Exposition and its Ills

I finished the second third of what I am beginning to consider the abominable Foundation trilogy, and its ending, if possible, was worse than the rest of the book. Not only does the villain explain himself, his plan and his Scooby Doo-esque blunder in the final pages of the story, but he prefaces it by explaining that his loquaciousness stems from his desire to be understood. Hackneyed, trite, cliche. It's like Asimov isn't even trying.

Reading through the Mule's soliloquy I realized just how weak that kind of exposition is. At first I didn't want to call it exposition; I thought it was exposition's opposite, because it came at the end of the story rather than at its usual spot in the beginning, but that's not the case at all. It is exposition, it's just ending exposition for people like my dad who were asleep during the entire story (more common in movies; difficult, but not impossible to do while reading a book) or true and unredeemable idiots. Or perhaps Asimov thought the story was so baffling that the rear exposition was necessary to girder the story from descending in to utter incomprehensibility, but I doubt it.

My incredibly biased assumption is that Asimov's motive is buried in the motive of his character: he just wants to be understood. Rather than seeing this as the pitiful cry for recognition that it is in the story, I see it as the arrogant author not trusting that his readers understood the subtle nuances and brilliant turns of his craftily constructed plot. And so the exposition comes tumbling out, detail by excruciating detail forcing the reader to relive what was so painful to experience in the first place.

It's perfect crime syndrome: a brilliantly conceived crime that is perfectly executed and no one knows how it was pulled off, so it doesn't receive the attention its creator feels it deserves. This forces the attention-starved criminal to confess, because the recognition of her brilliance is more important than fruits of the crime itself. Asimov, in his own way, wants the recognition for his accomplishments. What's tiresome is that the accomplishments aren't deserving of our time or our attention. The plot is none too craftily structured and the reveal at the end of the story is hardly surprising or in need of explanation to anyone who'd been reading the story. It is yet one more nail in Asimov's fictional coffin. Thankfully, there is but one hurdle left to clear before I never have to read Asimov again.