Talk:In Milton Lumky Territory

Ending

I gotta be honest I think the summary is bullshit, the ending of the book is set in such a way that you never really know if the ending is real or fanciful, try reading the fucking thing before you just ape a couple stupid reviews that can be found via g00gle.

Why do you think the ending is that unclear and ambivalent? I read the book and re-read the ending twice, just to make sure that I got it right. It seems to me that Bruce's character is really day-dreaming about his own future, it is not real to me.... You remember the part when he recalls his childhood memories, in the last chapter? When he was 11 and Susan was still his teacher. Susan tells the whole class to write a composition about a fanciful trip to New York and Bruce, who had just been humiliated by his teacher, has got no idea about what to write, he feels frustrated because he's never been to NY and thinks that fancying about such a thing is totally pointless. So Susan comes up to him and tries to encourage him to just day-dream about the whole thing, without any particular reason or maybe because it's just nice to day-dream sometimes. Well, in that moment there's a subtle twist from Bruce's childhood memories to "Bruce-in-the-present", lying on the bed, back to his current issues. Bruce, who's very upset about the troubles that've been going on in the past few hours, kind of "escapes" in a fantasy about his own future: he clearly states that he's going to "write a composition" (that is "day-dreaming" metaphorically) about how things would have been between him and Susan if that typewriter business hadn't gone so bad and hadn't ruined their relationship. So the remainder of the story is just a fantasy to me. But anyway I'm still curious about your point of view, that's an interesting interpretation, can you explain it?