ARE THEY DEAD YET?

Who is remembered.

Since 2015, when he was assigned to the obituary desk at The New York Times, Roberts has “buried,” as he puts it, some 1,600 individuals. Although he admits to having an aversion to death, he’s found obit writing satisfying: “[I]t necessitates heavy research, empowers writers with fewer fetters, and opens a window onto undiscovered, even previously unknown, worlds.” Succinct (between 800 and 1,200 words, though much longer for celebrities) and written to a short deadline, an obit aims to “capture the scope of an entire career and whether the world is better or worse because that person was briefly among its inhabitants.” Besides providing “a memorial that is universal, accessible, and eternal,” obits reflect cultural and social values—with the result that most have been about white men. Among many individuals not memorialized in the Times were “the photographer Diane Arbus; the poet Sylvia Plath; and Alan Turing, the mathematician, computer scientist, and code breaker who had been convicted under Britain’s harsh homophobic statutes.” Also omitted were the blues singer Gladys Bentley, the composer Scott Joplin, and the journalist Ida B. Wells. The newspaper’s “Overlooked” section, with more than 250 installments online and in print, helps to rectify those omissions. Some people are so famous that they merit advance-written obits, of which the Times has a stockpile of more than 2,000. Being interviewed for your own obituary, Roberts comments, is seen as “something of a status symbol.” Besides referencing more than 200 obits from various publications, he considers how obituary writers are portrayed in fiction and movies, dubious claims of famous last words, quirky reasons some people get obituaries, and reveals his own bright idea of finding out whether noted people were dead or alive (hence the book’s title)—a project carried out with zeal by his colleague Frank Bruni.

A brisk, witty look at writing about the dead.