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

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Overview

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 ...
See more details below

More About This Book

Overview

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.

Finalist for the 2006 Discover Award, Nonfiction

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
A self-described practitioner of "careful newspaper reading," Johnson enjoys perusing the day's obituaries, cleansing her hands of newsprint and "[thinking] about universal harmonies." Like the fact that both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, 50 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Johnson revels in such coincidences and in the fact that so many celebrities -- Rock Hudson, for instance -- "[slip] below the radar of appreciation until [their] appearance on the obituary page" gives their popularity a boost. (They say there's no such thing as bad publicity!)

Johnson traded in her job as a journalist interviewing celebrities (with stints at Life, Esquire, Redbook, and Outside magazines) for one in a darkened room, writing their obituaries. And she is a writer completely enthralled by her work, the perfect professional to introduce the casual obituary reader to the ins and outs of the genre, like the all-important placement of "the comma." An amusing, often poignant, and continually amazing book, Johnson's first effort is dead on. (Summer 2006 Selection)
Michiko Kakutani
A fetching book about obituaries? Well, yes: Ms. Johnson writes about obituaries with the zeal — and insight — of an avid obit fan, someone who looks at half a dozen newspapers a day and spends hours online, Googling death: reading posts on the alt.obituaries newsgroup and posting favorite obits of her own.
— The New York Times
More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews
From The Critics
A journalist who's written obituaries of Princess Di and Johnny Cash, Johnson counts herself among the obit obsessed, one who subsists on the "tiny pieces of cultural flotsam to profound illuminations of history" gathered from obits from around the world, which she reads online daily-sometimes for hours. Her quirky, accessible book starts at the Sixth Great Obituary Writers' International Conference, where she meets others like herself. Johnson explores this written form like a scholar, delving into the differences between British and American obits, as well as regional differences within this country; she visits Chuck Strum, the New York Times' obituary editor, but also highlights lesser-known papers that offer top-notch obits; she reaffirms life as much as she talks about death. Johnson handles her offbeat topic with an appropriate level of humor, while still respecting the gravity of mortality-traits she admires in the best obit writers, who have "empathy and detachment; sensitivity and bluntness." The book claims that obits "contain the most creative writing in journalism" and that we are currently in the golden age of the obituary. We are also nearing the end of newspapers as we know them, Johnson observes, and so "it seems right that their obits are flourishing." (Mar. 1) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780060758752
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 2/28/2006
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 256
  • Product dimensions: 4.87 (w) x 9.00 (h) x 0.95 (d)

Meet the Author

Marilyn Johnson
Marilyn Johnson
Having made a name for herself penning memorable obituaries for the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Princess Diana, Jackie Onassis, and Johnny Cash for Life and other magazines, Marilyn Johnson takes a fascinating look back at the experience in The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries.

Biography

Marilyn Johnson wrote The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries after writing obituaries for Katharine Hepburn, Princess Diana, Jackie Onassis, Johnny Cash, Bob Hope, and Marlon Brando for Life and other magazines. She has been a staff writer for Life and an editor for Esquire. Her articles and poetry have appeared in many publications. She lives in Briarcliff, New York, and is working on a book about librarians and archivists in the digital age.

Biography courtesy of the author's official web site.

Good To Know

Some fun and fascinating outtakes from our interview with Johnson:

"For several years, I wrote obituaries in advance for ancient or accident-prone celebrities. I seemed to have the magic touch: Even those who looked like skeletons recovered miraculously."

"I used to love reading trashy fiction, but after I worked for Esquire magazine, screening their fiction submissions, I found I'd lost my taste for it. You have to pay me to read bad writing now."

"I adore ratatouille and pesto."

    1. Hometown:
      Briarcliff, New York
    1. Education:
      B.A., University of Pennsylvania; M.A., University of New Hampshire
    2. Website:
      http://www.marilynjohnson.net

Read an Excerpt

The Dead Beat

Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries
By Marilyn Johnson

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2006 Marilyn Johnson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060758759

Chapter One

I Walk the Dead Beat


People have been slipping out of this world in occupational clusters, I've noticed, for years. Four journalists passed their deadline one day, and their obits filled a whole corner of the paper. What news sent them over the edge? How often do you see two great old actresses take their bows, or two major-league pitchers strike out together? Often enough to spook. Some days sculptors are called, some days pioneer cartoonists. A New York Times editor threw up his hands on June 13, 2004, and ran two almost perfectly parallel stories under one headline: winners of the medal of honor from two eras die; both men saved fellow marines.

It is more than coincidence, and certainly more than the vigilance of an editor on the graveyard shift. It's supernatural. I thrilled recently to a pair of obituaries for Paul Winchell, the voice of Tigger in Pooh, and John Fiedler, the voice of Piglet in Pooh; the two had gone silent a day apart. I keep them next to my clip from October 25, 1986, the day the New York Times ran side-by-side obituaries for the scientist who isolated vitamin C and the scientist who isolated vitamin K. One was ninety-three; the other ninety-two. One died on a Wednesday, one on a Thursday. One's farewell ran three columns, one ran two. One extracted the vitamin from tons of cattle adrenals scooped from the Chicago slaughterhouses, and also from paprika. One extracted female hormones from tons of sow ovaries. Make something of these differences if you dare. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi and Edward Adelbert Doisy, Sr., Dr. C and Dr. K respectively, both Nobel Prize winners, left the world together.

Did they get the idea from John Adams and Thomas Jefferson? In 1826, the second and third presidents of the United States died in harmony on July 4, exactly fifty years after they signed the Declaration of Independence. The New-York American wrote:

By a coincidence marvellous and enviable, THOMAS JEFFERSON in like manner with his great compeer, John Adams, breathed his last on the 4th of July. Emphatically may we say, with a Boston paper, had the horses and the chariot of fire descended to take up the patriarchs, it might have been more wonderful, but not more glorious. We remember nothing in the annals of man so striking, so beautiful, as the death of these two "time-honoured" patriots, on the jubilee of that freedom, which they devoted themselves and all that was dear to them, to proclaim and establish. It cannot all be chance.

No, surely it cannot all be chance. These are mystical forces, and what better place to find them at work than in the obituaries?

Such coincidences don't occur every day, but it wouldn't take you a week to begin a creative collection. A veteran UPI photographer and a veteran AP photographer. A professor of theology, a pastor, and a nun. An author named Arthur, an architect named Aaron, and an artist named Alois. Two obstetricians. The inventor of alternate-side-of-the-street parking and one of the founders of Evelyn Wood's course in alternate-word reading. The service industry of Hollywood -- a hairdresser, a caterer, and a costume designer. Princess Diana and Mother Teresa! Cary Grant and Desi Arnaz. The head of the tiniest kingdom in the world, the Vatican (Pope John Paul II), and the leader of the second-tiniest kingdom in the world, Monaco (Prince Rainier).

This is not craziness. It's careful newspaper reading. Each day, after I read, I wash the newsprint off my hands and think about universal harmonies. I think about things I haven't thought about since childhood, such as guardian angels. I used to believe we each walked around with a sort of ghost of ourself guiding and watching over us. Is it possible that instead of a guardian angel we each have a double, a guarantee that our work gets done? If we're the sort who isolates alphabet vitamins, there are two of us, just in case. If we are the voice of Tigger, the voice of Piglet backs us up.

A friend of mine used to collect "bus plunge" headlines. You'd be amazed how easy these are to collect. Buses plunge over cliffs and into canyons across the world, and newspaper editors seem resigned to the sameness and predictability of such a universal death. Nearly every headline reads, so many killed in such and such country's bus plunge. Once, the New York Times reported 10 die in brazil bus plunge, though it wasn't even a bus that plunged. It was a truck. But the convention persists.

I think of bus plunges as the generic passing. Many of us took the plunge yesterday. What did we have in common? We happened to be riding the same bus. Perhaps the bus is literal -- ten of us over a precipice in a south Brazilian state. Or perhaps it is metaphoric -- an imaginary bus that on Saturday encapsulates two vitamin scientists and on Sunday bears a cargo of handmaidens to Hollywood.

The bus is an attempt to grasp the unthinkable, of course: one day we're riding along on the highway; the next, we plunge out of sight. Who knows who might be sitting beside us? Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox's seatmate was Watergate counsel Sam Dash. Lawrence Welk's trumpeter and his accordion player played a duet out the door. The queen of the Netherlands and the king of the frozen french fry left the party together. The editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists went off with the lead guitarist for a rock group called the Blasters. I clipped them all. The New York Times comes each morning in a blue plastic wrapper, 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. I open the not-yet-smudged pages of newsprint. Obituaries are history as it is happening. I know one of . . .

Continues...

Excerpted from The Dead Beat by Marilyn Johnson Copyright © 2006 by Marilyn Johnson. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents


I Walk the Dead Beat     1
A Wake of Obituarists     13
Name That Bit     29
The Mighty and the Fallen of New York     43
The Irish Sports Page     43
The Franchise     47
Portraits of Grief     57
GoodBye!     69
Attention Must Be Paid     73
Now You Know     83
Ordinary Joe     89
The Egalitarians     115
Tributes     129
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse     143
The Obituary Capital     143
Boiled in Oil, and Other
Terrible Fates in the Daily Telegraph     153
A Few Words About the Code     160
Following the Guardian into the Mist     166
An Independent Bent     170
Lives of the Times     178
Googling Death     183
The Obit Writer's Obit     205
Epilogue to the Paperback Edition     225
Appendix     233
Notes     239
Bibliography     245
Acknowledgments     249
Customer Reviews
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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 9, 2006

    The Beat of Death goes on......

    Despite the poet, death has dominion¿in the hands of Marilyn Johnson and others of her ilk. The writing of obituaries, once shoved into the hands of novice or down-and-nearly-out journalists, has come into its own in recent years. The fine art of honing the human life and spirit to find its essence has resulted in a new generation of writers and readers. Some of us are so addicted, we begin the day with a cruise through the morning paper not for the comics, sports page or horoscopes but for the obits. In reading of people we wish we might have known, we encounter some of the finest (and fastest) writing available. Johnson introduces us to some of those writers, often with a poetry of words to capture their essences. She tells tales out of school and sets aside the old pattern of chronologies as the means of relating a lifestory. Her characters, living and dead, are people we¿d like to have met. I, for one, would like to meet her and she isn¿t dead! Johnson¿s writing is filled with the rhythms and vibrancy of life. An excellent, if unusual, read.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 4, 2006

    Finding light in the dark side...

    Marilyn Johnson has touched on a subject that is with us all on a daily basis, one some of us are secretly fascinated by, others are much more open in their appreciation of, and yet which most of us of us take for granted. That of obituaries. Who writes them, how have they evolved, and why do some of them touch us even though they are written of people we have never known nor even heard of? This book is eye opening and fun. A joy to read and will make one laugh and be touched, often within the same paragraph. A truly quirky celebration of life.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 28, 2006

    Obituaries 101

    Marilyn Johnson¿s `The Dead Beat¿ has been an awakening for me. I had always considered myself as someone who read the newspaper from the first to last page. And yet, I have always been amused at those people who would be drawn to `The Irish Sports Section¿. After reading this book, I realized that I had been avoiding the obituaries and denying myself `perverse pleasures¿. Now, the author may recoil at any suggestion that she exhibits cultish behavior in her chosen craft as an obituarist. But, the passion for her profession shines through with a blend of dignity, respect and a healthy sense of humor. `The Dead Beat¿ is a remarkable tribute to her profession. I particularly enjoyed her homage to many of the pioneer obituarists of the egalitarian tributes. She has done her homework and I appreciate the history lesson. The author demonstrates a reverence for her chosen profession and genuine compassion for the deceased and those they leave behind. I value the education on obituary structures and styles and I came away thinking I had just completed a course in Obituaries 101. Above all else, `The Dead Beat¿ was entertaining and enlightening and I have become a new fan of the obituary. I will no longer avoid this rich section of the newspaper and I may just start searching the online obituary resources as detailed in the book. The notes, references and bibliography are useful and thorough for those who want to pursue more.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 2, 2006

    The Beat Goes On

    Here's how to make a book about death fun. From the Poe raven on the front to the death of newspapers to their rebirth on the net, Marilyn Johnson really buries you in her passions. These are real ghosts that are made to come alive.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 28, 2006

    We read obituaries

    Finally a book about those dedicated people who allow no person to leave this world unnoticed. Our true history is in the many obituaries of so called 'normal' people and their passing is recorded with wit, integrity and even humor. Thank you, Marilyn Johnson.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted June 8, 2009

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    Posted October 17, 2011

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