The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade [Paperback]

Thomas Lynch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 22, 2009

“[Lynch] brings the lessons of death to life, and turns life and death into art.” —Time Out New York

Here is the voice of both witness and functionary. Lynch stands between “the living and the living who have died” with outrage and amazement, awe and calm, straining for the brief glimpse we all get of what mortality means to a vital species.

Editorial Reviews

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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (June 22, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393334872
• ISBN-13: 978-0393334876
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #31,702 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

54 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Every year I try to pick my own "Book of the Year.", October 29, 1999

By 

L. D Sears (El Paso, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade (Mass Market Paperback)

Every year I try to pick my own "Book of the Year." This started out as a way of picking an annual Xmas gift for my sister-in-law. Now it has become my own personal way of ranking books I have read. Though it is only late October and, though I had yet another book in mind, Lynch wins. I had heard him read a section of this book on a C-Span reading and bought it. But it sat unread on my shelf for close to a year. This past week, I was hungry for something good to read and so grabbed it pretty much at random. For the next three days, I used every spare moment of my time to finish it. Each essay convinced me that it alone was the best. And, except for the anti- Jessica Mitford diatribe near the end, it was hard to find any essay not to be a personal favorite in one way or another. While ostensibly about the funeral business-past and present--it is certainly about a great deal more. I found myself reading whole sections of it aloud to friends, with great excitement. Wonderful, rich writing.

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life Studies from the Dismal Trade is the key phrase....., February 6, 2002

By 

David J. Gannon (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade (Mass Market Paperback)

Life Studies from the Dismal Trade is the subtitle of Thomas Lynch's extraordinary collection of essays. It says far more about the substance of this book than the title itself.

Lynch is the sole funeral director in Milford, Michigan. As such, as he states in his opening, he "buries a couple of hundred of his towns people". It is not, an occasional aside notwithstanding, the technical aspects of his job that lynch focuses on here, however. As the subtitle suggests, it is the living that concern Mr. Lynch, and, in fact, as an undertaker, it is the living, not the dead, he truly serves. For, as he is wont to point out, the dead don't care.

The living, on the other hand, care a great deal. Especially in cases of tragic, unforeseen death. The young murder victim's family, the suicide's family, and so on.

Mr. Lynch is a published poet. So his essays are not the dry stuff of technical journals, but rater elegant, philosophical expositions on the nature of death, the nature of survival, and the nature of his profession.

One would think that this would be a rather depressing read but, in fact, it is anything but.

I have recommended the book to many friends-boomers like myself with aging parents. Reading this book helped me to deal more effectively with my own parent's deaths. It helps one put some perspective on the rituals that we observe attendant to death. That it manages to inform and entertain as well is a remarkable achievement.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I picked it up on a bargain table....., July 27, 2000

By 

Michelle Carlson - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade (Mass Market Paperback)

and found it to be one of the most beautifully written books I've yet read. In going through a time where I've been caught up in examining the deeper issues of my own life, this small book spoke a great deal to what was going on in my head and heart. Not death, per se, but rather life and enjoying it, trying to make sense of it. Mr. Lynch examines a subject we in America too often prefer not to deal with - the aftermath of death; the process that begins immediately after the departing of the spirit.

Beautifully, sensitively written. I'm going to buy it as a birthday present for a close friend. READ IT! It's really not morbid! :)