tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18599219922412739742024-02-08T08:00:19.487-06:00The Apple Core Going SepiaThis page is dedicated to the last paragraphs of texts. My hopes being that people won't have to type 100 different things into a search engine to find what they are looking for. If you have a last paragraph you'd like to be available to the community, please contact me at fairest @ gmail . comUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-3979983018242849582024-01-15T08:09:00.002-06:002024-01-15T08:09:16.653-06:00The Last Paragraph of D.H. Lawrence’s “The Rainbow”<br /><br />
The Last Paragraph of D.H. Lawrence’s <i>The Rainbow</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><br /></i>And the rainbow stood on earth. She knew that the sordid people who crept hard-scaled and separate on the face of the world’s corruption were living still, that the rainbow was arched in their blood and would quiver to life in their spirit, that they could cast off their horny covering of disintegration, that new, clean, naked bodies would issue to a new germination, to a new growth, rising to the light and the wind and the clean rain of heaven. She saw in the rainbow the earth’s new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven. <br /><br /><br />
<br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-81067229246504703602023-02-14T15:39:00.000-06:002023-02-14T15:39:02.164-06:00 The Last Paragraph of Testo Junkie by Paul Preciado<br /><br />
The Last Paragraph of <i>Testo Junkie </i>by Paul Preciado<div><br /><div><br /></div><div>As we walk away from your body, which has already begun to ferment among the flowers of Montparnasse, I promise you that we will come to rub our bodies against your grave, that we will come to leave traces of our bodily fluids on the slab; like a pack of mutating wolves, we will sleep on your earth, warm your bones; and like vampires, we will come to quench your thirst for sex, blood, and testosterone. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>(<i>translated from the French by Bruce Benderson</i>)<br /><br /><br /><br />
<br /><br /><br /><br /></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-18551199875611109232022-11-29T20:39:00.003-06:002022-11-29T20:40:34.946-06:00The last page of Triste Tropiques by Claude Lévi Strauss
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The last page of <i>Triste Tropiques</i> by Claude Lévi
Strauss</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Man is not alone in the universe, any more than the
individual is alone in the group, or any one society alone among other
societies. Even if the rainbow of human cultures should go down for ever
into the abyss which we are so insanely creating, there will still remain
open to us provided we are alive and the world is in existence a precarious arch
that points towards the inaccessible. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The road which it indicates to us is one that leads directly
away from our present serfdom: and even if we cannot set off along it,
merely to contemplate it will procure us the only grace that we know how
to deserve. The grace to call a halt, that is to say: to check the impulse
which prompts Man always to block up, one after another, such fissures as
may be open in the blank wall of necessity and to round off his
achievement by slamming shut the doors of his own prison. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is the grace for which every society longs,
irrespective of its beliefs, its political regime, its level of civilization.
It stands, in every case, for leisure, and recreation, and freedom, and
peace of body and mind. On this opportunity, this chance of for once
detaching oneself from the implacable process, life itself depends.
Farewell to savages, then, farewell to journeying!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And instead, during the brief intervals in which humanity
can bear to interrupt its hive-like labors, let us grasp the essence of
what our species has been and still is, beyond thought and beneath
society: an essence that may be vouchsafed to us in a mineral more beautiful
than any work of Man; in the scent, more subtly evolved than our
books, that lingers in the heart of a lily; or in the blink of an eye,
heavy with patience, serenity, and mutual forgiveness, that sometimes,
through an involuntary understanding, one can exchange with a cat. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(Contributed by Elizabeth Ames) <br /></span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-83906828324499992752015-11-08T10:35:00.000-06:002015-11-08T10:35:05.594-06:00The Last Paragraph of Marguerite Young's Miss MacIntosh, My Darling<br />
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The Last Paragraph of Marguerite Young's Miss MacIntosh, My Darling<em></em><br />
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She would hang a sign in the restaurant window---Owt to luntsch. Bee bak in a whale. For she could not spell either.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-66293989156416656222015-11-08T10:32:00.002-06:002015-11-08T10:32:55.013-06:00 The Last Line of Dodie Bellamy's Pink Steam<br />
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The Last Line of Dodie Bellamy's Pink Steam<em></em><br />
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Boy was I in for a big surprise....<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-20840745623572001342015-11-08T10:30:00.000-06:002015-11-08T10:30:01.392-06:00 The Last Lines of Janet Flanner's The Cubical City<br />
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The Last Lines of Janet Flanner's The Cubical City<em></em><br />
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Slowly Delia closed her eyes, her head sightless, erect, and yellow, holding its distance from the shadows that spread around her in her chair.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-82991026124066281992015-11-08T10:27:00.002-06:002015-11-08T10:27:58.843-06:00 The Last Paragraph of Iris Murdoch's A Severed Head<br />
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The Last Paragraph of Iris Murdoch's A Severed Head<em></em><br />
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I gave her back the bright light of the smile, now softening at last out of irony. "So must you, my dear!"<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-54842023413383921732015-11-08T10:25:00.003-06:002015-11-08T10:25:56.511-06:00 The Last Paragraph of David Shield's How Literature Saved My Life<br />
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The Last Paragraph of David Shield's How Literature Saved My Life<em></em><br />
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I wanted Literature to assuage human loneliness, but nothing can assuage human loneliness. Literature doesn't lie about this---which is what makes it essential.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-9268761132391692942015-09-13T10:28:00.000-05:002015-09-13T10:28:18.156-05:00 The Last Lines of Romeo and Juliet<br />
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The Last Lines of Romeo and Juliet<br />
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For never was a story of more woe<br />
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-45284526798276117252015-09-13T10:19:00.000-05:002015-09-13T10:19:23.595-05:00The Last Paragraph of Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych<br />
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The Last Paragraph of Leo Tolstoy's <em></em><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The Death of Ivan Ilych</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of a sigh, stretched out, and died.</span><br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-29057158005824136262015-09-13T10:16:00.004-05:002015-09-13T10:17:59.319-05:00The Last Paragraph of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I’ll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my mind inappropriately, there will be the same wall between my soul’s holy of holies and other people, even my wife, I’ll accuse her in the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I’ll fail in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray—but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!</span><br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-79431555699779385392015-07-16T12:55:00.003-05:002015-07-16T12:55:49.080-05:00The Last Paragraph of Philip Larkin's A Girl in Winter<br />
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The Last Paragraph of Philip Larkin's <i>A Girl in Winter</i><em></em><br />
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Yet their passage was not saddening. Unsatisfied dreams rose and fell about them, crying out against their implacability, but in the end glad that such order, such destiny, existed. Against this knowledge, the heart, the will, and all that made for protest, could at last sleep.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-68593124679318443242015-07-16T12:54:00.000-05:002015-07-16T12:54:16.179-05:00 The Last Paragraph of Go Ask Alice<br />
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The Last Paragraph of <i>Go Ask Alice</i><em></em><br />
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See ya.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-14750116888507102522014-02-21T12:51:00.000-06:002014-02-21T12:51:31.473-06:00The Last Paragraph of Pansy Sonata by Kenneth Weyerhaeuser<br />
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The Last Paragraph of Kenneth Weyerhaeuser's <em>Pansy Sonata</em>
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"It's a surge---a surge of feelings."<br />
"Surge all you want, old girl," Hugo grinned. "You've got my permission."
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-18882158606001736602014-02-21T12:45:00.002-06:002015-07-16T12:52:14.336-05:00The Last Paragraph of Shelia Heti's How Should A Person Be?<br />
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The Last Paragraph of Shelia Heti's <em>How Should A Person Be?</em>
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And so they were.
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-80565125401935414242014-02-16T17:42:00.000-06:002014-02-16T17:45:44.950-06:00The Last Stanza of the First Canto of Lord Bryon's Don Juan<br />
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The Last Stanza of the First Canto of Lord Bryon's <em>Don Juan </em>
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'Go, little book, from this my solitude!<br />
I cast thee on the waters, go thy ways!<br />
And if, as I believe, thy vein be good,<br />
The world will find thee after many days.'<br />
When Southey's read, and Wordsworth understood,<br />
I can't help putting in my claim to praise---<br />
The four first rhymes are Southey's every line:<br />
For God's sake, reader! take them not for mine.
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-5897030922901464492014-01-30T19:10:00.002-06:002014-01-30T19:10:52.393-06:00The Last Paragraph Of The First Part of Don Quixote<br><br>
The Last Paragraph Of The First Part of <em>Don Quixote</em>
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"That may well be," responded the canon, "but by the orders I received, I do not remember seeing it. And even if I concede that it is there, I am not therefore obliged to believe the histories of so many Amadises, or those of that throng of knights about whom they tell us stories, nor is it reasonable for an honorable man like your grace, possessed of your qualities and fine understanding, to accept as true the countless absurd exaggerations that are written in those nonsensical books of chivalry."
<br><br><br><br>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-15467861735204516182014-01-30T19:05:00.000-06:002014-01-30T19:11:34.194-06:00The Last Paragraph of Jack Kerouac's On the Road<br><br>
The Last Paragraph of Jack Kerouac's <em>On the Road</em>
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So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.
<br><br><br><br>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-55637197446046703472014-01-26T21:38:00.001-06:002014-01-30T19:11:56.811-06:00The Last Paragraph of Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers<br><br>
The Last Paragraph of Rachel Kushner's <em>The Flamethrowers </em>
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Leave, with no answer. Move on to the next question.
<br><br><br><br>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-69700575846331797282014-01-23T08:18:00.002-06:002014-01-30T19:12:48.751-06:00The Last Paragraph of Bhagavad-Gita As It Is<br><br>
The Last Paragraph of <em>Bhagavad-Gita As It Is</em>
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The living entity in his original position is pure spirit. He is just like an atomic particle of the Supreme Spirit. Thus Lord Krsna may be compared to the sun, and the living entities to sunshine. Because the living entities are the marginal energy of Krsna, they have a tendency to be in contact wither with the material energy or with the spiritual energy. In other words, the living entity is situated between the two energies of the Lord, and because he belongs to the superior energy of the Lord, he has a particle of independence. By proper use of that independence he comes under the direct order of Krsna. Thus he attains his normal condition in the pleasure-giving potency.
<br><br><br><br>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-9353984859515494122014-01-17T11:33:00.004-06:002014-01-30T19:13:06.261-06:00The last paragraphs of Bret Easton Ellis' Glamorama<br><br>
The Last Paragraphs of Brett Easton Ellis' <em>Glamorama</em>
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I'm drinking a glass of water in the empty hotel bar at the<a href="http://www.dorchestercollection.com/en/milan/hotel-principe-di-savoia"> Principe di Savoia </a>and staring at the mural behind the bar and in the mural there is a giant mountain, a vast field spread out below it where villagers are celebrating in a field of long grass that blankets the mountain dotted with tall white flowers, and in the sky above the mountain it's morning and the sun is spreading itself across the mural's frame, burning over the small cliffs and the low-hanging clouds that encircle the mountain's peak, and a bridge strung across a pass through the mountain will take you to any point beyond that you need to arrive at, because behind that mountain is a highway and along that highway are billboards with answers on them -- who, what, where, when, why -- and I'm falling forward but also moving up toward the mountain, my shadow looming against its jagged peaks, rising up, a fiery wind propelling me, and soon it's night and stars hang in the sky above the mountain, revolving as they burn.
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The stars are real.
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The future is that mountain.
<br><br><br><br>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-50638763105549940442014-01-16T00:43:00.001-06:002014-01-30T19:13:23.374-06:00The Last Paragraph of John Gardner's Grendel<br><br>
The Last Paragraph of John Gardner's <em>Grendel</em>
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Again sight clears. I am slick with blood. I discover I no longer feel pain. Animals gather around me, enemies of old, to watch me die. I give them what I hope will appear a sheepish smile. My heart booms terror. Will the last of my life slide out if I let out breath? They watch with mindless, indifferent eyes, as calm and midnight black as the chasm below me.
Is it joy I feel?
They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction.
"Poor Grendel's had an accident," I whisper. "So may you all."
<br><br><br><br>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-57472268576584011662014-01-16T00:41:00.002-06:002014-01-16T00:44:35.062-06:00The Last Paragraph of William Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury<br><br>
The Last Paragraph of William Faulkner's <em>The Sound and the Fury</em>
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Ben's voice roared and roared. Queenie moved again, her feet began to clop-clop steadily again, and at once Ben hushed. Luster looked quickly back over his shoulder, then he drove on. The broken flower drooped over Ben's fist and his eyes were empty and blue and serene again as cornice and facade flowed smoothly once more from left to right, post to tree, window and doorway and signboard each in its ordered place.
<br><br><br><br>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-43857636448209709782008-07-09T10:37:00.000-05:002014-12-30T17:22:58.578-06:00The Last Paragraph of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species<br />
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The Last Paragraph of Charles Darwin's <em>On the Origin of Species</em>
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Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object of which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1859921992241273974.post-24758963373769224582008-02-12T21:11:00.001-06:002008-02-12T21:12:55.598-06:00The Last Paragraph of Rob Sheffield's Love Is a Mix Tape<br><br><br />The Last Paragraph of Rob Sheffield's <em>Love Is a Mix Tape</em><br /><br /><br /><br />What is love? Great minds have been grappling with this question through the ages, and in the modern era, they have come up with many different answers. According to the Western philosopher Pat Benetar, love is a battlefield. Her paisan Frank Sinatra would add the corollary that love is a tender trap. The stoner kids who spent the summer of 1978 looking cool on the hoods of their Trans Ams in the Pierce Elementary School parking lot used to scare us little kids by blasting the Sweet hit "Love is Like Oxygen"—you get too much, you get too high, not enough and you're gonna die. Love hurts. Love stinks. Love bites, love bleeds, love is the drug. The troubadours of our times all agree: They want to know what love is, and they want you to show them.<br /><br /><br />But the answer is simple. Love is a mix tape.<br /><br><br><br><br>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com