The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade
by Thomas Lynch

The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade
List Price: $14.00
Our Price: $7.00
You Save: $7.00 (50%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $3.88 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Thomas Lynch
Edition: Paperback
Published: 1998-09-01
ISBN: 0140276238
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)

Book Reviews of The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

Book Review: take a different look
Summary: 5 Stars

This book is really eye opening to the undertaking trade. It was written with great warmth and emotion. To see this trade from the personal side is wonderful. I would tell anyone going into the ministry to read this book!

Summary of The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

"...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
Thomas Lynch serves his readership as a poet and memoirist, and his townspeople as a funeral director. In this wholly unique collection of essays, the two vocations meet as Lynch shows himself to be a competent functionary of mourning--dispensing comfort and homespun wisdom to the grief-stricken--as well as a poet poignantly tuning language to the right tones of private release. He is also a man of sardonic wit, uncovering humor where we least thought to find it--in our fear of and fascination with death. In its homages to parents who have died and to children who shouldn't have, its tales of golfers tripping over grave markers, portraits of gourmands and hypochondriacs, lovers and suicides, The Undertaking displays an impressively wide vocal range--from solemn, nostalgic, and lyrical to acerbic, sprightly, and unflinchingly professional.

General Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in ...thought provoking and sometimes funny!
Bitter is the New Black : Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass,Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office ImageBitter is the New Black : Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass,Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office
by Jen Lancaster
NAL Trade; Published: 2006-03-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.88
Price in other shops: $13.95
Straight Up and Dirty: A Memoir ImageStraight Up and Dirty: A Memoir
by Stephanie Klein
Harper Paperbacks; Published: 2007-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.69
Price in other shops: $14.95
Oh the Glory of It All ImageOh the Glory of It All
by Sean Wilsey
Published: 2006-04-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.98
Price in other shops: $15.00
Running with Scissors: A Memoir ImageRunning with Scissors: A Memoir
by Augusten Burroughs
Picador; Published: 2006-09-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.05
Price in other shops: $14.00
Dry: A Memoir ImageDry: A Memoir
by Augusten Burroughs
Picador; Published: 2004-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.50
Price in other shops: $14.00
Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood ImageSmashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood
by Koren Zailckas
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2006-01-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.99
Price in other shops: $14.00
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) ImageFear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
by Hunter S. Thompson
HarperPerennial; Published: 2005-04-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.20
Price in other shops: $16.50
How I Became Hettie Jones ImageHow I Became Hettie Jones
by Hettie Jones
Grove Press; Published: 1996-12-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.02
Price in other shops: $14.00
Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir ImageMinor Characters: A Beat Memoir
by Joyce Johnson
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1999-07-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.46
Price in other shops: $15.00
On the Road ImageOn the Road
by Jack Kerouac
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1976-12-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.80
Price in other shops: $15.00
Similar Books and other products
Alcestis: A Play ImageAlcestis: A Play
by Euripides
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2000-09-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.57
Price in other shops: $13.00
Still Life in Milford: Poems ImageStill Life in Milford: Poems
by Thomas Lynch
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 1999-11-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.01
Price in other shops: $13.95
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith ImageTraveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
by Anne Lamott
Anchor; Published: 2000-02-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.49
Price in other shops: $14.95
The American Way of Death Revisited ImageThe American Way of Death Revisited
by Jessica Mitford
Vintage; Published: 2000-01-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.81
Price in other shops: $14.95
A Grief Observed ImageA Grief Observed
by C. S. Lewis
HarperOne; Published: 2001-02-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.78
Price in other shops: $11.95
A River Runs through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition ImageA River Runs through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition
by Norman Maclean
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 2001-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.89
Price in other shops: $12.00
Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs ImageGig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs
Three Rivers Press; Published: 2001-08-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops: $16.95
Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans ImageBooking Passage: We Irish and Americans
by Thomas Lynch
W. W. Norton; Published: 2006-06-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.27
Price in other shops: $14.95
Mortician Diaries: The Dead-Honest Truth from a Life Spent with Death ImageMortician Diaries: The Dead-Honest Truth from a Life Spent with Death
by June Nadle
New World Library; Published: 2006-07-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.77
Price in other shops: $14.95
Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality ImageBodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality
by Thomas Lynch
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2001-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops: $13.95
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories