It's not as if the novel really moves towards a traditional ending, anyway. There are three fragments, two relatively short ones that fit somewhere not long after the last completed chapter, and then a long one, the "Oklahoma Circus", which is set later and makes up the better part of what would've been the final chapter, though it's unfinished.

But since the book's strength lies more in individual scenes - including some in those fragments - than in the overarching plot anyway, it didn't bother me much.

I don't know, I really do wonder what I'd have thought about it if I'd seen Karl as the child he is from the start, instead of thinking of him as a childish and immature young man.