Last Words

A short book about different practices for acknowledging death in the different cultures and religions currently in New Zealand. While it is designed for use by nurses and doctors, chaplains, funeral directors, police, hospice workers and community workers, the book is also intended for general readers.

Whether Goethe actually cried "More light!" on his deathbed, or whether Conrad Hilton checked out of this world after uttering "Leave the shower curtain on the inside of the tub," last words, regardless of authenticity, have long captured the imagination of Western society. In this playfully serious investigation based on factual accounts, anecdotes, literary works, and films, Karl Guthke explores the cultural importance of those words spoken at the border between this world and the next. The exit lines of both famous and ordinary people embody for us a sense of drama and truthfulness and reveal much about our thoughts on living and dying. Why this interest in last words? Presenting statements from such figures as Socrates, Nathan Hale, Marie Antoinette, and Oscar Wilde ("I am dying as I have lived, beyond my means"), Guthke examines our fascination in terms of our need for closure, our desire for immortality, and our attraction to the mystique of death scenes. The author considers both authentic and invented final statements as he looks at the formation of symbols and legends and their function in our culture. Last words, handed down from generation to generation like cultural heirlooms, have a good chance of surviving in our collective memory. They are shown to epitomize a life, convey a sense of irony, or play to an audience, as in the case of the assassinated Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, who is said to have died imploring journalists: "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something." Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A lighthearted look at the stories behind legendary last words—from heartwarming tales of final moments to hilarious last laughs. Last words are never easy—since, let’s face it, they’re mostly spoken by people in the worst health of their lives. But even if they aren’t eloquent, they can offer a glimpse into the speaker’s true self. Some are clever, others are loving, heartbreaking, or occasionally shocking. In Any Last Words?, Joseph Hayden explores the last words of more than two hundred actors, athletes, writers, musicians, politicians, intellectuals, criminals, and more. What was the last thing Bogart said to Bacall? What did Marie Antoinette say to her executioner? What were the final thoughts of great thinkers like Charles Darwin and Marie Curie? Or baseball legends like Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle? Joseph Hayden reveals all these stories and much more in a book that you’ll wish would never end.

The Last Word investigates the debased art of eulogy. Through insightful, surprisingly playful readings of famous eulogies (from a scene in Love Actually to Jacques Derrida’s heart-rending essays on the deaths of his peers), Cooper argues against the socially sanctioned desire to avoid thinking about death that results in clichéd memorials, honoring neither the living nor the dead.

Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs is the most intimate book ever written by William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch and one of the most celebrated literary outlaws of our time. Laid out as diary entries of the last nine months of Burroughs's life, Last Words spans the realms of cultural criticism, personal memoir, and fiction. Classic Burroughs concerns -- literature, U.S. drug policy, the state of humanity, his love for his cats -- permeate the book. Most significantly, Last Words contains some of the most personal work Burroughs has ever written, a final reckoning with his life and regrets, and his reflections on the deaths of his friends Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary. It is a poignant portrait of the man, his life, and his creative process -- one that never quit, not even in the shadow of death.

Keep the last words of your favorite Shakespearean heroes and heroines close to your heart with this delightfully grim, bite-size quote book. A tiny collection of the Bard’s best lines on dying, leaving, or just getting offstage! When it comes to exit lines, you can’t beat the Bard himself. From the obvious—“O, I am slain” (Polonius, Hamlet)—to the sentimental—“Thus with a kiss I die” (Romeo, Romeo and Juliet)—to the vengeful—“I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you” (Malvolio, Twelfth Night)—Shakespeare gave every character on his stage a send-off to be remembered. This tiny book collects the best final quips, dying words, and exit lines from Shakespeare’s spectacular oeuvre. It’s the perfect gift for Shakespeare fans, theater students, or anyone who’s ever wanted to know what to say before exiting, pursued by a bear.

Some beg for forgiveness. Others claim innocence. At least three cheer for their favorite football teams. Death waits for us all, but only those sentenced to death know the day and the hour—and only they can be sure that their last words will be recorded for posterity. Last Words of the Executed presents an oral history of American capital punishment, as heard from the gallows, the chair, and the gurney. The product of seven years of extensive research by journalist Robert K. Elder, the book explores the cultural value of these final statements and asks what we can learn from them. We hear from both the famous—such as Nathan Hale, Joe Hill, Ted Bundy, and John Brown—and the forgotten, and their words give us unprecedented glimpses into their lives, their crimes, and the world they inhabited. Organized by era and method of execution, these final statements range from heartfelt to horrific. Some are calls for peace or cries against injustice; others are accepting, confessional, or consoling; still others are venomous, rage-fueled diatribes. Even the chills evoked by some of these last words are brought on in part by the shared humanity we can’t ignore, their reminder that we all come to the same end, regardless of how we arrive there. Last Words of the Executed is not a political book. Rather, Elder simply asks readers to listen closely to these voices that echo history. The result is a riveting, moving testament from the darkest corners of society.

An NYRB Classics Original When the pioneering Taiwanese novelist Qiu Miaojin committed suicide in 1995 at age twenty-six, she left behind her unpublished masterpiece, Last Words from Montmartre. Unfolding through a series of letters written by an unnamed narrator, Last Words tells the story of a passionate relationship between two young women—their sexual awakening, their gradual breakup, and the devastating aftermath of their broken love. In a style that veers between extremes, from self-deprecation to pathos, compulsive repetition to rhapsodic musings, reticence to vulnerability, Qiu’s genre-bending novel is at once a psychological thriller, a sublime romance, and the author’s own suicide note. The letters (which, Qiu tells us, can be read in any order) leap between Paris, Taipei, and Tokyo. They display wrenching insights into what it means to live between cultures, languages, and genders—until the genderless character Zoë appears, and the narrator’s spiritual and physical identity is transformed. As powerfully raw and transcendent as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Theresa Cha’s Dictée, to name but a few, Last Words from Montmartre proves Qiu Miaojin to be one of the finest experimentalists and modernist Chinese-language writers of our generation.