The Sense of an Ending
Frank Kermode · 1967
The most important work of literary theory to read like an essay. Kermode argues that narrative endings provide the fictions we need to make sense of time. A genuine contribution to aesthetics written with elegant lucidity.
The case against
These were lectures before they were a book, and they read like it: allusive, digressive, assuming a reader already fluent in Augustine, the apocalyptic tradition, and a particular slice of the modernist canon. Kermode's central idea about endings and the concord-fictions we need is genuinely good, but it arrives wrapped in so much erudition that the through-line keeps slipping out of reach.
Essays · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
