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"Rebels in White Gloves: The tie-dyed debutantes of Hillary's graduating class
The times were turbulent, and these decorous young ladies weren't about to be left behind.
By Liesl Schillinger
[07/02/99]

Ivory Tower
The ethics of baby-killing
His protesters call him a Nazi, a hater and a snob, but the most interesting truth about Peter Singer is that there are many more like him.
By Jason Zinoman
[07/02/99]

Making a monster
"White Oleander" author Janet Fitch talks about creating a wicked woman, the debacle of film school and becoming an overnight success after 20 years.
By Laura Miller
[07/01/99]

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"The Broken Estate" and "When the Kissing Had to Stop"
Literary criticism remains alive and well (the novel is another story) in the work of two masters of the form.
By Euny Hong Koral
[07/01/99]

Kafka of the Great White North
Franz's niece takes the Yukon.
By Anne Beatts
[06/30/99]

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By Jonathon Keats

July 2, 1999 | The dead are the ultimate straight men in a joke of cosmic proportions. Their tombstones are carved with deprecatory doggerel and their elegies and eulogies often rewrite their lives into mush and melodrama. As for their earthly remains, well, there's no overestimating the slapstick possibilities of a stiffened corpse.

For a good time, call on the local cemetery. A 19th century example:

Here lies Jane Smith, wife of Thomas Smith, Marble-cutter.
Monuments of the same style, $350

For an epitaph, Thomas Smith's words are sensible enough: Jane's death gave him an irresistible opportunity, her tombstone providing a natural billboard for a man accustomed to advertising the facts of death. Except that Smith seems to have underestimated his art, misunderstood that his workmanship would outlast his earthly needs. Pity the man. The bargain he cut when he carved his wife's gravestone -- he didn't have to pay the $350, after all -- keeps his name, and his greed for work, forever above ground, while his wife rests soundly below.

Rememberances and Celebrations Lenin's Embalmers

We'll never know who else Thomas Smith cut marble for, but judging from the evidence in Jill Werman Harris' "Remembrances and Celebrations" -- 336 pages of eulogies, elegies, letters of condolence and epitaphs -- monuments in his style are about as common as coffin nails. We forget, obsessed as we are with extending our lives, that death lasts much longer, and as private as mourning may be, tombstones are our most public and enduring record. We forget, only to be reminded:

Here lies the body of Susan Lowder
Who burst while drinking a Sedlitz Powder,
Called from this world to her heavenly rest.
She should have waited till it effervesced.

Lowder's life is lost to us now. What preserves her memory is her absurd end. Dead people deride immortality from beyond the grave -- turn it ludicrous. The punch line isn't that Susan Lowder burst, but rather that, if she had waited for that Sedlitz Powder to effervesce, she wouldn't survive today in the pages of Harris' book.

Somewhat less daffy is the testimonial on the tombstone of one Mary Page: "In 67 months she was tap'dd 66 times. Had taken away 240 gallons of water, without ever repining at her case or ever fearing the operation." What gets us isn't the pain Mary endured, but rather the boastful -- to whom? by whom? -- recounting of her struggle. When we laugh at Mary Page's fate, it's the laugh of every loss, any loss, we've ever endured. Mourning itself is a bit ridiculous. The dead, after all, are oblivious to funeral arrangements. They ignore coffins and flowers and black lace. They smile on worldly tragedy. The dead are paragons of sobriety, reflecting our own absurdity back at us. They make a mockery of the ambitions of people like Jill Werman Harris, who attempt, through starched prose and somber posturing, to anthologize their way into "the vast literature of mourning."

Rather, we should follow Sir Rupert Hart-Davis' example. Given T.S. Eliot -- a man not noted for his comedic aspirations -- to eulogize, he told mourners an anecdote: "One day when [Eliot] was being driven somewhere, he and the chauffeur passed the time by discussing the merits of their respective dogs. Eventually the chauffeur thought that perhaps he had overpraised his own dog, and said, 'But, sir, he isn't really what you'd call a consequential dog.'" Of course Eliot was a consequential man, and his chauffeur knew it. But speak of things too consequentially, and they do get ridiculous. How do you lend weight to ashes without appearing to apply them, like war paint, to your own reputation? By laughing the whole business off -- acknowledging that even the most consequential dog has its final day.

Next page | Stealing swigs of Lenin's embalming alcohol