some last words on last words
In the years since Looking for Alaska was published, I have learned many last words. Sometimes readers share with me the last words of their family members or friends. (One grandfather told his grandson: “There’s a pot of coffee on,” while dying of a massive heart attack.) And I often hear of new last words from prominent people—Steve Jobs, for instance, said, “Oh wow oh wow oh wow.”
My interest in last words began as a child when I learned the final words of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, respectively the second and third
presidents of the United States. Adams’s mind turned to his longtime political rival at the end. He said, “Thomas Jefferson still survives.” But in fact, Jefferson had died a few hours earlier on the same day, July 4th, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s last words were, “Is it the fourth?”
Many of my favorite last words don’t appear in the novel. Emily Dickinson said, “I must go in; the fog is rising.” O. Henry said, “Turn up the lights. I don’t want to go home in the dark.” The economist John
Maynard Keynes said, “I wish I’d drunk more champagne.” Kafka begged for a morphine overdose: “Kill me, or else you are a murderer.” And Oscar Wilde, dying in a garishly decorated hotel room, famously said, “Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.” But now I have gotten to tell you about them anyway. If you’re curious to learn (far, far) more last words, I recommend Last Words of Notable People by William B. Brahms.
Last words are notoriously unreliable. Witnesses are emotional; time gets conflated; and the speaker isn’t around to clear up ambiguity. (In some
cases, we know the stories are untrue: Oscar Wilde’s “last words,” for instance, were spoken months before he actually died.)
“How will I ever get out of this labyrinth” were probably not Gabriel García-Márquez’s last words (although he did say them). His last words are also recorded as, “Jose, bring the baggage. They do not want us here.” And François Rabelais is credited with no fewer than four dying declarations. In addition to seeking the Great Perhaps, Rabelais may also have said 1. “I am greasing my boots for the last journey” (after receiving extreme unction rites), 2. “Bring down the curtain; the farce is played out,” or 3. Beati qui in Domino moriuntur. (He supposedly said this while pulling a cloak over himself, which is a joke, but because it is a Latin joke, it is rarely quoted
outside of Latin conventions.)
I’m often asked what I want my own last words to be. I believed for many years that the worst possible last words are “I love you.” They’re cliché, unmemorable, and totally unfunny. If you must express affection, I
always felt, you should do it like W. C. Fields, whose last words were, “God damn the whole world and everything in it but you, Carlotta.” (These are especially interesting last words when you consider that Fields’s wife was named Hattie. Carlotta was his mistress.) But in truth I do not hope to be clever or memorable in my dying declarations, although I do hope to escape the fate of the writer Paul Claudel, whose last words were, “Doctor, do you think it was the sausage?” It may be cliché and unmemorable, but I would
be very grateful indeed if my last words were of love to those with whom I have shared this brief and wondrous flicker of life.
