Masterful essays that illuminate not only how we die but also how we live.
Thomas Lynch, poet, funeral director, and author of the highly praised The Undertaking, winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the National Book Award, continues to examine the relations between the "literary and mortuary arts." "Lynch engages the reader with a mixture of poetic and funerary elements....his voice is rich and generous."—Richard Bernstein, New York Times "[W]hat makes him such a fine essayist is that it's just the business of everyday life and death to him."—Los Angeles Times Book Review "Few readers will walk away from this volume less than stunned and grateful."—Jay Parini, author of Benjamin's Crossing "A luminous work of words."—Nicholas Delbanco, author of What Remains
Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality
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Book Description
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
All poets who take their jobs seriously spend a good deal of their time pondering death. Few, though, have logged as many hours as Thomas Lynch, who for 25 years has been a funeral director in Milford, Michigan. As might be expected from a writer who performs "daily stations with the local lately dead," Lynch's second essay collection, Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality, has a lot to say about both the current state of his industry (with its "Walmartized" funerals) and the attitude Americans have toward death, which is more or less to pretend it doesn't exist and to hope it never happens to us or anyone we know. Of course, this leads to our inability to properly understand life. And we become one of those stunned mumblers whom the author has spent a lifetime consoling and selling caskets to at Lynch & Sons.
As in his previous collection, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, Lynch muses on contemporary American life with an appealing mix of light and dark. The effect can be striking, especially in his essays on the death of a crafty old gravedigger; the alcoholism he inherited from his father and, devastatingly, watches develop in his son; his divorce and the wicked poem he later writes about his ex-wife. His prose is always lively, though in several essays he relies on the same cultural touchstones--Bill Gates, the Internet, his Catholic-school upbringing and the "wonderful breasts" of the nuns, and (oddly) the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song "Love the One You're With." More unfortunately, he can lapse into familiar generalizations of the "we boomers" or "as an Irish Catholic" variety. Then again, funeral directors must keep an eye on the habits and statistics of generations and groups (as Lynch puts it, "our favorite parlor game is Demographics and Expectancies"), so perhaps a few familiar generalities are excusable--an occupational hazard of the poet-essayist-mortician. In Lynch's case (and there probably isn't another), they seem a fair exchange for his entertaining and often surprisingly humble wisdom. --John Ponyicsanyi --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Lynch engages the reader with a mixture of poetic and funerary elements....his voice is rich and generous. -- Richard Bernstein, New York Times
[W]hat makes him such a fine essayist is that it's just the business of everyday life and death to him. -- Los Angeles Times Book Review
[W]hat makes him such a fine essayist is that it's just the business of everyday life and death to him. -- Los Angeles Times Book Review
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More About the Author
Thomas Lynch's stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Granta, The Atlantic, Harper's, the Times (of London, New York, Ireland, and Los Angeles), and elsewhere. "The Undertaking" was a finalist for the National Book Award; he is also the author of "Still Life in Milford," "Booking Passage," "Apparition & Late Fictions" and "Walking Papers." Lynch lives in Milford, Michigan, and West Clare, Ireland.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you have read and enjoyed Lynch's "The Undertaking", you will not be disappointed in this book. If not, I suggest reading "Undertaking" first. This collection of essays covers a variety of topics. Lynch is delightfully unafraid to follow his own logic, even if that makes his conclusions far outside of what passes today for mainstream opinion.
The only negative I can give is that the book does not surprise you as much as his first book did. How could it? To me, that simply shows Lynch's unique contribution. These essays are a bit longer and more varied. Some of them are based on talks Lynch has given on the lecture circuit for morticians. One such is my favorite. Lynch notes that he is viewed with some suspicion by both poets and funeral directors, and insightfully compares the poem and the funeral. Very well done!
15 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Reading Thomas Lynch's essays brings you closer to knowing the importance of living. His poetic observances and proximity to death as an undertaker make for a rare sensibility and we, the readers, are lucky he has been thoughtful enough to share them with us.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Thomas Lynch writes catchy, well-tuned sentences. He's in company with the poet Hayden Carruth and personal essayist Phillip Lapote. Reading this book in 2000, I was a little non-plussed by Lynch's Catholicism and belief in God, however, religious views that he kept out of his first book of essays, "The Undertaking." If these bromidic conventional religious views were there in his first book, they weren't at all noticeable. Here, they are unavoidable, and they weaken his essays if only because his views are merely conventional. They or their expression in these essays are the only aspect that mars his otherwise good sense and his fine prose style.
The most spirited of these essays is "Y2 Cat," an essay about his hatred of a certain cat. His anger, ire and even his rage is amusing. His voice and timing make it impossible for him to be misunderstood. The cat, you see, is a leftover remnant of his relationship to his ex-wife. In another essay named "Reno," Thomas Lynch writes about poetry and the use of words, the respect he has for words and metaphors such that what he writes demonstrates he is a poet after all while also showing the common denominators between being a poet and being a funeral director.
This reader marvels how the author who daily works with death nonetheless maintains a strong, down home sense of humor.
The most spirited of these essays is "Y2 Cat," an essay about his hatred of a certain cat. His anger, ire and even his rage is amusing. His voice and timing make it impossible for him to be misunderstood. The cat, you see, is a leftover remnant of his relationship to his ex-wife. In another essay named "Reno," Thomas Lynch writes about poetry and the use of words, the respect he has for words and metaphors such that what he writes demonstrates he is a poet after all while also showing the common denominators between being a poet and being a funeral director.
This reader marvels how the author who daily works with death nonetheless maintains a strong, down home sense of humor.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
a good read for anyone who plans to die one day
Author/Undertaker Lynch has a gift for word play in addressing many areas of life, but mostly death & dying. A book you will lend and recommend.
Published 2 months ago by susu
Bodies in Motion and at Rest
The book by Thomas Lynch is superb....at least the first several chapters are. The introduction is wonderful with many statements that I saved in my "favorite quotation" folder. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Carol Boston
Simply Sublime!
As a peer in the profession, I have heard him speak at conventions, spoken to him myself, and read his works. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Colleen T.
If you like overheated prose . . .
you will like this book. Lynch's "poetic" prose is purple. If you like Sherwin Nuland or David Berlinski, you will like this book. If you prefer crisp writing, you will not. Read more
Published on September 5, 2005 by Brian C. Hagerty
Bodies in Motion ...
So, here I was, suspended between the wonderous and terrifying Christmas holy day, and the equally awesome coming of the New Year, wholly of our own making, mind you--trying to eke... Read more
Published on December 29, 2002 by Kathryn
Enjoyable book
I take issue with the above Amazon.com review somewhat. While it's true that throughout the book, Lynch makes repeated comparisons to a variety of topical matters (Y2K, The... Read more
Published on August 3, 2000 by T. Jerome Meltreger
Language and life by a master
Mr. Lynch returns with a treatise on life, love & death.
I recall my early books and the instructors who taught me to look at words, sentances and paragraphs that make up a... Read more
Published on July 24, 2000 by Patrick J. Beach
Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
So I'm over at the Hortons' with my stretcher and mini-van and my able apprentice, young Matt Sheffler, because they found old George, the cemetery sexton, dead in bed this Thursday morning in ordinary time. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Thomas Lynch, Oak Grove, United States, West Clare, Father Kenny, Jessica Mitford, Main Street, Sister Jean, Wall Street, Bill Gates, Central Park, George Horton, Service Corporation International New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
So I'm over at the Hortons' with my stretcher and mini-van and my able apprentice, young Matt Sheffler, because they found old George, the cemetery sexton, dead in bed this Thursday morning in ordinary time. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Thomas Lynch, Oak Grove, United States, West Clare, Father Kenny, Jessica Mitford, Main Street, Sister Jean, Wall Street, Bill Gates, Central Park, George Horton, Service Corporation International New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 24
books:
See all 24 books this book cites
- American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford on 6 pages
- Collected Poems by Ted Hughes in Front Matter
- Still Life in Milford: Poems by Thomas Lynch in Front Matter
- Selected Poems by Jenny Joseph in Front Matter
- Lives of the Saints by Nino Ricci on page 147
See all 24 books this book cites
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