It's October, and that requires obligatory Halloween-inspired posts. And nothing is more obligatorily macabre than looking at the tombstones of those who have died.
Now through Halloween we'll post collections of tombstones to see where famous writers are hanging out today.
Today: W.E.B. Du Bois, William Faulkner, Pearl Buck, Pablo Neruda
Unlike most writers who are done in by massive heart attacks, addiction, cancer, or themselves--Du Bois lived an extremely long and relatively healthy life.
Having moved to Ghana in his final years after the passport dispute with the United States, Du Bois died at the age of 95. No official cause of death was ever released by Ghanian officials, but it's safe to say it was because he was 95.
Being of such high esteem, Ghana honored the civil rights leader with the Du Bois Memorial Centre, located in Greater Accra. There his body rests in an ornate, indoor shrine that subtly channels the Brady Bunch living room.
Tombstone Notes:
Oddly creepy. The sleek pink slab of stone, the polished wood, the bright red carpeting --it's either a grave or a 1957 Chevy.
Faulkner loved smoking and drinking, yet he also loved riding horses, especially on hunts. Loving horse riding and being capable of horse riding are two separate things--and Faulkner routinely fell off horses during the latter half of his life, sometimes breaking bones.
Showing that skill for impromptu horse acrobatics, Faulkner fell off a horse twice in 1962. When he didn't feel well a few weeks after the latest fall, Faulkner voluntarily went to the hospital. Fewer than eight hours after being admitted, he suffered a massive heart attack and died. Hospital food has killed lesser men.
He was buried at Oxford Memorial Cemetery in Oxford, MS.
Tombstone Notes:
Greek revival columns--because nothing says ancient Greece quite like William Faulkner.
The child of Southern Presbyterian missionaries, Buck spent many of her formative years in China while her parents were working on converts.
This wandering mindset also left Buck with connections to many parts the United States. Born in West Virginia, she later bought a rolling sixty-acre homestead in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, named Green Hills Farm. Years later, Buck moved to tiny Danby, Vermont, for reasons only Danby and Pearl Buck can understand.
Maybe out of boredom from living in Vermont--or more likely the lung cancer inside her--Buck died in 1973, and was buried back on her old property of Green Hills Farm.
Tombstone Notes:
Buck designed her own plot, including the Chinese characters on the stone slab that say 'Pearl Sydenstricker' (her middle name). Bonus points for confusing ignorant Americans as to why an old, rural, American woman has Chinese lettering on her grave.
Pablo Neruda was poisoned by Fascist Chilean commando assassins who couldn't handle the hot political takes Neruda was handing out.
Or--
Pablo Neruda was assassinated by professional killer and former CIA operative Michael Townley, who was working for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s.
Is there truth to either of these stories? Experts are still busy futzing about with Neruda's grave and body, so the investigation continues. If either story is true, it makes Neruda's death the strangest and most badass of all poetry-related deaths.
The alternative theory to his passing? Neruda was sick with prostate cancer. While in a Chilean hospital for treatment, he died of heart failure. Hospital food strikes again!
While originally buried in Santiago's Cemeterio General, Neruda's body was moved to an estate he owned on Isla Negra off the Chilean coast after democracy was reestablished in 1992. Neruda is (err, was?) buried beside his third wife, their plots overlooking the ocean.
Tombstone Notes:
Ocean views are kind of lost on the dead.
photos: Flickr, The Daily Mail, etc.
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