The Day of the Dead: And Other Mortal Reflections [Hardcover]

Frank Gonzalez-Crussi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1993

A collection of essays, the sequel to Notes of an Atomist, looks at mortality from the cold-blooded perspective of morticians and embalmers, with a visit to a Mexican hospital on that country's lively celebration of death.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This strangely beautiful, disquieting meditation on death begins as Gonzalez-Crussi visits an embalmer, who relates the bizarre fates of two famous cadavers: slain gangster John Dillinger and Argentine demagogue Eva Peron. The author, a Chicago pathologist and popular essayist ( Notes of an Anatomist ), next travels to his native Mexico for the festive Day of the Dead celebrated on Nov. 2. Back in the U.S., for the benefit of anxious BBC documentary filmmakers, he performs an autopsy of a patient who has died of AIDS. Elsewhere Gonzalez-Crussi ponders how artists and movie-makers from Hieronymus Bosch to Ingmar Bergman invent imagery to come to grips with the Grim Reaper. He proves himself a memorable, often profound essayist in this exploration of death's meanings and our denial or avoidance of mortality. First serial to the New Yorker.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

These are a moving series of meditative essays occasioned by pathologist Gonzalez-Crussi's collaboration with a BBC documentary film crew in "a stark visual record of mortality." They probe behind the scenes to explore such things as the author's own misgivings in permitting the filming of an autopsy, reflect on death as it is depicted in various forms of art, and reveal Mexico's "Day of the Dead" celebrations and religious syncretism. These beautiful, poetic essays will speak to people of various religious traditions and beliefs. Highly recommended. First serial rights to The New Yorker.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 179 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt; 1st edition (November 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 015181192x
• ISBN-13: 978-0151811922
• ASIN: 015181192X
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,893,215 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting stories, banal reflections, February 16, 2011

By 

Harry Eagar (Maui) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Day of the Dead: And Other Mortal Reflections (F. Gonzales-Crussi Classics) (Paperback)

There are some interesting stories in "The Day of the Dead," but I almost didn't get to them. The writing is so affectedly literary and clunky that at page 15 I was debating whether to continue. I am moderately glad to have pressed on.

The framework concerns a BBC documentary about dead people in which Frank Gonzalez-Crussi, a Chicago pathologist born in Mexico, was a participant. Each essay was set off by an episode in the filming, but the book is not about the documentary.

A Mexican was a natural subject, since that country's attitude toward the dead is distinctive. The Day of the Dead (All Soul's Day) has a long European heritage, but nowhere today is it marked with such vigor as in Mexico.

Each essay is marked by Gonzalez-Crussi's ruminations about the mystery and permanence of death, and these are banal.

The stories, though, are baroque and fascinating. And true.

In the first, a president of Argentina is tortured to death to make him reveal the whereabouts of the embalmed corpse of Eva Peron.

The second explains how Aztecs ripped out hearts from living victims.

The third reviews the history of anatomical specimens.

The fourth, and most interesting, sends 9-year-old Gonzalez-Crussi on a school field trip to view the rotting body of a small child.

The fifth recounts the autopsy of a child who died of AIDS, and the nervousness of the participants. This one resonated deeply with me, since the week I read it our esteemed county medical examiner died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (which in our obituary we delicately did not call mad cow disease), which he possibly got while doing an autopsy. Despite agitation to the contrary, AIDS is not the trivial infection some would have, and concerns about inadvertent transmission have not been misplaced. On the other hand, the courage of medical professionals should not be scouted, and Gonzalez-Crussi gives a good discussion of the moral, as well as mortal, reflections of encounters with implacable diseases.

Regrettably, he follows with a last essay about death and the visual arts that is not merely banal but misinformed.

He contends that "works of art never instantiate the aesthetics of death. Works of art are rather the exclusion of death. For art truly to represent death, it would have to include death's reality as part and parcel of the work."

I don't understand what that means, but death as reality in art was demonstrated at a Berlin gallery a few years ago.

A woman jumped off the building and landed at the entrance. Art aficionados stepped nonchalantly around her corpse, under the impression that it was part of the "installation," although one wonders if they were not surprised by the attention to detail, so unusual in modern art.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I thankyou deeply Valerie, January 21, 2000

By 

Tricia Tomasini-Axelsen (Santa Rosa, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: For She Is the Tree of Life: Grandmothers Through the Eyes of Women Writers (Paperback)

When I was Sixteen, Valerie was my counselor. She ended up taking me into her home and giving me the support I needed to regain my life. Iam thirty years old now and have a wonderful life,because someone showed me I matter. Valeries books are enjoyable to read and have useful insight. I highly recommend this book. Love, Tricia