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It feels like betrayal, to be shut out of the comforts of a traditional, Aristotelian narrative, with its precise storytelling arc. “Now a whole is that which has a beginning, middle and end,” wrote the old philosopher, about the shaping of tragedy in “The Poetics.” It may seem like a truism — of course a story must have a beginning and a middle and an end — but it has cast a long shadow over the making of narrative (and other arts) in the West. Resisting its strictures, and playing with endings, has become almost a genera in itself.

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