The Dead Beat

Book 43 of my 2019 Reading Challenge

read from June 18 - 28

The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries

by Marilyn Johnson

Summary (via the book jacket)

published 2006

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.

My Opinion

3 stars

A 3 star rating is usually pretty neutral for me but in this case it's a disappointment because this book seemed tailor-made for me and my lifelong interests in reading obituaries, reading tombstones, learning about people's lives, etc.  I saw it on the shelf of the used bookstore and there was zero question it was coming home with me (plus it was already on my never-ending "to-read" list but had been added so long ago I'd forgotten until I went to update my reading - just another reason this book was meant to be mine).  I'm glad I read it even though it wasn't as great as I'd hoped it would be.

One of the fun things about reading a book years after it was published is seeing if what the author predicted came true.  In this case she wrote, "I know one of these days, maybe even as these pages zoom off to the press [in 2006], Nelson Mandela and Doris Day and Keith Richards will materialize in the obituaries. The fact that they haven't yet fills me with awe."  I can imagine her surprise when Mandela lived until 2013, Day recently passed away in May of 2019, and Richards is still alive as I write this (October 2019).  Just goes to show that death is completely unpredictable.  

A Few Quotes from the Book

"Death is an unstable element. Will it loft someone's reputation, or pull the ripcord? Read the obit to find out."

"And obituaries, as anyone who reads or writes obituaries will tell you, are really not about death. They're occasioned by death, and they almost always wrap up with a list of those separated from the beloved by death, but they are full of life."