具体描述
The New York Times comes each morning and never fails to deliver news of the important dead. Every day is new; every day is fraught with significance. I arrange my cup of tea, prop up my slippers. Obituaries are history as it is happening. Whose time am I living in? Was he a success or a failure, lucky or doomed, older than I am or younger? Did she know how to live? I shake out the pages. Tell me the secret of a good life!Where else can you celebrate the life of the pharmacist who moonlighted as a spy, the genius behind Sea Monkeys, the school lunch lady who spent her evenings as a ballroom hostess? No wonder so many readers skip the news and the sports and go directly to the obituary page. The Dead Beat is the story of how these stories get told. Enthralled by the fascinating lives that were marching out of this world, Marilyn Johnson tumbled into the obits page to find out what made it so lively. She sought out the best obits in the English language and chased the people who spent their lives writing about the dead. Surveying the darkest corners of Internet chat rooms, surviving a mass gathering of obituarists, and making a pilgrimage to London to savor the most caustic and literate obits of all, Marilyn Johnson leads us into the cult and culture behind the obituary page. The result is a rare combination of scrapbook and compelling read, a trip through recent history and the unusual lives we don't quite appreciate until they're gone.
作者简介
玛里琳·约翰逊（Marilyn Johnson），专栏作家。曾为《生活》等杂志撰稿，并担任过《君子》等杂志的编辑，她的作品散见于这些杂志和其他著名刊物。
玛里琳·约翰逊曾经为戴安娜王妃、杰奎琳·奥纳西斯、伊莉莎白-泰勒、凯瑟琳·赫本、约翰尼·卡什、鲍伯·霍普和马龙 白兰度等著名人物撰写讣告。很多读者以阅读她写的讣告为乐，并评价说：“如果她可以给我写上一段讣告，我即便现在死了，似乎也值得了。”甚至还打趣道：“我一定不能让她比我先死，不然就找不到更适合的人给我写讣告了。”
目录信息
读后感
容许我孤陋寡闻，才疏学浅。从没亲眼见过作者推崇不已的美、英各国的大报的讣闻版，否则，我敢打赌，我早已是一名资深讣迷。 此书我读来比较有极端，容易入迷，容易走神。因为地域文化背景的鸿沟，或者，又是因为小女子远不到火候，有些事件人名让我找不着北。不管怎样，有些部...
评分读书笔记： 1。迈克尔·多纳吉（爱尔兰裔美国人），他死后，风格粗鲁的《每日电讯报》刊发了一篇长长的褒扬性讣告，称他为“一位屡获大奖的诗人，擅长以严谨优雅的诗作叙述生活中的小故事，比如他如何单枪匹马地将帕瓦罗蒂塞进出租车。”不过，严禁优雅这句话总结得不是很恰当...
评分受这本书的启发，我突然意识到我的职业的延伸性，我开始莫名的兴奋。 我一直信奉一位广告业前辈所说，广告是了解人的事业，今天我才洞察其本意。很显然，如果一辈子为暮气沉沉的商品撰写广告文案，我的事业是多么的低级。 我希望自己未来的名片能印上“讣告撰写人”。 因为我们...
评分《先上讣告，后上天堂》是一本趣味性读本。话说林子大了什么鸟都有，有一群鸟热衷于讣告。他们撰写讣告追捧讣告收藏讣告，每年还开一次讣告迷世界大会。讣告俨然是一门学问，并且妙趣横生。每天太阳升起，他们守着各大报纸网站等待一个个时代的落幕，等待其他人的日落。还...
评分死亡是种普遍又不寻常的现象，长年写讣告的人，估计能养成一种异于寻常的视觉和习惯。作者玛里琳·约翰逊就有一个嗜好：热心关注同年同月同日死的人物（包括他们的身份、生平的成就、甚至不搭边）的联系，由此发现了不少感人叹谓的“巧合”—— 美国第二、第三届总统亚当斯与杰...
