In my non-fiction books, my travel writing, and as a Financial Times contributor, I’ve always been drawn to two questions: How does the world work? And what makes us human? Seeking answers to these questions has taken me on extraordinary journeys and given me the excuse to meet some fascinating people. In this, I consider myself extremely lucky.
When I began looking into how we humans send off our dead, this was the first book I read. Both moving and funny, it remains one of my favorites. Lynch, a poet, author, and professional undertaker, writes unsentimentally but with great compassion about the business of burying the dead.
While Lynch is critical of modern approaches to death—which he compares to the flush toilet, allowing us to quickly remove unpleasant reminders of our failing bodies—his book left me with a new understanding of the importance of the services provided by those who work in “the dismal trade.”
"Every year I bury a couple hundred of my townspeople." So opens this singular and wise testimony. Like all poets, inspired by death, Thomas Lynch is, unlike others, also hired to bury the dead or to cremate them and to tend to their families in a small Michigan town where he serves as the funeral director.
In the conduct of these duties he has kept his eyes open, his ear tuned to the indispensable vernaculars of love and grief. In these twelve pieces his is the voice of both witness and functionary. Here, Lynch, poet to the dying, names the…
I first read this book as a teenager and missed the full force of its ferocious satire. Re-reading it years later, I laughed out loud. Waugh’s genius is to set his story of a love triangle in a Los Angeles funeral home. This way, he gets to poke fun at Hollywood and the American funeral industry while giving the dead a prominent role in the drama.
When, for example, embalmer Mr. Joyboy starts wooing young cosmetician Aimée Thanatogenos, he does it through the expressions he puts on the faces of the corpses he sends to her makeup studio. When Aimée falls for his rival, a poet and pet mortician, the beatific smiles of Mr. Joyboy’s death turn into ghastly grimaces. It’s one of my favorite moments in the book—but there are many more.
This book has had a profound influence on my thinking. While I’m not sure I agree with absolutely everything the authors propose, their central idea is compelling: that as humans, awareness of our own death shapes everything we do in life (consciously or subconsciously)—whether we write symphonies, climb Everest, start a family or enter the local baking competition.
The book underscores my belief that, while knowing we have an expiration date is terrifying, if we use that knowledge in the right way, it can be empowering.
Proof of a ground-breaking psychological theory: that the fear of death is the hidden motive behind almost everything we do.
'A joy ... The Worm at the Core asks how humans can learn to live happily while being intelligently aware of our impending doom, how knowledge of death affects the decisions we make every day, and how we can stop fear and anxiety overwhelming us' Charlotte Runcie, Daily Telegraph
'Provocative, lucid and fascinating' Financial Times
'An important, superbly readable and potentially life-changing book . . . suggests one should confront mortality in order to live an authentic life' Tim Lott,…
What I love about this highly unusual memoir from Julian Barnes is how he invites us to join him on his meanderings through a smorgasbord of intriguing topics and unexpected thought worms. As he explores his fear of death, he meets, greets, and remembers everyone from historical figures, poets, writers, and philosophers to friends and family members.
I found this book unexpected, poignant, and, at times, very funny. And as is true of so much of what I enjoy reading, this meditation on death does much to shed light on what makes us human.
'I don't believe in God, but I miss Him.' Julian Barnes' new book is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his philosopher brother, a meditation on mortality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and a homage to the French writer Jules Renard. Though he warns us that 'this is not my autobiography', the result is a tour of the mind of one of our most brilliant writers.
For me, the fact that this intriguing book is part of a series called The Art of Living says it all. Philosopher Todd May argues that while death is “tragic, arbitrary and meaningless,” it’s also the most important fact about us as humans.
What stayed with me long after I’d finished reading was the idea that immortality would be far worse than death. With no end in sight, May argues, life would become meaningless. Why, in fact, would we bother doing anything at all since we could endlessly put it off till later? As a writer who needs a deadline to get anything done, I couldn’t agree more. Endlessly thought-provoking, this little book punches far above its weight.
The fact that we will die, and that our death can come at any time, pervades the entirety of our living. There are many ways to think about and deal with death. Among those ways, however, a good number of them are attempts to escape its grip.
In this book, Todd May seeks to confront death in its power. He considers the possibility that our mortal deaths are the end of us, and asks what this might mean for our living. What lessons can we draw from our mortality? And how might we live as creatures who die, and who…
The day after my father died, I opened a plain brown envelope containing a letter in which he’d set out a surprising request for how he wanted us to dispose of what he called his “organic matter.”
Curious about his decision, I decided to travel around the world to explore the different send-offs we give our dead. What astonished me was just how much thought, effort, and creativity we put into this. But on my travels, I was also seeking something more personal—inspiration for my own eventual send-off.
