The Glen Rock Book of the Dead [Hardcover]

Marion Winik (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2008

In her author’s note, Marion Winik writes that in Mexico on the Day of the Dead, “people build altars to their loved ones . . . they go to the cemetery and stay all night, praying, singing, drinking, wailing. They tell the sad stories and the noble ones; they eat cookies shaped like skeletons. They celebrate and mourn at once.” Striking that balance, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead presents snapshot portraits of The Jeweler, The Driving Instructor, The Bad Influence, The Queen of New Jersey—and roughly fifty others who have touched Winik’s life, from her son’s second grade teacher to Keith Haring. Tied together by the inimitable, poignant voice of Winik, these losses form not only an autobiography but a story of our time, delivering a lyrical journey that ultimately raises the spirits.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Taking a cue from the Mexican Day of the Dead, on which they build altars to deceased loved ones, "tell the sad stories and the noble ones... celebrate and mourn at once," author and NPR personality Winik (Rules for the Unruly) chronicles her life through glimpses of the late members of her adopted Pennsylvania home, Glen Rock, who have influenced her over the years. Most are friends of friends and the like; a few others are artists and authors. An eye doctor who passed away when she was a child, for example, had been a friend of the family, a former classmate of her father, and among the first deaths that touched Winik personally. She talks of neighbors who committed suicide, men who died of drug overdoses and women who battled cancer; she writes also of "The Art Star," Keith Haring, whose "adorable symbology-the crawling baby, the barking dog, the blowjobs and dolphins... made perfect sense to me the moment I saw it." ("I must have taken the same acid he did at a Grateful Dead concert when we were fifteen.") Winik treats her subjects with grace, sensitivity and a great deal of her own personality, bringing to brief life the known and unknown, giving each a fitting tribute and the town itself a winning pageant.
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From Booklist

Much of literature is elegiac in nature. Much of Winik’s propulsive, come-clean writing has been about coping with loss. So it makes sense that her newest essay collection comprises tributes to her dead. Glen Rock is the quiet place she lives; Spoon River Anthology was her template. Bold and funny, Winik is the queen of pithiness and punch, and the micro-lives she has created here are far more difficult to forge than their brevity and blithe tone might suggest. Each family member, friend, lover, or neighbor is identified by occupation, temperament, obsession, or curse, such as The Art Star, The Junkie, The Mah Jongg Player, The Bad Influence. And each portrait is a window onto some aspect of Winik’s life, one that has been pitted and torn by deaths accidental, suicidal, and simply tragic, including many due to AIDS. It is a fine and noble act to remember the dead as Winik has with candor, bemusement, and sorrow, and her gracefully crafted miniatures will inspire others to summon memories of their own lost ones. --Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (November 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158243431X
• ISBN-13: 978-1582434315
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 4.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #632,499 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Legacy of a Lost Brother, February 23, 2010

By 

Diana Young "Diana" (York, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Glen Rock Book of the Dead (Kindle Edition)

I was blessed to know one of the many people Marion Wink writes about in her book. It is hard to describe my brother and how truly unique he was, however, Marion does so in two pages. She gives a perfect antidote to give you an insight into his personality perfectly. Although this book is about all the people that have passed away, it is incredibly upbeat, humorous, and insightful. I would highly recommend this book to anyone and I feel blessed that Marion chose my brother to write about.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Great Equalizer, December 12, 2009

By 

Ayun Halliday "Author of No Touch Monkey!" (Beautiful Brooklyn New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Glen Rock Book of the Dead (Hardcover)

This is one of the rewards of getting three or four or five decades under your belt. You brush up against a lot of people, some of whom will stick with you for the rest of your life. Marion - movingly, beautifully, humorously - eulogizes the ones who no longer walk amongst us. It's the memoirist's equivalent of carving tombstones, to remark upon their passing, and let others know some of the notable things about those who have gone before.

This book will cause you to reflect fondly upon your own dead, and bring a certain sense of grace to your own inevitable demise.

It's also beautifully designed, and looks like something a Victorian lady might keep next to an ornament made of the deceased hair.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Haunting, beautiful, necessary: the most emotion-drenched book I read this year, October 30, 2008

By 

Jesse Kornbluth "Head Butler" (New York) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Glen Rock Book of the Dead (Hardcover)

November 1: "the day of the dead". In the Mexican/Spanish tradition, it's the day when those who have passed on find an easier passage to visit the living. And the living do their part by visiting cemeteries and honoring their dead. It's a spooky day.

Marion Winik was at a writers' workshop where she read a poem about a man learns who his lover was and what she needed --- long after she's gone. Winik took "gone" a step further and thought about her friend, The Jeweler, dead for decades.

She jotted some memories and "felt my brain begin to crowd up, as if tickets to a show had just gone on sale and all my ghosts were screeching up at the box office." She made a list of names. Then she went home to Glen Rock, Pennsylvania, woke up early, and began her daily meeting with her dead.

Recalling and recording "The Glen Rock Book of the Dead" was not depressing for Winik. "I have lost too many people to make talking and thinking about them an unpleasant thing to do," she says. "Writing this book has been a chance to hang out with my friends."

If you have read "First Comes Love" --- Winik's memoir about her marriage to a gay man and his death from AIDS --- you may imagine what you are in for: equal parts laceration and exhilaration, 100% brilliance. To say there has never been a book like this doesn't begin to get at my admiration for what Winik does here --- I'm dazzled by the highwire act of her writing, her willingness to go deep and then go deeper, and her immense wisdom about life.

51 chapters, 96 pages, no profile longer than two pages --- you could slip it in your pocket, read it in an hour. And, in that time, meet unforgettable characters. Like:

The Neighbor: a quiet kid, son of the high school principal, a suicide at 18. "Today I found his father's phone number on the Internet, which took about ten seconds, and I called it. I told him I was thinking about his son. Because our old class is having a reunion, I said, fumbling for an excuse, I heard he died. There was a long pause. He said, yes. He did. Have fun at your reunion."

The Virgin: a high school kid, killed in a head-on collision. "A couple of days later half our high school is staring into an open coffin, wondering if you needed tinted aviators and an uncomfortable suit in the afterlife."

The Bon Vivant: "When he left us, it was like taking Saturday out of the week or May out of the calendar..."

Too many die from drugs, but they never blur. Because this is Marion Winik, there are the freak deaths --- the motorcyclist whose head was snapped back by a white bird as he tooled down a mountain with his twelve-year-old daughter riding behind him. There is a second grade teacher, a peach, stolen by breast cancer. Caroline Knapp, not known to Winik, but a sister anyway. Kids, too many kids. One boy in Iraq. And near the end, one death that you don't see coming and makes you sit back and stop, just stop.

There is no conclusion, but Winik does say this: "The only thing I knew was what I'd learned at my job writing computer manuals: when some mysterious awful thing happens and the whole document disappears, you have to open a new file and start over. That is all you can do."

So mourn. And celebrate. Easy to get stuck in the rut of the first. Hard to balance them. Marion Winik does, and the result is so powerful that I left the book shaking. And then I made my own list.

If you have the guts to read this book --- easily the most powerful document I've read in years --- you will almost surely make your own list of the lost. You can't not. "The Glen Rock Book of The Dead" is that haunting, that beautiful, that necessary.