"The absence of answers or determinate
meanings" is exactly the set of "qualities that make a passage or a
work literary." Literary works have no single meaning, whatever the
author intended. Indeed, Garber points out, "one of the key features
of what might be called the literary unconscious is a tendency on the
part of the text to outwit or to confound the activity of closing or
ending."
-- Marjorie Garber. quoted in review of her book, Use and Abuse of Literature,
review by Set Lerer, San Francisco Chronicle (03/27/11).