Chapter 43: The Last Chapter and Page

It was the last chapter in the book, one that began with this self-referential penultimate para­ graph containing just one sentence, a sentence that made the chapter, paragraph and itself self- referential, and informed readers that even though the last word of the next paragraph lacked a direct object, that they could supply any direct object they wanted, including, but not limited to this metanovel, this moment, God, evolution, narrators and literary modes, themselves, their ideas, and the heat death of the universe. Without that penultimate paragraph in its ultimate form, a paragraph that had been been part of a much earlier draft and had, with its announcement of the final paragraph, been removed then replaced and rewritten several times, this final paragraph would have begun without warn­ ing, and rambled on, through phrase after phrase, clause after clause, as it does, all part of a single, long, convoluted self-referential sentence, which had begun with the words ‘without that penultimate paragraph,’ and would end with a word that finally made sense in the context of this paragraph, but only after a great deal of head-scratching and editing by the author, and which made a different kind of sense when read in the context of the previous paragraph and the pre­ ceding metanovel, both of which the author hopes you will—enjoy.