The Baltimore book of the dead

The Baltimore book of the dead

Marion Winik

Book - 2018

"When Cheryl Strayed was asked by the Boston Globe to name a book she finds herself recommending time and again, she chose The Glen Rock Book of the Dead. Now that beloved book has a sequel: The Baltimore Book of the Dead, another collection of portraits of the dead, their compressed narratives weaving a unusual, richly populated memoir. Approaching mourning and memory with great care and an eye for the idiosyncratic, the story begins in the 1960s in the author's native New Jersey, moves through Austin, Texas and rural Pennsylvania, and settles in her current home of Baltimore. Winik begins with a portrait of her mother, The Alpha. In this first vignette, Winik introduces locales and language around which other stories will orbit:... the power of family, home, and love, the pain of loss and the tenderness of nostalgia, the backdrop of nature and public events. From there, she goes on to create a highly personal panorama of the last half-century of American life. Joining The Alpha are The Man Who Could Take off His Thumb, The Babydaddy, The Warrior Poetess, and The Thin White Duke, not to mention a miniature poodle and a goldfish. Intimacy and humor are manifest in the economy of each piece, none of which exceeds 400 words, each of which conjures and celebrates a life"--

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Location Call Number   Status
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Subjects
Winik, Marion > Anecdotes.
Death > Anecdotes.
Curiosities and wonders.
Baltimore (Md.) > Biography.
Biographies.
Autobiographies.
Anecdotes.
Genres
Biographies
Autobiographies
Anecdotes
Published
Berkeley, California : Counterpoint 2018.
Language
English
Main Author
Marion Winik (author)
Edition
First hardcover edition
Physical Description
xix, 138 pages ; 19 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9781640091214
  • The alpha
  • The perfect couple
  • The fourth
  • The cat with nine lives
  • The man who could take off his thumb
  • The classmate
  • Two first cousins
  • Their mother
  • The social worker
  • The mensch
  • The thin white duke
  • The camp director
  • The history professor
  • The golden boy
  • The warrior poetess
  • The Jewish Floridian
  • The brother-in-law
  • Who dat
  • The artist
  • The young Hercules
  • The Velveteen Rabbit
  • The werewolf
  • The queen of the scene
  • The volunteer
  • The all-American
  • The paid professional codependent
  • The southern writer
  • The belle of the ball
  • The rancher
  • The father of the bride
  • Portrait of a lady
  • The statistic
  • Two slips of the knife
  • The old rake
  • The mother of four
  • The man of honor
  • The angel
  • The Montessori teacher
  • The ambassador's wife
  • The playwright
  • The belligerent stream
  • The southern gentleman
  • The squash player
  • Her son
  • His brother
  • The grandmother-general
  • The role model
  • The talent
  • The French horn player
  • The big man
  • The assistant superintendent
  • The very tiny baby
  • His dog
  • The pirate
  • The happy man
  • The babydaddy
  • The innocents
  • The leader of the pack
  • El Suegro
  • The living.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Winik follows her essay collection The Glen Rock Book of the Dead with this unconventional though captivating blend of memoir and biography. It's a slim volume of remembrances of the author's deceased friends and influences who, in one way or another, affected her. Chief among these is her mother, whose chapter is titled "The Alpha," and Winik describes her as believing herself impervious to danger, including getting lung cancer from smoking for 65 years, which is what killed her in 2008. In "The Thin White Duke," Winik writes of being a teenager "with mild gender dysphoria" and being captivated by David Bowie's various personae, while in "The Artist," she recounts taking her daughter to one of Prince's last concerts before his 2016 death. The stories of other people are plucked from the various places the author has lived-"The Neatnik," a young software designer who died of uterine cancer in 2013 in Austin, Tex.; two friends' daughters, killed in car accidents in 2008 and 2012 in Texas and Pittsburgh; "El Suegro," her son's late father-in-law, who died from pancreatic cancer. Throughout these understated portraits, Winik writes with a delightfully light and nuanced hand. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

National Public Radio contributor, author (First Comes Love; Telling), blogger, and MFA professor (Baltimore Univ.) Winik follows up 2010's The Glen Rock Book of the Dead with dispatches from Baltimore, although the people the itinerant author memorializes come from many locations and times in her life. They range from her mother, called "the Alpha" in the first short essay, to colleagues at various jobs and writers' gatherings; friends and lovers; foes and family, spanning New Jersey to New Orleans to Texas and rural Pennsylvania; some rock gods (Lou Reed is "The Role Model"; Prince is "The Artist"; David Bowie is "The Thin White Duke," which Winik observes was a problematic personality he was fortunate to outlive); and several animals (a tribute to a goldfish is surprisingly touching). The 60-plus essays are heartbreaking, as in the death of her daughter's playmate ("The Little Bird"), her former brother-in-law, who just gave up after a drunken tumble, or others who died too soon. Additional writings are humorous or tender, offering a glimpse of Winik's own life and tremendous powers of observation. VERDICT An exquisite, quick read that most will want to reread and turn to when their loved ones are gone. [See "Editors' Fall Picks," LJ 8/18.]-Liz French, Library Journal © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A sequel to The Glen Rock Book of the Dead (2008), the author's previous collection of sharp-eyed memorials.Though Winik (MFA Program/Univ. of Baltimore; Highs in the Low Fifties: How I Stumbled Through the Joys of Single Living, 2013, etc.) is most widely regarded as a humorist, through her columns and NPR commentary, death has been a focus of her book projects since First Comes Love (1996). As she observes in the introduction to her latest, "death is the subtext of life, there is no way around it. It is the foundation of life's meaning and value." The author also explains that her volumes reflect chronology rather than geography; despite the title, these aren't Baltimore's deaths but rather deaths that have occurred since she moved to Baltimore from Glen Rock, Pennsylvania, in 2009. So there's plenty about her New Jersey girlhood, beginning with the opening piece on her mother and proceeding through the deaths of family members and her mother's friends. Then she moves on to her pivotal years in Texas, where she found her voice and professional identity in Austin. Winik also commemorates people she didn't know personally but whose deaths affected her and the culture deeply, including David Bowie and Lou Reed. In writing about these dozens of deaths, the author is writing about life in general, how quickly it can change and how long a memory can persist, and her life in particular, "how big ideas about art and revolution were so easily infected with the stupid romance of self-destruction." Some die without warning, as Winik writes of an unnamed friend (almost all of those who inspired these pieces go unnamed), "he was fifty-six, just like my own father who died the same way: the heart in the dark of the night that loses its way." The famous and the anonymous, the scandalous and the respectable: All get their due. For all of the variety in details and circumstance, all of the stories proceed to the same ending.Insightful pieces with a cumulative impact that wouldn't work as well standing alone. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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