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Books : The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal TradeIn association with Amazon.comby: Thomas Lynch  List Price: $15.00 Amazon.com's Price: $10.20 You Save: $4.80 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 808 EAN: 9780140276237 ISBN: 0140276238 Label: Penguin (Non-Classics) Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics) Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 224 Publication Date: September 01, 1998 Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics) Sales Rank: 59617 Related Items:
Editorial Review: Product Description: Thomas Lynch serves his readership as a poet and memoirist, and his townspeople as a funeral director. In this wholly unique collection of essays, the two vocations meet as Lynch shows himself to be a competent functionary of mourning--dispensing comfort and homespun wisdom to the grief-stricken--as well as a poet poignantly tuning language to the right tones of private release. He is also a man of sardonic wit, uncovering humor where we least thought to find it--in our fear of and fascination with death. In its homages to parents who have died and to children who shouldn't have, its tales of golfers tripping over grave markers, portraits of gourmands and hypochondriacs, lovers and suicides, The Undertaking displays an impressively wide vocal range--from solemn, nostalgic, and lyrical to acerbic, sprightly, and unflinchingly professional. Amazon.com Review: "...I had come to know that the undertaking that my father did had less to do with what was done to the dead and more to do with what the living did about the fact of life that people died," Thomas Lynch muses in his preface to The Undertaking. The same could be said for Lynch's book: ostensibly about death and its attendant rituals, The Undertaking is in the end about life. In each case, he writes, it is the one that gives meaning to the other. A funeral director in Milford, Michigan, Lynch is that strangest of hyphenates, a poet-undertaker, but according to Lynch, all poets share his occupation, "looking for meaning and voices in life and love and death." Looking for meaning takes him to all sorts of unexpected places, both real and imagined. He embalms the body of his own father, celebrates the rebuilt bridge to his town's old cemetery, takes issue with the Jessica Mitfords of this world, and envisages a "golfatorium," a combination golf course and cemetery that could restore joy to the last rites. In "Crapper," Lynch even contemplates the subtleties of the modern flush toilet and its relationship to the messy business of dying: "Just about the time we were bringing the making of water and the movement of bowels into the house, we were pushing the birthing and marriage and sickness and dying out." Death and fatherhood, death and friendship, death and faith and love and poetry--these are the concerns that power Lynch's undertaking. Throughout, Lynch pleads the case for our dead--who are, after all, still living through us--with an eloquence marked by equal parts whimsy, wit, and compassion. In the last essay, "Tract," he envisions almost wistfully the funeral he'd choose for himself, and then relinquishes that, too. Funerals, after all, are for the living. The dead, he reminds us, don't care. --Mary Park Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Stunning...I was glancing over this book again tonight, in preparation for a book club discussion. I was amazed at how many passages that I had underlined, written, 'WOW!' next to, or bracketed. This is a fantasic collection of essays. Heart-wrenching and honest with a melodic poetry behind the words, I cannot recommend it highly enough. A profound piece of work of which Mr. Lynch can be proud. I especially recommend the final essay, written to the loved ones he will leave behind when he makes that final ... Read More Rating: - take a different lookThis book is really eye opening to the undertaking trade. It was written with great warmth and emotion. To see this trade from the personal side is wonderful. I would tell anyone going into the ministry to read this book! Rating: - The poet undertakerI must admit that until recently I didn't have the slightest idea of who Thomas Lynch was or, as a matter of fact, is. But being a subscriber of Granta literary magazine it turned out that in the last issue devoted to stories related with what they understood to be the "Deep end" it was published a short story by him called "The hunter's moon" and I was really haunted by it. It was about a man, a sales rep in the funeral business, who arriving to the final part of his life recalls in his daily lonely ... Read More Rating: - A Poet's View of the "Dismal Trade"This is a fantastic book. If you can swallow the subject matter, everything about the funeral business, then it is a beautifully written collection of essays about life. Lynch is first and foremost a poet, so his lyrical use of language is extraordinary. The book is a collection of essays. I believe the first essay was originally published alone, and then the rest of the essays were compiled into a book format. All of the essays (chapters) are well-written and insightful. This is a book that I sent ... Read More Rating:  - A poet and an undertakerThis is a charming book, one that feeds my own desire and interest in writing because Lynch is, first of all, a humanitarian, and a poet who closely observes life--and death--around him. And he doesn't pull his punches when he talks about the world he sees evolving around him--again, often through the lens of death and dying. But it's not a morbid book. Rather it's a book that will make you want to live the best life you can in the time you have allotted to you--that all the "little things" are what matter. Browse for similar items by category:
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