Double endings / Schroedinger's Cat

[malsperanza]

The outer edges of quantum mechanics may or may not be a useful form of research in physics, but it is a damn good form of literary theory.



"The formulation of Quantum Mechanics describes the deterministic unitary evolution of a wave function. This wave function is never observed experimentally. The wave function allows us to compute the probability that certain macroscopic events will be observed. There are no events and no mechanism for creating events in the mathematical model. It is this dichotomy between the wave function model and observed macroscopic events that is the source of the interpretation issue in Quantum Mechanics. In classical physics the mathematical model talks about the things we observe. In Quantum Mechanics the mathematical model by itself never produces observations. We must interpret the wave function in order to relate it to experimental observations. [...]

In Quantum Mechanics one often must model systems as the superposition of two or more possible outcomes. Superpositions can produce interference effects and thus are experimentally distinguishable from mixed states. How does a superposition of different possibilities resolve itself into some particular observation? This question (also known as the measurement problem) affects how we analyze some experiments [...] and may raise the question of interpretations from a philosophical debate to an experimentally testable question. [...] It is only superposition of different possibilities at the microscopic level that leads to experimentally detectable interference effects.

Thus it would seem that there is no criterion for objective events and perhaps no need for such a criterion."

~From here.


So, not being a nuclear physicist, and in fact having never made it to first base with physics, I've been thinking instead about fiction.

About narratives that have a double ending--either two opposing possible endings (happy ending/tragic ending), or some form of alternative embedded within the ending. Although I have defined this idea rather too vaguely, I'm wondering if all you readers (and viewers) out there would nevertheless like to suggest some works that you think have this sort of closure.

I don't mean works with a totally open ending, btw, such as some of Faulkner's novels (The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom come to mind).

And in case I haven't read these books/seen these movies, please don't describe the endings! I hate spoilers. Later, I can ask you more about them.

On my list, so far:

John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman (this is the classic, no?)

Milorad Pavic, The Dictionary of the Khazars--published in two simultaneous editions, with a difference in only 17 lines between the "male" and "female" versions (hint: the altered bit is not the ending, but affects the ending)

The TV series La Femme Nikita, which ended definitively with episode 22 of season 4, and then was revived and provided a radically different ending in episode 8 of season 5

Dorothy Dunnett, The House of Niccolo, a series of books whose ending is (in some ways) radically changed if it is read before her other series, The Lymond Chronicles, or after

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, which, being circular, has no ending at all, but whose final pages read very differently the second time around, and differently again the third time round (assuming some mythically durable and intrepid reader capable of reading the bloody thing all the way through more than once... or indeed even once)

The movie Brazil, depending on which bits you think are the reality and which are the dream, and why

Stoppard, Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead--I'm not sure about this one. Maybe it's just an open ending. But that tossed coin will fall, either heads or tails, eventually, and until it does, both heads and tails are in play. *waves Schroedinger's poor Cat*

I keep thinking Calvino probably has a book with a double ending, but none comes to mind. And I am also interested in works that don't necessarily fall into the usual "high art" or "experimental fiction" categories.

Others?

ETA: Apocalypse Now sort of has two endings. When Coppola filmed it, he famously shot an incredibly expensive B-52 airstrike, and intended the movie to end with Willard (the Marlow character) calling in the strike to wipe out Kurtz's compound. He then decided not to use it, and provided a much quieter and more ambiguous ending. But he used the footage from the airstrike (shot in weird yellow filters) under the closing credits, so that the viewer can choose to understand that the compound is being struck, or else may prefer to interpret that footage as general and decorative (so to speak), not narrative.

At least, in one theatrical release that's what he did, though I am told that the most recent iteration of the movie doesn't have that footage, but just credits over a black ground.

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The Playboy bunny thing was arful.

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