The Dead Beat

Every morning, countless readers of the morning papers bypass the front page, neglect the sports section, and go directly to the obituary page. It''s not morbid curiosity (or not just that) that motivates them. Legions of obsessive fans turn to the obit page first because it very often contains the most gripping and best-told stories of the day. In The Dead Beat, former Life magazine writer and Esquire editor Marilyn Johnson makes a smart and light-hearted survey of obituary writing, unraveling the cult and culture of obituaries to consider what our feelings about death-and the way we write about it-tell us about how we live.

"[A] whimsical paean to the obituary, a literary form initiated by death, but paradoxically, Johnson finds, brimming over with vibrancy, wit, and irony - in other words, with the stuff of life….The way others marvel over an orchid’s distinctive coloring or the clean bouquet of a wine, Johnson relishes the finely crafted obituary….a gleeful celebration of the form, but with a twinge of elegy."

Autorentext
Marilyn Johnson is a former editor and writer for Life, Esquire, and Outside magazines, and lives with her husband, Rob Fleder, in New York's Hudson Valley.

Klappentext
Marilyn Johnson was enthralled by the remarkable lives that were marching out of this world—so she sought out the best obits in the English language and the people who spent their lives writing about the dead. She surveyed the darkest corners of Internet chat rooms, and made a pilgrimage to London to savor the most caustic and literate obits of all. Now she leads us on a compelling journey into the cult and culture behind the obituary page and the unusual lives we don't quite appreciate until they're gone.

Zusammenfassung
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 HalberstamWhere 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.

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