next?
Do they live lives very different from what went before? Or do they settle into routines that are almost the same, because habit is so powerful or because their resources and therefore their options aren't infinite after all?
Look at me. I've had my end-of-the-book moment, but I'm still working at the same place doing the same thing. For a little while I was avidly going out to museums and shows; now I still do from time to time but not as often. And in some ways I've become less productive than I was, because back then I wrote all this cool stuff I've been sending you ... maybe in order to get away from the day-to-day, or for whatever reason. But I've been burning through a lot of accumulated capital in all this stuff I've been sending you to read. And even when there's the chance of having my job yanked out from under me, my response is to try to find more of the same.
Of course real life isn't a novel; to think that it is risks encouraging foolish decisions because they make dramatic sense. All that is surely true.
Still ... where do you suppose Ella and Anna ended up?
All my love, now and ever,
Your Hosea
Of course in one sense they just cease to exist. But we are supposed to imagine them as real people, and the endings of the books seem right. So what is next?
Do they live lives very different from what went before? Or do they settle into routines that are almost the same, because habit is so powerful or because their resources and therefore their options aren't infinite after all?
Look at me. I've had my end-of-the-book moment, but I'm still working at the same place doing the same thing. For a little while I was avidly going out to museums and shows; now I still do from time to time but not as often. And in some ways I've become less productive than I was, because back then I wrote all this cool stuff I've been sending you ... maybe in order to get away from the day-to-day, or for whatever reason. But I've been burning through a lot of accumulated capital in all this stuff I've been sending you to read. And even when there's the chance of having my job yanked out from under me, my response is to try to find more of the same.
Of course real life isn't a novel; to think that it is risks encouraging foolish decisions because they make dramatic sense. All that is surely true.
Still ... where do you suppose Ella and Anna ended up?
All my love, now and ever,
Your Hosea
Sent from my iPhone
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