Death sentences
2011 was the year of the Obit Writer: some lessons
Whichever way the world of human endeavour stacks up for you,it’s hard to dispute the contention that this has been an extraordinary year of passages. Har Gobind Khorana,Kim Jong-il,Dev Anand,M.F. Husain,Steve Jobs,Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi,Shammi Kapoor,Elizabeth Taylor,Vaclav Havel,Bhimsen Joshi,Srilal Shukla,Christopher Hitchens,Socrates. Why,even Osama bin Laden. Obituarists were kept busy in 2011. This year the centre of gravity did shift economically and politically,though inscrutably so — but with its cast of the important recently dead,this year has cast a clearer light on how so many contributions shaped the world to render it as it is. Some twelve-months are like that,and this one’s archives are rich with remembrances of lives and times past.
It is useful then to see off the year with the faintly — and,I admit,disturbingly — morbid exercise of inquiring into the making of an obituary. There are,it appears,folks who obsess over obituaries. They welcome sunrise every day by scanning their morning newspaper for stories about the newly departed,and since obit-writing is the craft by which the big British newspapers square up against each other and keep updating the global standard,they carefully track the Web editions of what Marilyn Johnson calls the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — The Daily Telegraph,The Independent,The Times and The Guardian. A few years ago,Johnson,an American journalist who confesses to being a “fan” of obituaries,wrote a chronicle of her obsession,The Dead Beat: Lost Souls,Lucky Stiffs,and the Perverse Pleasure of Obituaries,and I cannot say that her enthusiasm is not catching.
So,beware: you have been warned.
A classic obituary has many parts,she tells us. There is,first,the Tombstone: basically the intimation that so-and-so has died at such-and-such age. It is followed by the Bad News: the circumstance of the admittedly unfortunate death. Some call it the “death sentence”,and masters of obit-writing suggest that unless there is an exceptional angle to the cause of death,it’s best to be delicate. Third is what Johnson calls the Song and Dance,a couple of paragraphs to ink in “the turning point in the story of the subject’s life”,the telling anecdote to show how the said life acquired a rhythm to make it memorable enough to be written up for such wide readership. (In the hands of the advanced practitioner,naturally,these elements are easily scrambled.)
Having grabbed the reader’s attention,the obituarist will then shuffle back in her story,to document how and where it all began. Johnson calls it the Reverse Shift,the drift into Desperate Chronology. While reading an obit,be attentive to this stretch because “the measure of the artistry of an obit writer is his or her ability to transcend that desperate chronology”.
Between the desperate chronology and the end of the obit,she notes,are the Friars,quotes from “experts,relatives,old friends” that bring alive a life story,give it intimacy and sizzle. And then the writerly exit,the punch line: the Telegraph. And finally,the Lifeboat: the list of survivors.
Obits enthusiasts are not folks who are attracted to the fact of death,you understand,they in fact celebrate life by contemplating the contours of lived experience. And some of them,it transpires,gather at obits conferences to listen in awe of the masters. Suffice it to say that there is some consolation that the big debates on obits are not yet settled. For instance,should obits ideally be written up in advance,so that the fact of death does not hinder one from taking a clear-eyed view of the subject’s faults and strengths? Or,is there something to be said for the freshness that comes with the hastily written obit upon hearing of a death,for the distillation of a life story that the first thoughts compel? Should obits be commissioned from those with intimacy with the subject,or domain knowledge? Or is the primary obit better left to the beat obituarist?
Any which way,it is instructive to heed Johnson’s caution that it’s best to avoid being too obviously blunt,and to instead rise to the challenge of mock-delicacy and understatement. Obits are,it seems,the ideal habitat for the apt euphemism. Johnson quotes Hugh Massingberd,“the father of The [Daily Telegraph obit” who played a seminal role in the 1986 British Revolution in obit writing,on the subject. Here are some euphemisms decoded: “Gave colourful accounts of his exploits — Liar! No discernible enthusiasm for civil rights — Nazi! Powerful negotiator — Bully! Tireless raconteur — Crashing bore! Relished the cadences of the English language — Old windbag! Affable and hospitable at every hour — Alcoholic! He was attracted to his theories and sometimes urged them too strongly — Religious fanatic!”
This is,as Johnson exults,the great age of obit-writing. It is,also,an increasingly egalitarian age. And how we take a measure of lives,well-known as well as obscure,says much about how far we have moved down the path of democratisation. There is,therefore,a lot yet to be analysed not just about the folks who moved on this year — but also about how we marked that passage.
This applies not just to the obit-writer,it also holds to account the departed subject. Obituary styles vary across cultures,though of course they are always changing,as the British revolution showed. Yet they are closely linked to the culture of biography,the capacity of a society to support and enjoy scholarship in the telling of a life story as well as,and in India we miss this,a subject’s openness to making the stories and documents of her life accessible to the storyteller. Perhaps that is why the challenge for the Indian obituarist is rather different from Johnson’s — roll back to the obits you read across the media this year,and it’s difficult to discern fidelity to the Desperate Chronology. In its absence,appreciations of the men and women who passed away become tributes to their big achievements. The void left by a lack of Desperate Chronology too then tends to be filled by platitudes.
As we raise a toast to the new year,let’s declare war on the predictable platitude.
mini.kapoor@expressindia.com
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