Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory

by Caitlin Doughty

Overview

"Morbid and illuminating" (Entertainment Weekly)—a young mortician goes behind the scenes of her curious profession.

Armed with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre, Caitlin Doughty took a job at a crematory and turned morbid curiosity into her life’s work. She cared for bodies of every color, shape, and affliction, and became an intrepid explorer in the world of the dead. In this best-selling memoir, brimming with gallows humor and vivid characters, she marvels at the gruesome history of undertaking and relates her unique coming-of-age story with bold curiosity and mordant wit. By turns hilarious, dark, and uplifting, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes reveals how the fear of dying warps our society and "will make you reconsider how our culture treats the dead" (San Francisco Chronicle).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393351903
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/28/2015
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	9,930
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Caitlin Doughty is a mortician and the New York Times best-selling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, From Here to Eternity, and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? She is the creator of the web series Ask a Mortician, and the founder of The Order of the Good Death. She lives in Los Angeles, California, where she owns a funeral home.

Table of Contents

Author's Note 9

Shaving Byron 15

Puppy Surprise 28

The Thud 48

Toothpicks in Jell-O 64

Push the Button 84

Pink Cocktail 105

Demon Babies 129

Direct Disposal 147

Unnatural Natural 169

Alas, Poor Yorick 185

Eros and Thanatos 205

Bubblating 222

Ghusl 242

Solo Witness 257

The Redwoods 273

Deth Skool 284

Body Van 300

The Art of Dying 315

Prodigal Daughter 335

Acknowledgments 345

Notes on Sources 349

Interviews

A conversation with Caitlin Doughty, author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons From the Crematory

You're a mortician? Really? Aren't morticians all creepy old guys in suits?

Yes, I'm really a mortician. No, we're not all creepy white men in suits (although, don't worry, if you're looking for one of those there are no shortage of them in the industry). Young women are entering death-related fields in very high numbers. Soon ladies will rule mortality with an iron fist, mark my words.

At the crematory I worked in, there were no suits at all. The men I worked with (ok, so it was all men) wore California casual, button ups and khakis. Except for Bruce the embalmer, who wore personal protective equipment so as not to get covered in blood splatters. Hazards of the job and whatnot.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is the story of your initiation into the funeral industry. What was the strangest thing you saw?

I'm asked this all the time, and it's hard to say "strangest." Things that looked totally strange to me when I started working with dead bodies, severally bloated and decomposed corpses for example, are part of a totally natural process. Our bodies are supposed to do that when we die! We just don't look at them as natural because we're so used to seeing chemically preserved bodies in the United States.

Aren't you freaked out by dead bodies?

I'm not, although I'll be honest and say that you never really get absolutely comfortable around them. Even after years of doing this work I still get grossed out sometimes. But grossed out is different than freaked out. Gross is fluids. Or snot. Or decay. But freaked out implies I'm worried about spirits or bodies that are out to get me, which they definitely are not.Did you leave anything out of the book because it was too scary or weird?

Absolutely not! I made a very conscious decision that I wanted to be completely honest about everything I saw and all the things that go on behind the scenes in mortuaries and funeral homes. Even if that makes it harder to read for some. Not everyone wants to hear the logistics of grinding bones after a cremation, or how deceased babies are handled, but the only way we are going to break through our cultural death denial is through brutal honesty.

What's the worst thing about how we handle death in our culture?

It's the denial. It's the idea that, "death is going to happen to everyone eventually...oh, except me, of course." When we took the dead human body out of "polite" society and handed it over to professionals, we gave away the reality of death as well. If you've never seen a real dead human, it's very hard to believe death is real. Of course you don't think it will happen to you, you've never seen any proof! A society where the general populace has no physical or ritual interaction with the dead is an unhealthy one. I stand by that.

Should I give my body to science?

Depends. On the pro side: it's free death care. And you and your family get to have the feeling that you may be contributing to research, medical advancements, etc. As for the cons: you have no control over what happens to your body when you sign it over to a for-profit scientific donation company. They can do any kind of research they want with it, even if it's research (like advances in plastic surgery or military technology) that you would have totally disagreed with during your life.

What are you going to do with your own body when you die?

Right now, with what's currently legal, the answer is that I want a natural burial. What I affectionately call "corpse, ground, hole, dump." My body will be buried in a shallow grave, in only a shroud, to decompose naturally. I want my body to go back into the nitrogen cycle, no need to seal me up in a casket and underground vault. In the future, I hope that it becomes legal to leave my body above ground to be consumed by animals. That's my real ideal.

Who have you discovered lately?

E.O.Wilson is a two time Pulitzer winning Harvard biologist (and the world's best known ant expert!) that has taken, in his later years, to writing about human nature and the future of humanity. He writes about big, huge, overarching topics that no one else would touch. I read his last book, The Social Conquest of Earth, two years ago. And just last week I snagged an advanced copy of his upcoming book, The Meaning of Human Existence, and re-discovered how much we need him. His books are filled with ideas that make your head spin. We need hundreds of more thinkers and writers like him.

Editorial Reviews

"In a moving—and often funny—memoir about working in a crematorium and other parts of the ‘death industry,’ Caitlin Doughty argues for radical change in how we face the details of death."

Daily Beast - Jessica Ferri

"Frank…philosophical…engaging, and even wicked."

New York Times Book Review - Natalie Kusz

"Demonically funny dispatches."

O Magazine

"Think Sloane Crosley meets Six Feet Under."

Grantland - Kevin Nguyen

"This book absolutely must be read, if only to remind all of us that exercise, organic food, and plastic surgery only work up to a point. Doughty is my kind of death crusader—compassionate, unblinking, and very, very funny."

Meg Rosoff

"Caitlin Doughty takes you to places you didn’t know you wanted to go. Fascinating, funny, and so very necessary, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes reveals exactly what’s wrong with modern death denial."

Bess Lovejoy

"Doughty…a trustworthy tour guide…keeps us laughing most of the way."

Washington Post - Rachel Lubitz

"Upbeat, brave and brilliantly, morbidly curious…Her measure of society is fierce, right on, and radical…[A]n important and timely book."

Sunday Times - Helen Davies

"Alternately heartbreaking and hilarious, fascinating and freaky, vivid and morbid, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is witty, sharply drawn, and deeply moving. Like a poisonous cocktail, Caitlin Doughty’s memoir intoxicates and enchants even as it encourages you to embrace oblivion; she breathes life into death."

Dodai Stewart

"Demonically funny."

The Oprah Magazine O

"It may well blow your mind wide open."

Flavorwire - Elisabeth Donnelly

One can well imagine a publicity director swooning over this book concept…But the book is more consequential than its spin potential, and though it contains frank descriptions of decay, body fluids and human ashes, it is ultimately more philosophical than lurid, more cultural critique than exposé.

The New York Times Book Review - Natalie Kusz

08/11/2014
In this valiant effort Doughty, a Hawaii-born LA mortician and creator of the web series "Ask a Mortician," uses her work as a crematorium operator at the family-owned Westwind Cremation and Burial in Oakland, Calif., to challenge the way we view death. Having studied medieval history in college, Doughty found an early job with the real deal: feeding the two huge "retorts," the cremation machines in the Westwind warehouse, with corpses—some not so fresh—retrieved by order from private homes or, more often, from hospitals, nursing homes, and the coroner's office. Doughty was eager to prove her mettle, and offered to do any number of odious tasks, such as shaving corpses, or otherwise helping Bruce the embalmer prepare them for the bereaved family's viewing: pumping them with the "salmon pink cocktail" of formaldehyde and alcohol, wielding the trusty trocar, and sewing closed mouths and eyelids. Her descriptions about picking dead babies up from the hospital prove particularly difficult to read. Nonetheless, Doughty does stare death in the face, by tracking down numerous ancient rituals (she observes approvingly how some Eastern cultures still participate in the preparing of the body), pursuing fascinating new words such as "desquamation" and "bubblating" (both refer to excess fluids), and celebrating the natural function of decomposition. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Entertaining and thought-provoking."

Shelf Awareness - Julia Jenkins

"Morbid and illuminating."

Entertainment Weekly

"Doughty reels you in with wonderful anecdotes about her work. Intermixed with the humor is a love of life that will make you reconsider how our culture treats the dead."

San Francisco Chronicle

"[Doughty’s] sincere, hilarious, and perhaps life-altering memoir is a must-read for anyone who plans on dying."

Booklist, Starred review - Katharine Fronk

2014-06-30
A 20-something's account of her life as a professional mortician.Doughty's fascination with death began in childhood, but it wasn't until she got to college that she dropped all pretenses of "normality and began to explore "all aspects of mortality" through her work in medieval history. Intellectual exposure to death and the human rituals associated with it eventually led to a decision to pursue a career as an undertaker. With an honesty that at times borders on unnerving, Doughty describes her experiences tending to dead people that, through her colorful characterizations, come to life on the page to become more than just anonymous stiffs. The author offers an intimate view of not just the mechanics of how corpses are treated and disposed, but also of the way Americans have come to treat both death and the dead. Throughout the last century, the rise of hospitals and displacement of homes as centers of life and death sanitized mortality while taking it out of public consciousness. "[T]he dying," writes Doughty, "could undergo the indignities of death without offending the sensibilities of the living." In the vein of Jessica Mitford, Doughty also casts a critical eye on the funeral industry and how it has attempted to "prettify" death for the public through cosmetic excesses like embalming. Yet unlike Mitford before her, Doughty reveals that what the public is ultimately getting cheated out of is not money, but a real and wholesome experience with death. For the author, the way forward to a healthier relationship with the end-of-life experience is to reclaim "the process of dying" by ending the ignorance and fear attached to it. Death is not the enemy of life but rather its much-maligned and misunderstood ally.A witty, wise and mordantly wise-cracking memoir and examination of the American way of death.

Kirkus Reviews