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While writers such as Colquhoun and Wroe are rare, if less so in the U.K., one need only be a deposed royal, a defunct dictator, a poet of dubious talent, the last survivor of a largely-forgotten battle or a clever parrot to deserve a page in the back matter of "the paper" as it is called.The obituaries are more often than not more entertaining and useful than their subjects. As a professional obituarist, albeit on a very small scale, this book gives me two goals: to write as well as Kenneth Colquhoun and Ann Wroe and to deserve an obituary in The Economist. The bar for the second is lower. The seriously bad are called by their true names without waffling or bile; the virtuous are given their due without fawning. The accompanying photos are as revealing as the text.
And just delightful to read, because, as you'd expect from The Economist, these obits are so well written. A talking bird. And so, after 150 years without an obituary page, the editors of The Economist decided to lunch one."The Economist Book of Obituaries"is a collection of 200 obituaries that the paper published between 1995 and 2008. Christian Barnard, who performed the first transplant of a human heart, believed that sex-with-romance was "the most beautiful, healthiest and most pleasurable way" to keep fit.Did you know that Freddy Heineken wanted to put his beer in square bottles so the empties could be used as bricks in Third World countries.And so many more.
Pamela Harriman, "expert between the sheets". And a British book of obits that did not include Princess Diana would raise the eyebrows of the dead. The forger of the "Hitler diaries". The editor of the Weekly World News, who used "Bolivia" as a deadline when a story was an especially wild fabrication. A musical psychic. No matter.
There is no template for the subjects.Oh, there are the obligatory world leaders and corporate kings. But English newspapers are uncommonly imaginative. It's a richly rewarding book, deserving of a place of honor on a coffee table. I never thought "The Economist" and "obituaries" would find themselves in the same sentence. A man who learned to read at age 98.
The telling detail and the previously unseen anecdote make this a seriously delightful book.Did you know --- this is from an obit of Digby Baltzell, the scholar who coined the word WASP --- that Al Capone's son went to Yale and married a "well-connected" woman.Did you know that Dr. Mr Marceau's father died in 1944 in Auschwitz, and Bip's silence was a tribute to all those who had been silenced in the camps. (The obit begins: "For l00 years nothing much happened to Jeanne Calment.") A French ski champion, dead at 31. No fun is more welcome than unlikely fun. Mao's mouthpiece. An English gardener. An ideal hostess gift.
Useful on the bedside table, where it invites you to read one death a night, comforted by the expectation that you'll be back for the another the next night. It was a recollection, too, of the necessary muteness of resistance fighters caught by the Nazis, or quietly leading children across the Swiss border to safety, as Mr Marceau had done. The length is fixed --- about 1,000 words. In one of his acts, "Bip Remembers", the sad-faced clown relived in mime the horrors of the war and stressed the necessity of love. The world's oldest person. The king of the gypsies. Like this, on Marcel Marceau, the mime:"He [Bip] never spoke.
In another, his hands became good and evil: evil clenched and jerky, good flowing and emollient, with good just winning."
This book includes both the well-known (Allen Ginsberg) and the lesser known (at least in the US) but significant (Maurice Couve de Murville). All the obituaries are facinating, and tell the reader things she might not have known already about the well-known (Ginsberg managed to offend John Lennon) and why the less-known should be known (Couve, the foreign minister of French President from 1959-69, Charles de Gaulle, is largely credited with policies that still affect France's place in world politics). It's not the most aesthetically attractive volume (black and white pictures; the type is smallish) but reading about the lives they lived is worth it.
Despite the gloomy title and topic, this compilation is a fascinating collection of, essentially, mini-biographies featured within the Economist during the past decade. They are, however, profiles of people who made an impact upon the world around them, be that world defined geographically or within a vocational sector. The Economist has raised the act of obituary writing to an art form, avoiding the chronological approach to discussing the importance of a person's life, but, rather, focusing on the pure essence of what made an individual's life significant and noteworthy. The profiles collected within are not necessarily those of well-known world leaders. Many may be names one has never heard of. But in reading these short biographies, the reader can't help but feel inspired.
Written in the smug, strident style of the magazine, the obits are poorly researched and inaccurate. That will be news to The Crickets who still perform,The same with Hunter S Thompson - no mention of The Hells Angels novel that propelled him to fame - just a collection of cliches about gonzo journalism. For example, in the review of Allen Ginsberg, you'll be surprised to learn that the Beats started Flower Power - and I always thought it was the hippies. In another review, we learn that The Big Bopper and Richie Valens were Buddy Holly's band members and that they perished along with him. This makes me wonder about the veracity of the magazine as well as the rest of the obits.In balance, if you want pompous. ill-researched prose then this is the book for you.
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