Extra Credit: Margaret Atwood "Happy Endings"

Margaret Atwood’s Happy Endings was interesting because I had dealt with a similar conundrum of how most books represent the same themes. Atwood’s view is that all books contain variations of the same plot. I think it’s true. Its hard I think to be any more creative than your predecessors, in literature and music especially. Shakespeare created hundreds of literary works, and most of their themes are still prevalent today. Authors generally create stories about people, and though every person is unique, just the sheer number of people alive today make it hard for people to be that different. Similar people react in similar ways, and though books do attempt to replicate this it’s nearly impossible to end a book completely originally now.
Atwood said “true connoisseurs...are known to favor the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with. That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.” I completely agree with this statement, because it shows how though its nearly impossible to end with an authentic ending, books are still entrancing because of plot orchestration. How you get to the ending is more important than the ending itself.
I have read books that thoroughly pissed me off, mainly because they didn’t have happy endings. I really like happy endings, as unsophisticated and immature as this is. Two books in specific that I still remember being mad at the author for having screwed up the ending were The Street by Ann Petry and Anna of Byzantium by Tracy Barrett. I read Anna of Byzantium a long time ago, but it still sticks out in my memory because of how frustrated I was by how horrible the main character’s life was, and it never got better. It was so aggravating, and I just felt like crying in the end. I picked up The Street this year because I had liked the excerpt we read in class, and it was interesting, but at the end the main character is bull dozed by society and its overall, pretty depressing. I can’t fathom why anyone would want to read about depressing things; I certainly didn’t pick up the book because I was looking forward to the main character’s death.
I guess one could argue that’s the point of art; controversy , discussion and provocation. Books would be less interesting if you knew everyone was going to be fine in the end too I suppose. However, I think creating intentionally sad endings is unnecessary and a failure of any attempt to shock the world and achieve literary merit.