A thorough, accessible obit-creation manual.
A handy guide that demystifies the challenging art of modern obituary writing.
Most people are familiar with the boilerplate newspaper obit, but some may wonder: do we really need to keep writing them in the modern era? “The web has obliterated space limitations and media restrictions,” writes the author in her introduction, “yet obituary writers are urged to follow the same shopworn templates folks used 30 years ago.” The past few decades have seen great shifts toward secularism, confessionalism, and online social interactions. Kinsey, a longtime professional editor and writer, argues that contemporary obituaries should accommodate this evolution in order to properly celebrate the recently deceased. Her debut book is intended as a beginner’s guide to obit writing, offering not only tips on the writing process, but also an expanded notion of what an obituary can be. Modern obits, she says, must celebrate the deceased’s individuality and humanity—even if that means recognizing some flaws—with photos, videos, voice recordings, music, and other media in addition to simple prose. Kinsey tackles such topics as collaborating on an obituary (or writing one’s own), figuring out a subject’s essential qualities, choosing a digital platform, and even photo and video editing techniques. Citing real obituaries as examples, the author takes readers through the myriad options for making sure that an “obituee” doesn’t become a mere name on a piece of paper. The author writes in a colorful, cajoling prose that keeps things light with numerous jokes and asides: “On my very first report card, the teacher wrote ‘Easily distracted.’ What do people remember about your obituee’s habits and behavior?” She also peppers the text with quotes from famous authors and experienced obituary writers. Most illuminating are the excerpts from dozens of real obituaries, which Kinsey highlights to demonstrate successful uses of place and nostalgia and other elements of a thoughtful, balanced remembrance. In more than 150 pages, Kinsey approaches this art from every angle, and although she advocates for highly personalized obituaries, her book works well as a catchall guide to the form.
A thorough, accessible obit-creation manual.Pub Date: July 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9990520-2-0
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Nicholson & Stillwell
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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