The Trial of Philmore Gray
The Trial of Philmore Gray is a tragicomic socio-political psychodrama. It is also a novel. While there is a plot, of sorts, and the novel may seem to be plot driven, it does not slavishly pursue the plot at the expense of the characters, i.e., it is not dependent on plot. The Trial is, in short, character driven. Some readers may find the ending, well, different. The ending is unexpected, not because it's an unexpected ending, but because it veers, or seems to veer, from the "story-line" as presented, or seemingly presented, to that point. You've finished 9/10ths of the novel and things are wrapping up, or at least one dimension of the novel has wrapped up, and you start to envision how the rest of the novel, the other (or another) dimension of the novel, will resolve itself. But The Trial of Philmore Gray pulls you away from any expectations you might develop in terms of where this other dimension of the novel is going. If the reader can envision how the novel ends, can in a sense write the ending in his or her mind, then there isn't a point anymore, from the writer's perspective, to write that ending. All the flash is gone. It also, it is argued, doesn't make sense for the reader to want that ending any longer, since it's already happened in the reader's mind to at least some degree. The Trial of Philmore Gray, therefore, abrogates or castrates the ending, in terms of what's expected, and lets the eunuch that is the philosophical/social underbelly or backdrop of the novel run off. The dimension of the story that includes the "love interest" and the apparent nemesis falls away, because there is no point in pursuing an elucidation of events that have already been elucidated. Because the writer doesn't have to waste time and space writing about the already imagined ending, and the reader doesn't have to read it, the writer is free to develop the "hidden" or less apparent dimensions of the story, which, once developed or elucidated, highlight an otherwise muted aspect of the novel, rendering an entirely other reading of the novel, i.e., a reading of the emasculated dimension. The reader is forced to reflect on the purpose or point of the novel and see that he or she has, in one sense, missed the point all along, that the real story is this highlighted by the unforeseen direction of the ending, which, it turns out, is not so much an ending as a beginning, so that the reader almost impulsively begins reading the novel again in pursuit of this newly realized thread of the novel (think Hegel) to discover the kernels of the budding underbelly as it plays itself out throughout the novel.
