Ambiguity

As in Dada collage, fragmentation, links and lexias, create space, gaps where the (w)reader must create their own meaning, fill in the missing pieces, infer and contemplate. To create this space, the author must be willing to give up a certain amount of control, and the reader must give up searching for authorial intent and often be content with his or her own interpretation. In postmodern fiction, this space can be created in overlapping segments of time, fragmented sections of text, as in Coover’s stories, or the space between the linear and supplemental chapters of Hopscotch, where the reader never knows what she or he will encounter, or, as it does in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, several times throughout the novel, and most definitely at the end, where he leaves the reader to make sense of both what has passed and what the future holds for Oedipa.
            In afternoon, a story, ambiguity is the theme of the day. In a classroom of students, it is possible that none of them will find closure—discover what actually happened to Peter’s ex-wife and child. This ambiguity can be frustrating, for a reader who wants the ending neatly bound, like a murder-mystery novel. But like an abstract minimalist work of art, it forces us to consider multiple possibilities, see things from several angles, and find our own meaning there. All of this adds meaning to the text, in Lot 49 and afternoon, for instance, it solidifies the mystery surrounding the characters and the journey they are on for elusive truth. It also forces the reader to reconsider closure in a text. In Lot 49 we may have closure in that we have reached the end of the material book, but in a text like afternoon, we must stop when we tire of reading, get caught in two many loops, come to our own conclusions.