The Day of the Dead: And Other Mortal Reflections - Softcover

Gonzalez-Crussi, F.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1607140810 ISBN 13: 9781607140818

Publisher: Kaplan Publishing, 2009

Synopsis

“Delightfully readable.”—Newsday

 

“Dr. Gonzalez–Crussi is a marvelous storyteller as well as a meticulous observer, and he has written a book about death that is pulsing with life.”—The New York Times Book Review

 

“Gonzalez–Crussi comes off as a sort of dream dinner guest: urbane, informed, ironic, and entertaining.”—San Francisco Examiner–Chronicle

 

“Gonzalez–Crussi [writes] with a flowing prose style ... indulging some perceptive observations on politics and religion en route.... His account of the filming of an autopsy he performed leads into a commentary on various reactions to death. He draws attention to the profound difference between the words ‘resuscitation’ and ‘reactivation’ in near–death situations.... There is much here for immediate and future pondering.”—Booklist

 

“Elegant.... While Gonzalez–Crussi brings some levity to his subject here, the overall tone is serious—appropriately so—and should stir readers into their own memento mori.—Kirkus Reviews

About this title

About the Author:

González-Crussi is Professor emeritus of pathology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He is the author of The Five Senses, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and Notes of an Anatomist, winner of the nonfiction first prize of the Society for Midland Authors. He lives in Chicago.

From Kirkus Reviews:

The genesis for this latest collection of elegant essays from Gonzalez-Crussi (Pathology/Children's Memorial Hospital, Northwestern University; On the Nature of Things Erotic, 1988, etc.) was a BBC TV-series that started out to be a sort of day-in- the-life-of... but soon came to focus on death and dying. This isn't the book of the show, however, but Gonzalez-Crussi's later musings and reflections. The opening piece describes a prototypical funeral home in a working-class Chicago neighborhood, presided over by an octogenarian obviously pleased with his life's work. Gonzalez- Crussi quotes liberally from the embalmer's own writings on the death of John Dillinger, as well as on the fate of Eva Per˘n's body--subjected to elaborate preservation, veneration, and then attempts by anti-Per˘nistas to destroy it. The scene then switches to Mexico City, the author's birthplace, for essays dealing with the elaborate festivities surrounding the Day of the Dead. On this occasion, which takes place during the first week of November, pre- Columbian and Catholic customs blend in celebrations in which the departed are offered food and drink amid special offrendas--flower- bedecked altars with motifs of cheerful skulls and skeletons. This combination of irreverence, merriment, and fatalism, Gonzalez- Crussi suggests, characterizes the Mexican attitude toward death, a sharp contrast to the European legacy of lugubriousness and ``danse macabre.'' Meanwhile, in one of his most vivid pieces, the author recalls his solitary trip at age nine to a poor Mexican neighborhood: There, he viewed the body of a young child in a room in which the glorious abundance of flowers couldn't mask the stench of the decomposing body. Finally, Gonzalez-Crussi describes an autopsy, and discusses how death has been depicted in the arts. While Gonzalez-Crussi brings some levity to his subject here, the overall tone is serious--appropriately so--and should stir readers into their own memento mori. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Kaplan Publishing
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1607140810
• ISBN 13: 9781607140818
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192