Synopses & Reviews
The
New York Times comes each morning and never fails to deliver news of the important dead. Every day is new; every day is fraught with significance. I arrange my cup of tea, prop up my slippers. Obituaries are history as it is happening. Whose time am I living in? Was he a success or a failure, lucky or doomed, older than I am or younger? Did she know how to live? I shake out the pages. Tell me the secret of a good life! Where else can you celebrate the life of the pharmacist who moonlighted as a spy, the genius behind Sea Monkeys, the school lunch lady who spent her evenings as a ballroom hostess? No wonder so many readers skip the news and the sports and go directly to the obituary page.
The Dead Beat is the story of how these stories get told. Enthralled by the fascinating lives that were marching out of this world, Marilyn Johnson tumbled into the obits page to find out what made it so lively. She sought out the best obits in the English language and chased the people who spent their lives writing about the dead. Surveying the darkest corners of Internet chat rooms, surviving a mass gathering of obituarists, and making a pilgrimage to London to savor the most caustic and literate obits of all, Marilyn Johnson leads us into the cult and culture behind the obituary page. The result is a rare combination of scrapbook and compelling read, a trip through recent history and the unusual lives we don't quite appreciate until they're gone.
Review
"A charming, lyrical book about the men and women who write obituaries...sly, droll, and completely winning." David Halberstam
Review
"[Marilyn Johnson]'s written a warm, funny, appreciative book that, ironically enough, should live forever. But get it now." Roy Blount
Review
"This delightful quirk of a book is not dark or morose; it's an uplifting, joyous, life-affirming read for people who ordinarily steer clear of uplifting, joyous, life-affirming reads." Los Angeles Times
Review
"While Johnson's analysis of the form and its top practitioners is absorbing, her accounts of the culture of obituary lovers is downright amazing." New York Times
Review
"This is a book about dead people and the journalists who write their stories. But as Marilyn Johnson, the author of this wise and witty volume on the art of the obituary, makes clear, obits aren't so much the literature of death as the celebration of life." Seattle Times
Review
"Johnson...teases an awful lot of life out of her descent into the chronicles of death. In a sense...she has peremptorily crafted her own obituary by writing a dead-on minor classic that should outlive its author by a long margin." San Francisco Chronicle
Synopsis
A light-hearted look at the history and practice of "the ultimate human-interest story," the obituary.
"What a wonderful surprise--a charming, lyrical book about the men and women who write obituaries. The Dead Beat is sly, droll, and completely winning."-- David Halberstam
Where can readers celebrate the life of the pharmacist who moonlighted as a spy, the genius behind Sea Monkeys, the school lunch lady who spent her evenings as a ballroom hostess? The obituary page, of course. Enthralled by these fascinating former lives, Marilyn Johnson tumbled into the little known world of the obituary page to find out what made it so compelling. She sought out the best obits in the English language, and chased the people who spent their lives writing about the dead. Surveying Internet chat rooms, surviving a mass gathering of obituarists, and making the pilgrimage to London to savor the most caustic and literate obits of all, she leads us into the cult and culture behind this fascinating segment of our daily news.
About the Author
Marilyn Johnson has been a staff writer for Life and an editor at Esquire, Redbook, and Outside. Her essays, profiles, and stories have appeared in these magazines and others. She has written obituaries for Princess Diana, Jacqueline Onassis, Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Johnny Cash, Bob Hope, and Marlon Brando.