A study done at the University of California, San Diego, reveals that readers actually enjoy a story more when they know the ending. Annoyingly this will confirm the habit of my best friend since university days, who always reads the last pages of any novel before turning to the start.
It’s a bit of a shocker: don’t we read to find out what happens next, with the biggest surprise or revelation often coming at the end? Is this just an example of enjoying superior knowledge (knowing the ending before the characters do)? Or is it a function of the seemingly ever-increasing demand for immediate gratification?
Of course generally we do know that romances will end with the couple getting together, mysteries will end with the police officer or detective solving the crime, and horror movies will end with the monster defeated (at least for now, pending a sequel). Do we really want to know anything more specific than that in advance?
Not me. That’s why I didn’t see the movie version of “Shutter Island”; I’d read the book and I knew the twist. I don’t think I would have enjoyed “Sixth Sense” as much if I’d known at the start that he was really dead (oops, I hope you weren’t just about to see it for the first time…).
In fact, I don’t even want to know how this post ends.
