BooK Review: Marilyn Johnson's THE DEAD BEAT Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries

Book Review: Marilyn Johnson's the Dead Beat

Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries

--This Bit Here by Ken Pothier--

Marilyn Johnson has written not only the bible of Obituaries. She has defined the genre. She has taught us to write short, quick and on deadline. In this book we can savor the individuality and commonality of the rich and famous and the everyman on the common ground connection of life, the journey, the roads taken all condensed and distilled at the end in the OBIT.

The Dead Beat has everything about the best in the business and includes an internet tour with your destinations listed in the appendix. Marilyn writes the way you would a good obituary, bits of information collected from observation, research and interview; marriage, births/children, careers, inventions, breakthroughs, firsts and lasts. The Bit is about the prominent and the unknown, the important in life and those who found importance only in death. She is a great observer and interviewer; she has the author fascination and love of writing which is evident in concise quality throughout the book.

The good ones have you asking questions and seeing coincidence and connections in the life write. Is there any control? Is life predetermined, Great Spirit within or without? Was it intelligent design or human persistence?

Fate, faith, fortune are all found here shaped by knowledge, inspiration and perspiration.

The chapter, Name That Bit, gives us the nomenclature and structure of the Obituary, a template that almost every newspaper publication follows. She asks the best and finds names for the parts which I believe will stand the test of time: the tombstone, bad news, song and dance, shift and reverse shift, the desperate chronology, the black box, the friars, the telegraph and the stinging telegraph. You thought it was only an Obit, have fun finding out what these terms refer to.

New York Obituary writing is covered in chapter four--The Mighty and the Fallen of New York--A wonderful line written by Billy Collins former poet laureate of the US is included and still cracks me up.

Once I got a cab for Pavarotti. No kidding.

No tip, either.

Yes sir, I put the tenor in the vehicle

And a mighty tight squeeze it was.

Did you know that 'tenor' and 'vehicle' are literary terms?

Marilyn does the leg work, meets these incredible characters and works the bits into a entertaining and educational whole.

Chuck Strum, the obits editor of the New York Times was interviewed by Marilyn and she was nervous. She finds that Strum admires straight and solid writers who find drama not in artful prose so much as scrupulous reporting and skillful juxtapositions. He mentions Robert D McFadden who he says has the ability to take scores and scores of scraps an turn them into a beautiful, coherent story, all fully attributed. She had no reason to be nervous as this is just how she writes this incredible book.

PORTRAITS OF GRIEF is about the aftermath of the 9/11/2001 disaster. The portraits were included in the Times new section, A Nation Challenged, the section won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2001. She writes; 'The Portraits developed spontaneously, when American sentiment and journalistic objectivity met to mourn a mass tragedy in the Time's backyard. They rose up out of the rubble.' 'The portraits dignified ordinary people; they helped heal wounded families and a wounded country; they made people cry.' 'They became a model around the world for other newspapers trying to cover the deaths of ordinary men and women.'

What knowledge is gained by reading the obits? It is a history of our lifetime written in footnote. It lets us get a flavor for the people of different cities and countries. The Last two, Googling Death and the Obit writers Obit, cover research of past and alt obits and how their own are sent off.

Are they Ghouls, life scribes, death watchers? Do they write of the rich and famous, the poor and persistent, the lucky and the lost, the winners and the losers? Yes they write of all those lives and characteristics intertwined. We all wait with the Grim Reaper. The end comes, the obituarists, the short and quick writers of a life spent wait. From the darkness we come to live a life before moving on to the light. The Obituarist is the doorman who draws a condensed, distilled apt and witty footnote when death knocks. I hope you enjoyed the ride.

750 words

ISBN: 0-06-075875-9

Pages: 244

Publisher: HarperCollins 2006