Not Fade Away

Yesterday I mentioned some of my favorite openings to novels and short stories, and then asked what about endings? If you google 'first lines of novels' all sorts of things, from quizzes to quote collections, pop-up. Not much turns up for last lines though.

One last line - or rather last paragraph - did jump into my head:

"A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

I'm not a great admirer of James Joyce; having read A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man and Dubliners I don't have any desire to read more Joyce. That being said, I think his short story The Dead*, which the above passage concludes, is brilliant. It's certainly makes my list of favorite short stories.**

*I also love the film version of The Dead; which I think was John Huston's last film.

**I am a compulsive list maker. An on-the-spot list of Dan's favorite short stories (in no particular order):

The Pugilist At Rest - Thom Jones
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber - Ernest Hemingway
The Dead - James Joyce
The Big Knockover - Dashiell Hammett
But Loyal To His Own - David Drake