Endings

The Cruel Sea

Monsarrat's book The Cruel Sea published a year before I was born had an ending. It had a place in many graveyards, it had several tombstones. This book sold over 11 million copies. The trouble with endings in a book is the word end. The thing is nothing is ever finished. In total Monsarrat wrote well over thirty books, closer to forty if you have the patience to count them all. The understanding, the totem, that nothing is ever finished is a characteristic of art not commerce.