Help me find recursive narratives because I need you to help me find...

November 14, 2006 11:25 AM

Help me find novels and other narratives that wrap around, ending in such away that you find yourself back at the beginning. (maybe some spoilers inside):

I'm looking for narratives where the end is the exact beginning starting all over again in a circular process. Some examples:

-The novels Finnegans Wake and Dahlgren both end with the exact words they begin with, in fact they both abruptly end in such a way as to suggest an endless cycle.

-The old Infocom text game Trinity, where a successful conclusion brings you back to the exact same crisis point the game began with.

-If memory serves, David Lynch's Lost Highway sort of fits this, ending and beginning with the same intercom message.

-And of course, The Song That Never Ends.

I'm not looking for things like Robert Heinlein's story "All You Zombies" where an endless cycle is described, but rather where the medium itself creates the cycle. Long flashbacks (like Fight Club) don't really fit the bill either.

posted by PinkStainlessTail to Media & Arts (48 answers total)

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time
- Alan Moore
posted by interrobang at 11:32 AM on November 14, 2006

Not sure if this is *exactly* what you're looking for, but no one does labyrinthine, repetitive narratives like Alain Robbe-Grillet. What's great is he always finds a reason to justify it too (the circular nightmares of a fever, the looping suspicion of jealousy).
posted by nathancaswell at 11:33 AM on November 14, 2006

The goddamned cursed @#$%@# Dark Tower series by Stephen King. After 7 books totalling at least 3,000 pages, you can see how it has to end but you keep telling yourself that can't be it and then it is!! I'm not dissing the series as a whole, but the frustration of finishing it, and coming closer and closer to the last page, and wanting to tell Roland no, no don't go up that staircase don't open that door!!!

Can you TELL how frustrating this was?!

And, I'm not sure if this really fits your criteria, but you might look into The Dictionary of the Kazars by Milorad Pavitch, which has two very similar texts, each of which are three interwoven stories that circle back on each other. I'd love to see the sections of that book (those books) laid out graphically, because there's a lot more than just a circle there.
posted by whatzit at 11:35 AM on November 14, 2006

It's been a while since I read it, but I think Nabokov's short story The Circle fits the bill.
posted by miniape at 11:35 AM on November 14, 2006

The graphic novel Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar ends with an action that loops back to set up the beginning.

And I know some people who interpret the ending of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to mean that the characters undergo an endless chain of memory wipes and reclamations.
posted by COBRA! at 11:36 AM on November 14, 2006

Twelve Monkeys
posted by Khalad at 11:36 AM on November 14, 2006

"The Man Who Folded Himself" begins with the main character receiving a time-machine belt from his older self, but it does not end with the same event, so I'm not sure if it counts or not.
posted by interrobang at 11:38 AM on November 14, 2006

The CBC Radio programme The Great Eastern did exactly this in their second season; the seventh episode (Scroll down for script and mp3) ends with the show you've just listened to being broadcast for the "first" time.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:40 AM on November 14, 2006 [1 favorite]

My favorite novel that nobody's ever read, Acts of Levitation by Laynie Browne, begins and ends with an afternoon at the beach, which is questionably the same afternoon from the beginning, or possibly a new afternoon that mimics the first. It's written in such a way that you can almost miss the fact that you're ending up where you began.
posted by nevers at 11:48 AM on November 14, 2006

Oh, and I think you could play Paul's Boutique on repeat and get a seamless circle.
posted by COBRA! at 11:48 AM on November 14, 2006

Infinite Jest, mentioned a few questions down, does this, right? It's been a while.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 11:49 AM on November 14, 2006

Donnie Darko sort of. It's not completely cyclical, but the narrative does return to the beginning.
posted by WinnipegDragon at 11:53 AM on November 14, 2006

Neil Gaiman's "Other People" found in Fragile Things, originally from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, v101 #4&5. It is a cleaver 'mobius' version.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 11:57 AM on November 14, 2006

The song "There's a Hole in the Bucket"

These two probably are further from what you're looking for, but there's "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead."
posted by phoenixy at 12:01 PM on November 14, 2006

Response by poster: Wow there's a lot of this about.

Robbe-Grillet isn't quite on the mark, though the repetition and cycling are right next door. Watching Last Year at Marienbad gives me a similar feeling to these circular narratives.

With Infinite Jest, isn't it more that the ending is sort of buried in the middle of the book somewhere? It's been awhile for me too.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 12:01 PM on November 14, 2006

I don't think Infinite Jest does this. It uses a shuffled storytelling technique, but doesn't literally go into a time-loop. Along the same lines would be Pulp Fiction—the story is structured so that it begins and ends in the middle.

One book that actually does create a time-loop is The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien.
posted by adamrice at 12:02 PM on November 14, 2006

The first chapter of Infinite Jest is chronologically about six months to a year (???) after the final chapter. It doesn't loop around to the starting point, because we are never told exactly what happens chronologically between the final chapter and the first one.

The narrative as a whole shuffles back and forth chronologically between several seperate narrative strands; but those strands are told basically chronologically.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, maybe? I forget, exactly.

Memento would seem to fit the bill, though.
posted by Infinite Jest at 12:10 PM on November 14, 2006

Craig Harrison's sci-fi novella The Quiet Earth^ does this. The first and last paragraphs are exactly the same, and suggest that the protagonist is caught in some kind of time loop.
posted by Sonny Jim at 12:18 PM on November 14, 2006

Michael Joyce's hypertext novel, afternoon: a story. It doesn't have an ending per se, but explains its own structure like this:

"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 the paths, the experience of it ends. Even so, there are likely to be more oppotunities than you think there are at first. A word which doesn't yield the first time you read a section may take you elsewhere if you choose it when you encounter the section again; and sometimes what seems a loop, like memory, heads off again in another direction."
posted by chocolatepeanutbuttercup at 12:20 PM on November 14, 2006

Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk starts and ends at the same place with the same lines.
posted by Captain_Science at 12:21 PM on November 14, 2006

Doesn't really qualify as a narrative - at least not a single one - but at some point a story was written in the DC universe indicating that when Barry Allen ran himself into pure energy in order to thwart the Anti-Monitor he becomes the lightning bolt that strikes (struck?) the shelf of chemicals that doused him and made him into the Flash however many years prior.

The excellent novel Replay by Ken Grimwood involves people being bounced backwards in their own lives and then living them forward to the same point only to be bounced backwards again. The book opens at the first time it happens to the protagonist and concludes when he has reached that point yet again,
posted by phearlez at 12:24 PM on November 14, 2006

One Hundred Years Of Solitude is actually a linear, beginning-to-end story. And by the same token, wouldn't Memento be a straight end-to-beginning story? (Survivor is told in flashback. I wouldn't think that counts.) I assume you're not talking about works that don't move much at all (like, frex, Metal Machine Music). A dot is not a circle, and all that.

The works of Faulkner (and, for that matter and on a different level, Bukowski) can certainly be read in more or less any order.

What about Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch, or (oh, right) Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler?
posted by chicobangs at 12:24 PM on November 14, 2006

The Player, a film by Robert Altman is close, but not quite. It doesn't wrap around to the same events, but it does have a "meta" ending.
posted by zpousman at 12:26 PM on November 14, 2006

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell does this, with leaps forward through time in each chapter and then back again by the end. While I'm not sure if you could say it ends where it begins, but as you might guess from the title, The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger does all kinds of crazy stuff with time.
posted by kittydelsol at 12:27 PM on November 14, 2006

The The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton definitely fits the bill.

Not sure if this counts, but one of my favorite Star Trek episodes Cause and Effect played with this.
posted by funkiwan at 12:31 PM on November 14, 2006

The Alexandria Quartet is a collection of four (fantastic) novels by Lawrence Durrell. He notes that they are to be considered "sibling novels" and may be read in any order, as each has secrets and revelations to impart that don't show up in any of the others.

The novels are "Justine", "Balthazar", "Mountolive", and "Clea".

Not exactly what you asked for, but incredibly worthwhile anyhow.
posted by hermitosis at 12:37 PM on November 14, 2006

Any palindrome.
posted by nathancaswell at 12:48 PM on November 14, 2006

The incomparable Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe does not feature a literal word loop, but does feature several carefully tangled time loops within the story that create discontinuous, recursive interactions between past and future versions of major and minor characters. Along with Dahlgren it's probably one of the more complex 20th century SF works.
posted by meehawl at 12:54 PM on November 14, 2006

Land of the Lost did this in the first season. The whole thing was a pocket universe, and in order for Mashall, Will and Holly to escape they had to be replaced by identical versions of themselves. The first scene of the first episode of the season is exactly the same as the last scene of the last episode.

Hey, it may have been a crappy children's show, but all things considered it was a pretty smart crappy children's show.

</ grew up in the 70's >
posted by Lokheed at 1:10 PM on November 14, 2006

Arc D'X by Steve Erickson
posted by hermitosis at 1:11 PM on November 14, 2006

I think this counts (warning: QuickTime, creepy).
posted by Scoo at 1:41 PM on November 14, 2006

What about Robert Cormier's The Cheese Stands Alone?
posted by adipocere at 1:42 PM on November 14, 2006

Uh, I mean I Am The Cheese. Duh.
posted by adipocere at 1:43 PM on November 14, 2006

12 Monkeys, but no La Jetée?
posted by Leon at 1:45 PM on November 14, 2006

I think Primer fits this bill. I think I need to watch it a few more times to make sure though.
posted by genefinder at 1:47 PM on November 14, 2006

One Hundred Years Of Solitude is actually a linear, beginning-to-end story. And by the same token, wouldn't Memento be a straight end-to-beginning story?

While since I've read it, but doesn't the opening scene also recur at the end? (It's linear otherwise, though, right?).

**Spoiler - Memento**





Also been a while since I've seen Memento, but again, doesn't the opening scene recur at the end, and isn't there an implication that the story could keep on re-curring?

I don't know, I'm probably talking nonsense, sorry...
posted by Infinite Jest at 2:23 PM on November 14, 2006

Second vote for Calvino.
posted by oxford blue at 2:30 PM on November 14, 2006

Too Many Ways To Be No. 1.
posted by russilwvong at 2:31 PM on November 14, 2006

Mammoth by John Varley loops back to the beginning. It also starts at chapter 5.
posted by Axandor at 3:48 PM on November 14, 2006

The truly excellent Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. Starts off with three deaths and returns to each of the scenes at the end.
posted by janecr at 4:21 PM on November 14, 2006

I'll throw in Dream Theater's album Octavarium. It has 8 songs, each in an ascending key. The first is in F, the second in G, all the way to the last song, which is again in F and ends with the same note that begins the first song. It's a cute musical trick, but I admit there's no real thematic coherence between the songs.

Dark Side of the Moon has the same "beginning and ending with the same sound" trick.


Spoilers ahoy!

— — —

While since I've read it, but doesn't the opening scene also recur at the end? (It's linear otherwise, though, right?).

The opening scene of Colonel Aureliano Buendía facing the firing squad recurs about a hundred pages in; however, the story is more or less linear as its title hints at. The end of the novel is hundred years after the start.

Also been a while since I've seen Memento, but again, doesn't the opening scene recur at the end, and isn't there an implication that the story could keep on re-curring?

The backwards-story is interlaced with an expository telephone call filmed in black and white. At the end of the movie the picture goes from black and white to color and this phone call becomes the last scene of the backwards-story.

The beginning of the movie, though, is Leonard shooting Teddy, and that does not recur. The structure is more like the past and the future meeting in the middle.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell does this, with leaps forward through time in each chapter and then back again by the end.

It's not really circular. It jumps forward thousands of years from the late 19th century through the present day to a post-apocalyptic future, and then yo-yos, returning to and concluding each story in reverse order. More... pyramid shaped, I would say.
posted by Khalad at 5:37 PM on November 14, 2006

The vast majority of the suggestions here do not fit what you are looking for. I tried to find the Borges short story where he talks about theoretical stories that would do this (it may be a nonofiction piece). So that doesn't answer your question either, but the imagined plots within the piece would.
posted by Falconetti at 7:49 PM on November 14, 2006

Oh, I tried to find the piece, but couldn't. I mean to include that bit of information.
posted by Falconetti at 7:51 PM on November 14, 2006

Well, there is always the 3rd movement of Beethoven's Sonata Op 109 (The movement is a set of variations and the final "variation" is just a re-statement of the theme).

Of course, you could just as well list every ABA form or sonata form musical composition, but the difference with the variations in Op. 109 is that in variation form you expect continuous development of the theme so suddenly arriving back at the original version at the end is a surprise and gives you that feeling, hey, we're back at the beginning--maybe this is just an infinite loop or something.
posted by flug at 8:22 PM on November 14, 2006

Jodorowsky & Moebius's The Incal does this, if I remember it correctly.
posted by misteraitch at 5:36 AM on November 15, 2006

Bret Easton Ellis' "The Rules of Attraction" begins and ends with a very similar, unfinished sentence, which I always took as him trying to comment on how the endless life of sex, drugs, etc his college protagonists go through is always the same.

Also, the new book "Ony Revolutions" by Mark Z. Danielewski, author of "House of Leaves," has a really weird setup and to explain it I'd best quote Wikipedia:

"Only Revolutions is printed in such a way that both covers appear to be the front of the book. The side with the green cover is the story as told by Sam, and the side with the gold cover is the story as told by Hailey. Every page contains upside-down text in the bottom margin, which is actually later pages of the opposite volume. For example, the first page of Hailey's story contains the last several lines of Sam's story, apparently upside down. When you reach that page while reading Sam's story, those lines will appear to be the only right-side-up text on the page. (Note: The publisher recommends the reading of eight pages from one story, then the other, and so on.)"
posted by GaelFC at 9:35 AM on November 15, 2006

The last question.

"This is by far my favorite story of all those I have written." --Isaac Asimov
posted by Anything at 11:18 AM on November 15, 2006

If I recall correctly* The Time Traveler's Wife would fit your criteria.

*It's been a while since I've read it.
posted by deborah at 8:20 PM on November 15, 2006