The Last Word: A story ends

To find a way to end with a flourish, a gasp, a stirring thought that endures beyond the moment itself — that’s an art.

Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds.

The rest is silence, so let us hope to bring forth a surge of eloquence as we take our final breaths in this world. Such is life? Ned Kelly knew how to exit in style, linguistically at least.

Endings are tough. To find a way to end with a flourish, a gasp, a stirring thought that endures beyond the moment itself — that’s an art in ­itself, whether we’re talking about the end of a life or a book or, indeed, the inside back cover of a newspaper. Timing is important, too: to outstay a welcome is to dilute an ending, no matter how well crafted.

The title of this column, The Last Word, brings with it pressure to perform. It’s not enough to drift off into nothingness. The editor won’t allow us to fade to black. We must conjure an ending that offers a sense of resolution and completeness. It must justify everything that has come before and leave you, the reader, fulfilled. Hence the pressure.

Karl Marx grumbled: “Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough.” I prefer Ibsen’s version, having just been told that his health was improving: “Tvertimod” (On the contrary). On the big screen, most of us know about Rosebud, but one of my favourite moments is the way Quentin Tarantino wraps up Inglourious Basterds, with Brad Pitt speaking straight to the camera, knife in hand: “I think this might just be my masterpiece.”

With one word, “yes”, James Joyce leaves the reader with a burst of euphoria at the end of Ulysses — more conclusive than the last words of Finnegans Wake, which send us right back to the start, baffled evermore.

All our stories end eventually. As I step away from this fine newspaper, my home for the past two decades, it feels like a special privilege to look back on a storyline that has taken me from Barcaldine to Barangaroo, Fraser Island to Fannie Bay. The time has come for an ending, then for new beginnings.

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