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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38220 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

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

From Kirkus Reviews
Eloquent, meditative observations on the place of death in small-town life, from the only poet/funeral director in Milford, Mich. Poets like Lynch (Grimalkin and Other Poems) tend to be more respectful about death and the grave than novelists like Evelyn Waugh or journalists like Jessica Mitford. Lynch lives by the old- fashioned undertakers' motto, ``Serving the living by caring for the dead'' (as opposed to more mundanely providing, as one seminar put it, ``What Folks Want in a Casket''). Taking up the family business, Lynch philosophically bears his responsibilities in Milford, which has its statistical share of accidents, suicides, murders, and grieving survivors. His essential respect for the living and the dead notwithstanding, his shop talk perforce has its morbid aspects, such as making ``pre-arrangements'' with future clients, reminding families about uncollected cremation ashes, taking middle-of-the-night calls for collection, or, in a rare filial obligation, embalming his own father. But the author has a sense of the absurd possibilities of his business, even a whimsical scheme to run a combination golf course/burial ground. In one of the livelier essays, he reflects on the competition--both professional and philosophical--fellow Michiganite Dr. Jack Kevorkian, with his no-muss suicide machine, poses to Uncle Eddie's postmortem-clean-up business, Specialized Sanitation Services (``Why leave a mess? Call Triple S!''). In the high point of these dozen essays, he combines his profession and his vocation, delivering the dedicatory poem for the reopening of the restored bridge to Milford's old cemetery--``This bridge connects our daily lives to them,/and makes them, once our neighbors, neighbors once again.'' Already excerpted in Harper's and the London Review of Books, this thoughtful volume is neither too sentimental nor too clinical about death's role (and the author's) in our lives. (illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
At his best, Lynch shows himself to be a master of the essay form. "Words Made Flesh," a tribute to the erotically suggestive power of a single poem ... is a small classic that ought to be included in every college writing textbook. At his worst, Lynch sounds like a publicist for the mortuary business. -- The New York Times Book Review, Susan Jacoby

From somber to black comedy to plainspoken to lamentation. . . . The Undertaking is a masterpiece. -- John Lanchester

[B]rims with humanity, irreverence, and invigorating candor. -- The Nation

Customer Reviews

take a different look
This 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!

The poet undertaker
I 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 walks through the woods the way he has lived, his wives, his dead daughter, the whereabouts of his trade, the harm done and the bliss received, and all that under the spell of the October's full moon. After that I began to learn more about this author: a poet and funeral home director, the one who has inspired the TV series "Nine feet under", a man of deep understanding of life and death and of what the latter means to the living. A writer worth to be read.

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 to my pickiest-reader friend, who loved it. Don't let the subject matter dissuade you from reading this unusual book.