1. Joyce Carol Oates, Wonderland.
2. Jean Toomer, Cane.
3. H. P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu.”
4. Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood. Apophenia guessed the author correctly. (Is that you, Danah?)
5. Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping, as pointed out by Amanda and elaborated upon by Bradley.
6. Henry James, The Turn of the Screw, as guessed by Amanda.
7. Don DeLillo, White Noise.

To me, they all kind of qualify as minor classics in (mostly) 20th century fiction, which was my criterion of selection, and are all favorites. As Bardiac suggested, I’d have likely included some Nabokov and Pynchon as well, were their concluding lines all not so already familiar. But I’m getting some ideas for round 2. . . Calvino, maybe?

However, I would never have got that one. It’s been so long. The others, my only hope at salvation is I have read none of them, but, but . . .

Joanna: #1 is much, much later; #2 is rather more lyrical — albeit perhaps on a similar level of experimentalism as The Sound and the Fury — than Faulkner, and #4, you’re on the right track with female authors, albeit again somewhat later. In fact, perhaps some might more easily recognize a central or key quotation from #4: “Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.”

I’ll post answers in a day or two.

Oy.

#3 seems familiar, somehow, but I can’t place it.