Three Impactful Books
DOUGHTY
Over the past year, I have tracked an interesting woman with a Youtube channel called Ask A Mortician (Caitlyn Doughty; she's foxy and clever and has almost a million subscribers.) A college major in medieval studies who went into funeral work, she's become a social media celebrity and published three books (the first a memoir, the second recording her world-travels looking at funeral customs.) A few weeks ago I saw her at a new-book reading in downtown Los Angeles at a sold-out 300-person nightclub. And I thought, this is good, and it's good in part because she brings the same joie-de-vivre to the topic that Thomas Lynch does.
LYNCH
Thomas Lynch?
Around 1998-2003, I closely watched HBO's "Six Feet Under," about a cockeyed LA family that ran a funeral home. (The house used for exteriors was about a mile from my own. And we were in girl scouts later with one of the actresses). In 2008, at LA's beautiful 1920s downtown public library, I saw an interview and book reading with Alan Ball, the series creator, and Thomas Lynch, a Michigan undertaker, poet, and author of several books of both thoughtful and whimsical essays. So I read several of Lynch's books around 2008 when I saw him, which I am certain were helpful in working through the death of my mother a few years later in 2011.
Around 1998-2003, I closely watched HBO's "Six Feet Under," about a cockeyed LA family that ran a funeral home. (The house used for exteriors was about a mile from my own. And we were in girl scouts later with one of the actresses). In 2008, at LA's beautiful 1920s downtown public library, I saw an interview and book reading with Alan Ball, the series creator, and Thomas Lynch, a Michigan undertaker, poet, and author of several books of both thoughtful and whimsical essays. So I read several of Lynch's books around 2008 when I saw him, which I am certain were helpful in working through the death of my mother a few years later in 2011.
I hadn't picked up Lynch for a long time, but the Doughty book reminded me of him. Is he still around? Google says: He is, and published a book recently and another one to be released in November; he's giving a book reading somewhere in Michigan this month. So he's still vertical. Not having his email, I wrote a letter thanking him for his work and stamped it and sent it off in this week's post. I'm now listening to the audiobook of his most popular book, "The Undertaking: Tales from the Dismal Trade" - such as today's hike in the hills. (His next title: "Bodies in Motion and at Rest.")
So Lynch.
MITFORD
Somewhere between Doughty and Lynch, I recalled an experience in high school and saw it in a new light. In the middle of nowhere in rural Iowa, our high school library had a copy of "The American Way of Death," by Jessica Mitford. You may know; Mitford was a Brit from a famous family and wrote an "expose' " of the American trade in the early 60s. Did that influence my choice of pathology as a medical residency? Let's call it one factor. But here's what's new. Mitford's book is an exercise in taking something fairly familiar, and unpacking it, taking the back off, looking at it upside down and sideways and showing how all the gears and levers move. That's something I love. Later in life, in 2001, I left medicine and armed with a fresh MBA, plunged into a new world of strategy consulting, which involves looking at things upside down and sideways and proposing what the gears and levers are and how to move them. Is there a connection between my experience of Mitford's creativity and investigation in 1975, and that career shift in 2001, 25 years later at age 40? Let's call it one factor.