Librarian tracked down a list of books that inspired Kobe Bryant. It's only 75% predictable.

If you're a sports fan, you couldn't look for sports scores or stories in the past week without trudging through a media funeral procession for Kobe Bryant. The platitudes...the praise...the scandals...etc., etc., etc. It has been a public performance of artful misery to show you're dutifully depressed. A Sylvia Plath poem is a speedball of cheeriness by comparison.

Luckily, there's the Los Angeles Public Library offering a lighter take!

Keith Kesler, the social media librarian for the institution, searched through public interviews and social media posts for any literary mentions that the basketball superstar uttered. From that, Kesler cultivated a list.

The books Kobe read include:

“The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho
 
“The Illustrated Art of War” Sun Tzu

“Blink” and “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell

“Children of Blood and Bone” Tomi Adeymi

“The Hero’s Journey” Joseph Campbell

“Jonathan Livingston Seagull” Richard Bach

“Lone Survivor” Marcus Luttrell

“Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable” by trainer Tim Grover

“Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike” Phil Knight

“The Silver Linings Playbook” by Matthew Quick

“Sunny” Jason Reynolds

“Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” by Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Thirty Rooms to Hide In” Luke Sullivan

“Tuff Juice” by former NBA player Caron Butler

Look at Malcolm Gladwell with two books! And Doris Kearns Goodwin gets a shoutout!

I have to admit. I didn't think I'd ever mention Kobe Bryant and Doris Kearns Goodwin in the same sentence during my lifetime. Yet, here we are.

Mary Higgins Clark has died. She was 92.

I know...I know. I had no idea she was alive either. Or that she was 92.

Japanese kindergarten teacher moonlights as a break dancer.

Ayumi Fukushima is a world-class break dancer (or "b-girl" if you're a cool kid down with the slang), traveling the world and in various competitions for solo and group performances.

She is also a kindergarten teacher.

Fukushima is so successful that the website Deadspin lets us know she's going to be a coach when "breaking" becomes a sport at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games.

Here's Fukushima in action with her sister in a two-versus-two event:





And here is a 4-minute documentary by filmmakers Daniel Zhu and Jennifer Whalen of Stance detailing the backstory:






This reminds me of my arthritic, overweight, elderly kindergarten teacher who was an elite beatboxer. It was her side hustle when she wasn't dishing out Teddy Grahams to us for snacktime.

Richard Adams, author of "Watership Down," dead at 96.

2016 has been a great year if you have money riding in a celebrity death pool.

Have you already won this year? You're a horribly morbid human being.

Haven't won yet? Don't worry. Betty White and Bob Barker can't live forever.

This is a roundabout way of saying that Watership Down author, Richard Adams, died on December 24th, according to a press release from his family. He was 96-years old.

The book sold over a million copies in his native United Kingdom, became hugely popular worldwide, and was eventually made into a movie.

In other words, Adams had a good go of it.

But if I'm any other celebrity at this point, I'm sitting in a padded room, alone in the dark, and trying to ride out the next four days in hiding.

What word do you really hate?

For many who speak the English language, it appears to be "moist." Maybe its a sensory situation, a tactile visual inserting itself upon a word. Maybe people just have had bad experiences with rain or saunas. Who knows?

Oxford Dictionaries has started a worldwide poll to determine the least liked word. Early word choices are in, and they vary mainly by culture, "Moist" leads the pack in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, while a simple "hello" really girds the loins of people in Spain. If certain Adele or Beatles songs come on the radio, I assume pandemonium occurs in the streets of Madrid.

The poll continues, as researchers hope to see tens of thousands of more respondents. So if your hatred for "ergonomic" is as passionate as you know others feel, now is the time to speak up.




"Ergonomic" is largely the lovechild of science and marketing creating the worst possible word. First appearing in 1949, the word combines the Greek "ergon," meaning work, and simply added on the "nomic" which was deliberately stolen from the word "economic." Thus, a new word was lazily created for the sake of marketing and a very small field of science.

This is why some people shouldn't be allowed to play with words.

Elie Wiesel: 1928-2016

The Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1986 and author on a variety of works on the Holocaust died today at the age of 87.

And so the night grows a little darker this evening.

Harper Lee: 1926-2016

Pulitzer Prize winner, recluse, and all-time one-hit wonder Harper Lee died today at the age of 89.

The mockingbird no longer mocks.

Where Dead Writers Reside, Part Six: Samuel Beckett, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Anne Sexton, Albert Camus

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.

Every year we do this. Now through Halloween we'll occasionally post collections of tombstones to see where famous writers are hanging out today.

Today:  Samuel Beckett, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Anne Sexton, Albert Camus


Samuel Beckett:

The Irish Beckett loved living in France, famously saying he preferred "France at war to Ireland at peace." Beckett must have really loved France, because in 1938 he was stabbed in the chest by a pimp--yes, a pimp, who went by the name Prudent--after Beckett refused the pimp's solicitations. Maybe Prudent was living up to his name and just being cautious, who knows? Beckett was scary looking after all.

He would later drop the charges against Prudent, partly because he said he liked the pimp's personality. Because if you can't like a mentally unstable pimp, who can you like?

In the 1950s, Beckett bought some rural land in France, and locals helped him build a cottage. One such local was a Bulgarian-born farmer who had an abnormally large son. Beckett volunteered to drive the large boy to school in his truck, as the huge child didn't fit on the bus. The boy? He would grow up--really grow up--and be better known as WWF wrestling superstar Andre the Giant. That's right. A Nobel Prize winner was a taxi service to a future WWF wrestler. Bet you didn't see that one coming.

Winning the Nobel Prize in 1969, Beckett donated all of his prize winnings to charity. He lived for another twenty years, eventually finding himself stuck in a nursing home, slowly dying of emphysema and potentially Parkinson's disease. Since 1989, he has been residing with his wife at the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris under a simple gravestone.

Tombstone Notes:
Beckett had a basic request for his gravestone. It could be "any color, so long as it's gray." As opposed to all those neon orange gravestones you typically see.



Ralph Waldo Emerson:


Besides his writing, Emerson was known for his speeches. But by 1872, at 69 years of age, he started having memory problems and began showing signs of aphasia (an affliction that affects speech). Not the best of combinations for someone who gives speeches.

1872 was not a good year for Emerson, as his house in Concord, MA, caught fire. Flames can be hypnotizing apparently, and no one worked to extinguish the flames except a one-armed local named Ephraim Bull, Jr., who eventually put the fire out, although the house was lost. Ephraim Bull, Jr. was the son of Ephraim Wales Bull, who was the creator of the Concord grape. The Bulls lived next door to the Alcotts. Yes, of Louisa May Alcott fame. It might not be the magnitude of living near Andre the Giant, but it's not shabby.

By 1879, Emerson's lack of memory was embarrassing to him, and he ceased all public speaking and appearances. Three years later, in 1882, he was found to have pneumonia, and died in April of that year. He was buried in a white robe given to him by David Chester French, better known as the sculptor who designed the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Sing it with me: "It's a small world after all...It's a small world after all..."

Tombstone Notes:
Emerson is buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, MA, on a hillside referred to as "Author's Ridge," beneath a gigantic boulder. The epitaph reads, "The passive master lent his hand / to the vast soul that o'er him planned." A little dry for an epitaph, but this is Emerson we're talking about. Not a live wire of excitement.



Anne Sexton:

You know those deaths that are happily casual, where the person lived a generally pleasant and long life and dies in their sleep? (I'm looking at you, Nadine Gordimer!) Anne Sexton didn't have that sort of life or death.

If you're looking for some light beach reading, you probably want to avoid Sexton. She was known for her confessional poetry, which focused heavily on suicide, mania, and depression--a what's what of sadness--yet her skill as a poet was never doubted. It led to her winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1967 for her book of poetry titled Live or Die. The collection details struggles with her mother and daughters, and includes one of her more famous poems, "Wanting to Die." Picking up on a theme yet?

Sexton was admitted to psychiatric wards routinely. Her therapist had originally encouraged her to take up poetry as an outlet for her mental illness. That led her to eventually studying under poet Robert Lowell at Boston University, where another famous female poet also studied alongside her: Sylvia Plath. Between Sexton, Plath, and Lowell, Boston University was pumping out some of the saddest poetry in the 1950s and '60s. It's a wonder the city of Boston wasn't collectively depressed at that point.

Strangely enough, Sexton would go down the same path as her classmate Plath and commit suicide. After a lunch with an editor friend, Sexton went home, drank a glass of vodka, put on her mother's fur coat, removed any jewelry on her hands, locked herself in the garage, started the car, and killed herself via carbon monoxide poisoning.

I warned you it wasn't a pleasant life or death.

Tombstone Notes:
Sexton is buried at Boston's Forest Hills Cemetery beneath a small, inconspicuous gravestone with two other relatives. It's in the same vein of humble headstones like John Steinbeck's and Charles Chesnutt's.



Albert Camus:

The Nobel-winning writer known for his Absurdist writings died under absurd claims...or were they?

On January 4, 1960, Camus was going to head back to Paris after vacationing with his wife and children south of the city. He bought a train ticket--but at the last minute changed his mind and decided to hitch a ride with his publisher and friend, Michel Gallimard. Sometimes we make bad choices in life. For Camus, this was the ultimate one.

The official story is that Gallimard drove over some ice, lost control, and wrapped the car around a tree--killing Camus instantly. (Gallimard would die a few days later.)

The unofficial story that has conspiracy theorists salivating? You might want to grab a drink and a pen and paper to keep track.

The theory was instigated by Italian poet Giovanni Catelli, who says that he read a passage from the diary of a Czech poet named Jan Zábrana--I assume because he's nosy. Zábrana allegedly wrote in his diary that he overheard a very well-informed (nameless) man with upper-level sources that Soviet KGB operatives rigged a tire on Gallimard's car to rupture at higher speeds. This was done in anticipation of causing an accident that the KGB hoped would kill Camus.

Why kill Camus? Because the Frenchman supported Boris Pasternak, writer of Doctor Zhivago, a book which Joseph Stalin had banned. The book still managed to be smuggled out of the country and find itself published regardless. Pasternak won his own Nobel prize a year later, which infuriated the Soviets.

Camus also insulted the Soviet foreign minister, Dmitri Trofimovic, over Moscow's decision to enter Hungary to stop an uprising.

For both these reasons, Zábrana allegedly wrote--and Catelli asserts--the KGB took a very roundabout way to kill Camus. Because poison is too quick and simple?

Tombstone Notes:
Camus is buried in the cemetery of the small French village of Lourmarin, a plot adorned with an absurd level of various flora.

Do you really want to cover the burial plot with Mother Nature when a tree took him out?

"O Captain, my Captain."

Other corners of the internet will have more eloquent tributes on Robin Williams, more detailed, more extensive, all worthy of being read and watched.

For our purposes, here is just a five minute clip from his 1989 movie Dead Poets Society, where he plays teacher John Keating trying to motivate a classroom of prep school kids. Any teacher alive today wishes they could be this.

"Keep ripping, gentlemen!"

The media's occasional panic that poetry is on its deathbed is happening again. And, again, poetry isn't dead.

Every handful of years the debate rages anew over poetry's worth and vital signs, and that time has seemingly arrived again. Recent weeks have seen a media upheaval questioning the value of literature's artsier cousin, from Heidi Simmons's column asking "Is poetry dead? Does anyone care?" to the New York Times holding a debate among seven writers over the question, "Does Poetry Matter?"

Online magazine The Millions has a systematic look at how fond of poetry the United States is, but notes Americans love poetry, just not poetry books. Indeed, sales of poetry books have stagnated in recent decades, leading publishers to pull back the reigns on publications, or look for new and and creative ways to reach audiences--audiences that seemingly don't exist, at least not in large numbers willing to part with their money.

Tom Brady agrees: NFL quarterbacks matter.

At the Times, it's a debate in name only--a debate where whichever of the seven writers praises poetry most wins. It's akin to asking seven NFL quarterbacks if NFL quarterbacks matter, or seven priests if religion matters.

To Heidi Simmons, poetry isn't dead, but it isn't the lively entity it should be, and sees it dying in our schools first and foremost.

But maybe one comment left on The Millions article sums up the issue for poetry today, an insight left by someone going by the moniker Germane Jackson:


"I’ll offer a simple answer to a complicated question, undoubtedly a reductive and insufficient answer, but one that hopefully will get at the point of this article.

[...] Americans like poetry, but mostly poetry not written within the last thirty or forty years, around the same point at which most poetry became an exercise in careerist academic obscurantism.

[...] I realize this comment sounds like populist demagoguery, and I don’t mean to denigrate the entire project of modern poetry [...] But I do think that poetry’s intellectual vanguard largely fails to coherently and meaningfully engage the average reader about their lives, and is more interested instead in a sort of dense opacity, a modernist aesthetic hangover from which poetry has never recovered."


Not that popular opinion equals quality, but a look at the current top-20 poems on PoemHunter.com (as voted by readers) suggests as much as Jackson states, a list including the likes of William Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, William Blake, Pablo Neruda, and Emily Dickinson--none, it should be noted, who reached their individual artistic peak in the last 40+ years. Angelou comes closest, but even scholars consider her "late period" to be post-1969.

Ella never dies.

Headlines are meant to grab attention, which explains how silly Simmons or the Times are being. Poetry is no more dead than jazz music, no more a corpse than ballet. But like all artistic realms over an extended period of time, a popular consensus develops. Humans, largely, just like what they like, and for poetry that preference seemingly exists prior to the work of 1970. Just as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and John Coltrane are what makes jazz jazz, so too does Dickinson and Frost and Hughes and Shakespeare make poetry poetry, no matter what new, exciting, and creative aspects modern poetry might bring.

It sounds like an over-simplification to answer "What's wrong with poetry today?" as such, I know. Deeply philosophical waxing might sound more emotionally powerful, systematic examinations of the publishing industry might appear more profound, but it doesn't seem to change the basic pattern. Americans don't buy books of poetry today because they largely don't like the poetry of today. Yes, there's an audience for modern poetry, but it's a sliver of the broader populace. I might like modern poetry, you might like modern poetry, but looking beyond our own literary myopia might suggest most Americans don't agree.

Changes in popular taste didn't kill jazz, and it won't kill poetry. Being a niche market is still a market. And you know what? That doesn't mean you're dead. It means you're okay.

Maya Angelou's funeral is going to involve a biker gang and the Westboro Baptist Church.

It sounds like the B-grade plot to a made-for-television movie, except this will actually happen.

The Westboro Baptist Church plans to protest at Maya Angelou's funeral for, uhh...enunciating very slowly? Maybe? I don't know. The Westboro picketers seem to protest any funeral these days that might generate a sliver of attention.

If a protest from a homophobic pseudo Baptist church from Kansas at a literary icon's funeral wasn't head-scratching enough, enter the biker gang.

A group calling itself 2 Million Bikers is planning on building a hog-ridin' human wall to shield those attending Angelou's funeral from the Westboro protesters. You know, to keep things low key and subtle.

2 Million Bikers, just to make the story weirder, is a politically conservative group focusing heavily on freedom--the flag waving, bald eagle screeching, my pickup has mudflaps with stars and stripes kind of freedom--but that conservative side also wants it known it doesn't agree with anything Angelou believed in, so much so that they quote themselves on their Facebook page to clarify things.

Says a spokesperson from the page:

"No we do not agree with her beliefs, but we agree with her freedom to have & voice those beliefs. That is what freedom is about!"

Sadly, the only person involved in this situation eloquent enough to talk about freedom is Maya Angelou, and she's dead.

Maya Angelou: 1928-2014

Author, memoirist, and poet, as well as winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011, Maya Angelou died today at the age of 86.

The caged bird goes silent.

Nobody knows for certain where Cervantes is buried?

Go figure. Miguel de Cervantes--Spain's answer to England's Shakespeare, and most famously the creator of Dox Quixote and the first modern novel--was apparently buried without anyone knowing exactly where.

The belief is that Cervantes is buried somewhere in the walls or foundation of the Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians, where a dozen nuns ranging in age from 23 to 92 live. The next logical question is why would Cervantes be buried in a convent? Because those same nuns helped negotiate his freedom when Cervantes, as a member of the Spanish navy, was kidnapped by pirates and held captive for five years. On his death bed, Cervantes wish was to be buried with the Trinitarians.

Fast forward 400 years, and no one is exactly certain where in the convent Cervantes is buried--if at all.

The convent's secretary, Maria Jose, tells NPR, "For 400 years, we have kept Cervantes' last dying wish, to be buried here. We have passed down the memory of the documents that registered his burial here, even though the documents themselves have all since been lost."

"Memory of documents" isn't the most helpful arrangement, so now scientists are utilizing ground-penetrating radar to find the body, using Cervantes own detailed history of his physical ailments, gunshots, and general wounds to identify the body. (After all, Cervantes had a rough go of it in the navy. He was shot in the chest twice alone.) If found, an excavation might occur, although ultimately the plan is to keep his body with the Trinitarians.

For that, Cervantes' dying wish remains.

Gabriel García Márquez: 1927-2014

The 1982 Nobel Winner in Literature, and leading creator of magical realism, Gabriel García Márquez died today at the age of 87.

If heaven exists, nothing will be more magically real than that.



photo: The Guardian

Why do old books smell?

Why does an old book smell like grandpa's closet?

Mental Floss answers readers' questions, and apparently enough people don't understand how things die. (Psst: Heads-up...you're going to die someday, too.) So the explanation?

Books are made of organic material, and that organic material reacts to its environment (light, temperature, moisture, etc.). When that organic material decays--and all of it will in time--it releases volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which release a scent. As macabre as it sounds, this is why animals (and you) smell when they die, too.

According to Mental Floss, scientists have found a selection of compounds (in the form of VOCs) that keep showing up in dying books, from acetic acid and butanol to octanol and benzaldehyde.

In case you're wondering, benzaldehyde is also known as artificial almond oil, and is often used today as a food additive to make the food smell extra deliciously nutty.

Mmm, delicious dying books!

Doris Lessing: 1919-2013

Known for saying "Oh, Christ! [...] I couldn't care less," upon learning she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, Doris Lessing died today at the age of 94.

Christ...I kind of care.

'The Simpsons' pay tribute to Mrs. Krabappel.

Bart Simpson's teacher, Mrs. Krabappel, died last week. Rather, the voice of Mrs. Krabappel--actress Marcia Wallace--died last week. In a quick turnaround, last night's episode of The Simpsons offered a quick shoutout to Mrs. K during the opening credits.

Wallace was the voice of everyone's favorite stressed teacher from 1990 until her death, a period in which she appeared in over 100 episodes. She was 70-years old.

Where Dead Writers Reside: Part Four

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

W.E.B. Du Bois

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.

William Faulkner

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.

Pearl Buck

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

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.

Where Dead Writers Reside: Part Three

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: Katherine Mansfield, Charles Chesnutt, Walt Whitman, Jane Austen

Katherine Mansfield

Like many in her day, Mansfield was diagnosed with tuberculosis, in her case at the age of 29. She spent the final five years of her life trying a myriad of ways of battling the disease, none of which held any positive effect.

At the age of 34, Mansfield died from a pulmonary hemorrhage after running up a flight of stairs, further proving why escalators are your friend.

Mansfield is buried at Cimetière d'Avon, Avon
Département de Seine-et-Marne
Île-de-France, France, where she was last at an institute for the treatment of her tuberculosis.




Tombstone Notes:
Bonus points for the wannabe garden party at the foot of the grave. Homey, chic decor can lighten up any cemetery plot!

Charles Chesnutt

There's a great rift among the scholarly set as to Charles Chesnutt's literary merit. He wrote an array of short stories, novels, and essays regarding race in America, about self-identity and social construct and belief structures--and while his message was one that many believe was powerful, others argue it was flimsy and lacked complexity.

All of this is a diversionary tactic so as to avoid saying I don't know how Charles Chesnutt died. No amount of research tells me what the cause of death was. He's dead though--died in Cleveland, OH, in 1932, and is interred at Lake View Cemetery. Because living in Cleveland kills everyone in time.

Tombstone Notes:
In the vein of that humble, modest, "I guess someone is buried under here," subtle sort of way John Steinbeck has as well.

Walt Whitman

Whitman's final years are as familiar as any elderly person's. In 1873, he suffered a paralytic stroke and moved into the home of his brother in Camden, NJ. Later, when the brother and sister-in-law moved for business reasons, Whitman bought a house across town in Camden, where he would spend the rest of his days.

In 1892, in failing health, Whitman spent $4,000 on a mausoleum for his body. By March 26, Whitman was dead. A who's-who of lung ailments killed him. An autopsy (performed in his home) declared Whitman died from "pleurisy of the left side (lung), consumption of the right lung, general miliary tuberculosis, and paranchymatous nephritis." His left lung had collapsed, his right lung was at 1/8th capacity, and an egg-sized abscess had eroded one of his ribs.

That trouble breathing you're feeling right now? Yeah, that's totally psychosomatic, I swear.

Whitman was buried in his $4,000 mausoleum in Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, NJ. Later, the bodies of his parents, two brothers, and their families would be moved in as well.

Tombstone Notes:
Only a miniature house could do for the cocky Whitman.

Jane Austen

God only knows what killed Jane Austen.

A 1964 "retrospective diagnosis" (where doctors look at symptoms of long dead famous people and guess what killed them) says Austen died of Addison's Disease, an adrenal disease where the body doesn't produce enough steroids.

Other experts suggest Austen died of Hodgkin's Lymphoma, bovine tuberculosis, or Brill-Zensser disease. Austen, during her life, described her symptoms as rheumatism.

Her main symptom? Death. She was 41.

Austen's brother, Henry, hooked her up to a plot in the floor of Winchester Cathedral of Winshester, Hampshire, England. Nothing in the epitaph--written by her brother James--describes her skill as a writer.

Sigh.

Tombstone Notes:
A little bit wordy and over the top. Clearly James wasn't the writer in the family.

Where Dead Writers Reside: Part Two

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: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, Charles Dickens, Robert Frost

 F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald was a notorious alcoholic for decades, and often claimed he had contracted a mild form of tuberculosis. Nonetheless, he spent his final decade in decline, his body withering.

Weakened by previous heart attacks, Fitzgerald was struck dead after a final, massive coronary arrest in 1940 while (according to his lover) he was eating a candy bar.

Remember that on Halloween when you grab that extra Snickers.

Labeled a non-practicing Catholic, Fitzgerald wasn't allowed burial in a Catholic cemetery, leading to his original internment in Rockville Union Cemetery in Rockville, MD. Later, after Zelda's death, the Fitzgerald's daughter, Frances, worked to have the Catholic church overturn their ruling on the burial banishment. She succeeded, leading to her parents' current residence at Saint Mary's Cemetery across town in Rockville.

Tombstone Notes:
Including a passage from one's own book is one last final indulgence. It's like a literary gin and tonic.

Sylvia Plath

Plath, who battled with depression for many years, attempted suicide multiple times during her short life.

In 1963, her marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes deteriorating (he was busy with other women) and in the throws of depression once again, Plath sealed off the kitchen with wet towels, placed her head in the oven, and turned on the gas.

So, yeah. That's a downer.

Buried in St. Thomas' Churchyard, Heptonstall, West Yorkshire, England, Plath's fans have continually tried to chisel off Hughes from the tombstone. While Ted Hughes was alive, he regularly had the tombstone removed, fixed, and placed back in its original location.

Tombstone Notes:
Ted Hughes included the epitaph on his wife's marker, potentially from a 16th century Chinese poet Wu Ch'Eng-En--but some disagree as to its origins. Because when you want to go with obscure sources, go big, my man.

Charles Dickens

Dickens spent the last few years of life in declining health, starting with bouts of paralysis (mild strokes) in 1868 incurred from a heavy itinerary of public readings.

By 1870, gravely ill, Dickens suffered a severe stroke at his home, and spent a day unconscious before dying.

Planning for death well in advance, Dickens desired a burial at Rochester Cathedral, near his home at Gad's Hill, "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner."

Showing that the dead can't file a complaint, Dickens was instead buried in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey. While the official funeral ceremony was relatively private (only twelve mourners were in attendance), the grave was left open so thousands of people could walk past and pay their respects.

Expensive? Check.
Ostentatious? Check.
Public memorial? Check.

Sorry, Chuck. You rambled on so long with your books that no one could pay attention when you died.

Tombstone Notes:
Fun fact time! Dickens' plot is surrounded by a who's-who of famous dead Brits, including Rudyard Kipling, George Fredrick Handel, and Thomas Hardy. It'd be a great guest list for a dinner party if you really wanted to be bored.

Robert Frost

While living to quite a ripe age of 88, Frost was slowed down in his later years. In late December 1962, Frost went to the hospital for a needed prostate surgery. Not the best of ideas for the severely elderly, complications were had, most notably a heart attack. A month later, Frost died.

When he was sixty-six years old, Frost purchased a burial plot for his entire family at the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, VT, where the entire roster of dead Frosts currently resides.

Anyone who wagered money that Bennington, of all places, is where the notoriously hopscotching Frost would end up must've made a fortune.

Tombstone Notes:
Frost quotes himself from his poem 'The Lesson for Today.'

"I had a lover's quarrel with the world," says Frost's marker--painting an image no one in the world ever associates with Frost.