Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality [Paperback]

Thomas Lynch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2001

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

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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (June 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393321649
• ISBN-13: 978-0393321647
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #634,107 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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:

5.0 out of 5 stars Missing Only the Element of Surprise, March 18, 2004

By 

Harry W. Forbes (Wrentham, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality (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:

5.0 out of 5 stars On Metaphor and Mortality, June 16, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality (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.

5.0 out of 5 stars Bodies in Motion and at Rest, November 25, 2011

By 

Carol Boston (Eureka, IL, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality (Hardcover)

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. The first several essays leave you with a lot to think about, but the last couple are about the importance of poetry, and this is clearly Lynch's "hobbyhorse." On the whole, the book is powerful and well worth reading.