Here's Where the Story Ends (?)

In case you haven’t gotten to this page yet, or if you don’t mind jumping ahead (or jumping back) in the text, here is an excerpt worth reading from a page entitled “work in progress.”

Closure is, as in any fiction, a suspect quality, although here it is made manifest. When the story no longer progresses, or when it cycles, or when you tire of paths, the experience of reading ends. …
There is no simple way to say this.

Try clicking on a word, an empty space, or simply the Enter button, and you are back to the “begin” page.

The narrator (perhaps Joyce himself) in this page goes on to say that the possibilities for interpretation are endless and that “sometimes what seems like a loop, like memory, heads off again in another direction.” So maybe there is an end, but it is the reader who must establish it. We've been warned: "There is no simple way...."

Work Cited: Joyce, Michael. afternoon, a story. Watertown: Eastgate Systems, 1987.