Last Line Quiz--Post Script

[Spoiler warning: last lines of several novels are revealed in this posting.]

Last week's quiz had a few entries that troubled me. There were several instances when it felt unfair--arbitrary, really--to post only the very last sentence when I knew that the artistry of the novel's closing occured in the last sentence or two.

I've already published the quiz results, so I can now restore one or two of the entries to the longer, more enjoyable closings I would like to have posted:

      So [said the doctor]. Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes?
      --Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint

      But, I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.
      --William Goldman, The Princess Bride

      "Poor Grendel's had an accident," I whisper. "So may you all."
      --John Gardner, Grendel

There is one other quiz entry that I should amend. I included the unforgettable concusion to A Clockwork Orange as follows:

      I was cured all right.
      --Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

Unforgettable, that is, to American audiences of my generation as well as fans of Stanley Kubrick's 1971 cinematic adaptation of the novel. If you buy the version widely available today you will discover that the novel includes a final chapter that was excluded from the original American version for years, much to the dissatisfaction of Anthony Burgess, though he was powerless to prevent it at the time.

The novel as he'd intended it was divided into three parts, each consisting of seven chapters. The version published in the U.S. ended with Chapter 6 of Part Three and the memorable moment with Alex in the hospital listening once again to Beethoven and remarking ironically, "I was cured all right." That was good enough for the American publishers who concluded that their audiences wouldn't appreciate Burgess's final plot twist and moral statement so they excised it.

But now the novel is complete as Burgess intended it--though it is still a burden to him, believing as he does that though it is one of his lesser works, it is the one he is destined to be remembered for. And as the novel has been restored, so must my last line entry. Here then, is the line as I should have included it in my quiz:

      And all that cal.
      --Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

Out of context, it is not nearly as satisfying, is it?