By arnold

March 31, 2008 8:17 AM | Link to this

This poem, Midnight’s Children, rather reminded me of the poem Invictus. “Yes, they will trample me underfoot, the numbers marching one two three, four hundred million five hundred six, reducing me to specks of voiceless dust, just as, in all good time, they will trample my son who is not my son, and his son who will not be his, and his who will not be his, until the thousand and first generation, until a thousand and one midnights have bestowed their terrible gifts and a thousand and one children have died, because it is the privilege and the curse of midnight’s children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace.” –Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1981)

By Jeff

March 31, 2008 8:43 AM | Link to this

Lots of classics there, lots of rather obscure works. Mostly good ones, I’ll grant.

I’ve still seen other last lines in other classic works (A Separate Peace comes to mind) and other more recent somewhat-pop fiction that I enjoy more. (Most of the Reacher series when Lee Child is writing in first person, some of Jeremy Robinson’s - The Didymus Contingency comes to mind - even a couple of the Dale Brown books.)

I doubt they could ever make a list of this, but what about last chapters or last scenes?

BTW: Of classic works that I have read/ know much about, I COMPLETELY agree that Gatsby should rank in the top 3 (their #3), though I probably would have put it as the best.

By TuckerDad

March 31, 2008 8:51 AM | Link to this

The last line of All the King’s Men is definitely memorable. I’ve always loved the last line of V.S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street.

“I left them all and walked briskly towards the aeroplane, not looking back, looking only at my shadow before me, a dancing dwarf on the tarmac.”

By Brian Gross

March 31, 2008 8:59 AM | Link to this

The last line of “1984”….simple, yet horrifying.

By Tim C

March 31, 2008 9:17 AM | Link to this

I’ll submit the last line from Raymond Chandler’s “Farewell, My Lovely”, which has stuck with me ever since I first read it: I rode the elevator down to the ground floor and walked out onto the steps of the city hall. It was a cool day and clear, and you could see a long way. But not as far a Velma had gone.

By Tom

March 31, 2008 10:04 AM | Link to this

I agree with Tim C about Chandler, though I’d pick the last line of “The Big Sleep.”

Also the last line of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: “In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”

By Radcliff Wannabe

March 31, 2008 10:35 AM | Link to this

The best last line: “It’s the stuff dreams are made of”.

(maltese falcon. It’s the best last line because everyone thinks they’re a player and everyone will strive for glory in some self-righteous pitiable stupor of deduced entitlement. That’s why man stinks.)

By Matt

March 31, 2008 11:06 AM | Link to this

I agree with Brian about “1984.” I was going to submit it myself, but he beat me to it.

I also like the last line of Pet Semetary by Stephen King. I know the line is “Darling.” followed by a description of the tone of voice, but I dont want to misquote and do injustice to the line.

By Gilgamesh

March 31, 2008 11:10 AM | Link to this

Actually, the last line in maltese falcon is, “Huh?” which is also why man stinks.

By Kate

March 31, 2008 11:15 AM | Link to this

Graham Greene always gets to me, so I loved the last line from “The Quiet American” that was on the list: Everything had gone right with me since he had died, but how I wished there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry.

I found it interesting that “One Hundred Years of Solitude” which is often quoted as having the best opening line, also is honored with having the best last line. The stuff of genius.

By Maria

March 31, 2008 11:43 AM | Link to this

Oh wow — this list made my day.

The whole last paragraph of James Joyce’s “The Dead” takes my breath away. It’s just perfect. I always recommend “The Dead” to people who kinda sorta want to get into Joyce but don’t know where to start.

I get the final lines of Absalom, Absalom! in my head the way some people get songs stuck in their heads. For reference, Quentin Compson (my literary boyfriend) is trying to convince himself that he doesn’t hate the South, and its whole dark history that he has just spent the novel recounting to his roommate. Love that book. It often haunts me on gloomy days like today.

By geekboy

March 31, 2008 11:51 AM | Link to this

I liked the last line of Bukowski’s Post Office (won the Pulitzer Prize).

The novel is a semi-bio on his drunken life and his experiences working at the US Post Office in LA. The last line is something like … “After 12 years of slogging through misery I sat down and wrote a book. You just read it.”

By Coincidently Oxbow

March 31, 2008 11:51 AM | Link to this

I dont think man stinks. Neither could the author who wrote this candidate for the best last line most likely to ruin lives in a docu-drama screen play adapted from the one act, two man, three ring circus of dog-and-ponyism: “..and they lived happily ever after…”

By BPJ

March 31, 2008 12:09 PM | Link to this

It’s a good list; I have a few nominees. I was going to list Absalom, Absalom!, which the above poster mentions. I find its closing, with Quentin saying into “the cold New England dark…I don’t hate it [the South]! I don’t!” more memorable than the last line of *As I Lay Dying (which is a bit of a punch line).

The list picked the obvious Updike choice, from Rabbit, Run; my favorite is the ending of The Centaur. The ending of In the Beauty of the Lilies [“The children.”]is also quite fine; each of the four sections of that novel ends with a two-word phrase which sums up that section.

An especially smart ending is in Phillip Lodge’s Changing Places, a comic novel about two American & British academics who participate in an exchange program. The last chapter is in the form of a film script, and the characters are discussing the differences in how a novel or a film can end: in the latter, you can feel that the pages are running out, while a film can surprise us since we don’t normally know the running time…and you’ll have to read the book to see how that ends.

My favorite ending might be to The Name of the Rose. Technically the last line is in Latin, which might disqualify it from this list, but it’s the entire last page which is so eloquent & memorable.

When I’m at home and have access to my bookshelves, I’ll try to post some of these endings.

By BPJ

March 31, 2008 12:18 PM | Link to this

oops! Sorry, in discussing Changing Places, I meant to say in the former, i.e., a novel, you can sense when the pages are running out (“the telltale compression of the pages”, as Lodge quotes Austen).

By Kate

March 31, 2008 12:24 PM | Link to this

Wow, Maria..Quentin Compson as your literary boyfriend!!! The tortured suicidal type, hmmmm… :)

(Btw, this would be a good topic, Phil….literary crushes)

By Baboo

March 31, 2008 3:17 PM | Link to this

the last line (not sentence) of Ulysses: “…and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.” A great “Amen” to life and love.