Finest closing in literature

mind_philip

saw the light
These 'finest'/'finer' things are all a little bit Borgesian, but I couldn't resist. My personal favorite is from Richard Ford's 'Independence Day':

"And I am in the crowd just as the drums are passing—always the last in line—their boom-boom-booming in my ears and all around. I see the sun above the street, breathe in the day’s rich, warm smell. Someone calls out, ‘Clear a path, make room, make room, please!’ The trumpets go again. My heartbeat quickens. I feel the push, pull, the weave and sway of others."

Obviously a last line is more in cahoots with the bulk of what has come before than a first line, but if you haven't read it, trust me when I say that's a pretty much beat-perfect closing to my favorite novel of the 90s.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Just to go with what I said in the best first line thread it seems a shame to miss out

"It is a far far better thing that I do now... etc"
I wonder how many other books have such legendary first and last lines?
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Just to go with what I said in the best first line thread it seems a shame to miss out


I wonder how many other books have such legendary first and last lines?
Again from the first line thread, The Communist Manifesto:
"A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of Communism" though to "Workers of the world, unite!"
 

CHAOTROPIC

on account
For a decade, for me, it's James Joyce, 'Finnegans Wake', last page (& a bit):

I'll slip away before they're up. They'll never see.
Nor know. Nor miss me. And it's old and old it's sad and old it's
sad and weary I go back to you, my cold father, my cold mad
father, my cold mad feary father, till the near sight of the mere
size of him, the moyles and moyles of it, moananoaning, makes me
seasilt saltsick and I rush, my only, into your arms. I see them
rising! Save me from those therrble prongs! Two more. Onetwo
moremens more. So. Avelaval. My leaves have drifted from me.
All. But one clings still. I'll bear it on me. To remind me of. Lff!
So soft this morning, ours. Yes. Carry me along, taddy, like you
done through the toy fair! If I seen him bearing down on me now
under whitespread wings like he'd come from Arkangels, I sink
I'd die down over his feet, humbly dumbly, only to washup. Yes,
tid. There's where. First. We pass through grass behush the bush
to. Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. Us
then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thous-
endsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a
long the
 

CHAOTROPIC

on account
(It's not just a last line, sure, but it's such a rush of words it's kindof hard to nip off just the tip. 'Pologies!!)
 

bruno

est malade
the last few lines of robert walser's el paseo (the walk?) are incredibly poignant, one of the most memorable endings to me at least.

i lost the book, sorry
 

ripley

Well-known member
In the rush of words vein... after hundreds of pages of whimsical dithering about the last 5 pages of the book spin into a complete tornado of action, ending with:

But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying billows they almost touched;- at that instant, a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.
 
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