Sam Roberts admits at the outset of this delightful book that, when he was a young child, the concept of death both frightened him and fueled his desire to become a journalist. So it was perhaps beshert (fated) that Roberts has capped his long writing career as an obituary writer for the New York Times. In Are They Dead Yet?: The Art of the Obit, Roberts muses over the intricacies of writing obituaries and mines a long career for both personal and professional anecdotes.
Who rates an obituary in the august pages of the fabled paper-of-record? How do journalists handle the delicate task of approaching living people to prepare articles that will only appear posthumously? Why do people other than the deceased’s loved ones like to read obituaries? What happens when obituarists (as Roberts prefers to call his fellow writers) make mistakes? Roberts answers these questions and more while simultaneously surveying what seems to be an extensive secondary literature on the art of obituary writing.
Obituaries occupy a special place in journalism. The decisions that go into selecting candidates for coverage and constructing their stories are fraught at every turn. Family members want to remember the positive aspects of the deceased’s life, but obituaries are not eulogies. The public wants to read about significant lives and accomplishments, but many who are immortalized in the Times (and other papers) are infamous as well as famous. As Roberts observes: “Writing obituaries has persuaded me that everyone has a story to tell; every life, no matter how seemingly mundane, can offer something to grasp.” Yet not everyone gets a New York Times obituary, even people whom readers might consider important.
Obituary-writing is a serious occupation but, surprisingly, it also has its lighter moments. Roberts captures these and pays warm-hearted tribute to his fellow obituarists as well as their deserving (and sometimes undeserving) subjects. He is a genial, if sometimes repetitious, guide through the complexities of the genre.
