On Inferred Narratives of the Last Word in Novels

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1968 

I was reading the ending of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and found it a highly unusual occurrence that the novel ended on its single-word title.  It doesn't seem to happen very often at all (though it also occurs in Toni Morrison's Beloved).  And so I set to check out the last words of some significant works of fiction that are on the shelves here at home and see what these books ended on, and to give this project an hour of search.  Nothing comes very close to Nabokov, though Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun ends with "gun", and Italo Calvino's  If on a Winter's Night ends with the entire title, along with the author's name: "Just a moment, I’ve almost finished If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino.” (Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49" ends with the title of the book, as well). But on my hour's journey into ending, that was about it.  It all seems a little useless, except that there were a few nice bits that broke away from this time-hole.

First, when you read the words and their books, they sorta/maybe suggest the essence of what came before--I think if you squint your eyes a little and connect the last word to the title, the word occasionally feels like a micro-summation.  Second, I found that when taken together and in order, the last word of each of the short stories in the beautiful Jorge Luis Borges' Ficciones (edited by Kerrigan for Grove Press in 1962 with a number of different translators) presents themselves as not-bad found poetry/musical word arrangement. Third, it might be a fun idea to set up a chess set of pieces composed on the one side by Last Words in Great Fiction and on the other the Last Words in Famous Scientific Papers. 

Another interesting bit is a challenge to write a paragraph using the following last word from the accompanying list of novels (you can have your choice of punctuation and prepositions and whatever else is necessary).  Dr. Seuss managed to create a great classic with a 236-word allowance from his publisher and somehow managed to write The Cat in the Hat, so there is a precedence for such things.  Taken as a random group, the words aren't necessarily a collection of momento mori, but could make a nice beginning for something. 

        Found Poetry in the Last Word of the Short Stories in Borges' Ficciones:

Burial memempschosis

counsel him,

chance ruins, hope, heart

congestion me foreseen,

fired morning evil,

man

infastructure

plain.

                      --I added punctuation and the spacing.

 

The Last Word in 55 Novels:

Again	The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Aitches	Road to Wigan Pier
Bloom	Watership Down
Bombs	Homage to Catalonia
Both	End of the Affair
Brother	1984
Combustion	The Loved One
Days	Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Distance	Frankenstein
Distance	Lord of the Flies
Earth	One Hundred Years of Solitude
Earth	Wuthering Heights
Ended	Crime and Punishment
Exercation	The Stranger
Feet	Great Wall of China
Gun	Johnny Got His Gun
Guys	Of Mice and Men
Ha!	The Tin Drum
Happy	A Moveable Feast
Hate	The Stranger
Him	Continental Op
Honor	Madame Bovary
Hotel	Age of Innosence
In	Maltese Falcon
It	Brokeback Mountain
Know	A Tale of Two Cities
Life	A Good Man is Hard to Find
Life	Auto-Da-Fe
Lived	Moll Flanders
Mediterranean	A Room with a View
Moby Dick	Orphan
Morning	To Kill a Mockingbird
Multiply	God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Off	Catch-22
Past	Great Gatsby
Place	The Sound and the Fury
Play	The House at Pooh Corner
Played	The Recognitions
Poo-tee-weet?	Slaughterhouse Five
Ravine	Under the Volcano
Restored	Claudius the God
Room	Bell Jar
Seen	Speak, Memory
Shining	Of Human Bondage
Smiled	The Good Earth
So	The Sun Also Rises
Them	The Long Goodbye
Them	Charlotte's Web
There	Cat's Cradle
This	Little Women
Time	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Union	Emma
Way	Paradise Lost
Which	Animal Farm
Yours	Breakfast of Champions

Comments

[Jeffrey Shallit]

Ruth Rendell's novel, Simisola, does not have that as the last word, but it is in the last line of the novel, which is also the first time the word appears in the novel.