Where Dead Writers Reside, Part Eight: Truman Capote, Dylan Thomas, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Willa Cather,

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: Truman Capote, James Baldwin, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Willa Cather


Truman Capote:

I actually have 1/2 of Capote's ashes, too!

Truman Capote got by in life on three things: a unique name, drug/alcohol addiction, and verbally clawing the eyes out of almost every writer that existed during his time. (Gore Vidal was a popular target. But it was Gore Vidal after all.)

Capote had a whirlwind life. Crazy parents, an early life being neighbors with Harper Lee, vagabond teen years, time working at The New Yorker, pissing off Robert Frost*, fame and notoriety, friendships with a cast of characters (like Andy Warhol), and a liver that was a beast all kept Capote going into his 50s.

Then the liver gave out. He officially died of liver cancer at the age of 59, although a coroner's report claimed there was a fantastic concoction of drugs in his system, too, which didn't help matters.

Tombstone Notes:
Capote's life was timid compared to afterlife. Shortly after dying he was cremated, with his ashes potentially split between two individuals--Jack Dunphy and Joanne Carson (the ex-wife of Johnny Carson). Except maybe not. Dunphy claimed he received all of the ashes, not half. Carson, meanwhile, said she kept her share of ashes in an urn in the room where Capote died.

When in doubt, claim you have some of the ashes.

In 1988, Carson claimed her ashes were stolen, along with $200,000 in jewels. Capote's ashes were later returned, hidden in a coiled-up hose in the backyard of Carson's home. A year later, the ashes were nearly stolen again during a dinner party. Cremated remains = hot commodity.

After Dunphy died in 1992, he was cremated as well. It took two years, but in 1994 Dunphy's ashes were taken with his own alleged stash of leftover Capote, and both scattered in various spots of water around New York.

All we really know for certain are two things: Capote bought a crypt at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, where maybe no one is buried, and Dunphy had a memorial stone placed at one location where someone's ashes were tossed about.



Dylan Thomas:

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage our next literary alcoholic, Dylan Thomas!

Nothing much of note has ever really come from Wales, especially on the writing front. A Welsh person will rattle off twenty names for you, half of which sound like real names--but there's not a chance you've ever read anything by them. That is, of course, unless Dylan Thomas is mentioned.

Thomas wasn't a stellar student, and largely did nothing of note academically--yet he wrote poetry feverishly. In his teen years he gained some small popularity, and built a reputation off that. He also gained an appetite for smoking and drinking, and built a bigger reputation off those.

Writing doesn't pay terribly well, and it didn't pay much back in the 1940s and '50s. As a result, Thomas often embarked on reading tours to generate more money. It was on one of these reading tours of America that Thomas, while looking ill to everyone he encountered, went out drinking in New York City. After spending all night at the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, Thomas went back to his hotel and loudly proclaimed, "I've had 18 straight whiskeys! I think that's the record!"

He spent the next couple days still drinking, before falling even more ill. Eventually he ended up in the hospital and died within the week. Pneumonia was the official cause of death, with pressure on the brain and a fatty liver contributing.

Note to self: Quit at 17 straight whiskeys.

Tombstone Notes:
Wales isn't known for its writers, and it isn't known for stylish looking tombstones.

Thomas is buried in the over-spill graveyard of St. Martin's Church, Laugharne, Dyfed, Wales, under a simple white cross with garish writing from someone we can only assume just started out with amateur calligraphy. Although bonus point for trying to squeeze "memory" in diagonally on the cross and putting his name off-center.



Paul Laurence Dunbar:

Good news! Dunbar eschewed the trend of trying to kill himself via addiction!

The bad news? Death gets us all in the end.

Dunbar lived a short life, but a life packed with a vast amount of publications, from poetry to novels to short stories. Born of two former slaves--including a father who joined the Massachusetts 55th Infantry Regiment (the second all-black infantry in America's history, after the 54th Regiment portrayed in the movie Glory)--Dunbar had the stereotypical childhood all writers hope to have.

Unhappily married parents? Check.

Divorced parents? Check.

Dad dying while Dunbar still a kid? Check.

Off and running with the sad story, Dunbar didn't allow it to keep his ambitions down. By the age of 16, he started publishing poems. Yet, despite initial luck in being published, he still lacked fame. That is until William Dean Howells, editor of The Atlantic Monthly and author himself, gave rave reviews to the young poet.

Throughout his 20s Dunbar gained popularity, so much so that he toured Europe to read his work. But it generally went downhill after that. By the age of 27, Dunbar was diagnosed with tuberculosis and advised by doctors to go to Colorado for the dry air, and to drink whisky to alleviate his symptoms. (Oh, no...) Dunbar and his wife started to drift apart because of his dependence on alcohol (...not again!...), and they separated.

At the age of 33, his health damaged even further from his addiction to whisky (...this wasn't supposed to be about booze!...), Dunbar died, officially, from his bout of tuberculosis (...but alcohol won again).

Tombstone Notes:
Buried in his hometown of Dayton, OH, Dunbar's tombstone includes a plaque bolted to a giant, irregular boulder. On the plaque is a verse of his poetry written in what was called "Negro dialect" of the antebellum south.

The verse is about death, just to really drive the point home.



Willa Cather:

This time, I promise, a writer who didn't find friendship at the bottom of a bottle. I swear.

In fact, compared to most, Cather's life was downright homey and lovely. Born to two stable parents, her family initially lived in Virginia. Before her 10th birthday, with a father fearing tuberculosis running rampant throughout the region (hello, Paul Laurence Dunbar!), the Cathers picked up stakes and moved to Nebraska.

It's in Nebraska that young Willa Cather became affected by the sprawling land and unique personalities. As a freshman at the University of Nebraska, she intended to go into medicine and become a physician--but a publication of an essay in the Nebraska State Journal convinced Cather she could write. She'd end up graduating with a B.A. in English.

As the years passed, success found her. Short stories, magazine articles, and novels came forth, as did awards like the Pulitzer Prize. She never married, instead living with a female friend for most of her life, especially after moving to New York City.

Nothing major afflicted Cather as she aged into her 70s, although biographies note her health faded for nondescript reasons. Death isn't nondescript though, as Cather died from a cerebral hemorrhage.

Take THAT, alcohol!

Tombstone Notes:
In a great bait-and-switch, Cather was buried in Jaffrey, NH, in a plot beside her longtime friend. Why Jaffrey? Cather was one of the few people in American history who could handle stepping foot into New Hampshire often, and traveled to Jaffrey later in life to write in silence.

The tombstone includes a passage from her novel My Antonia: "...that is happiness; to be dissolved
into something complete and great."

Dissolve. Kind of ghoulish. But I guess "ashes to ashes, dust to dust"...




*Capote vs. Frost:
Capote, while young, largely unknown, and still working at The New Yorker, went to Vermont for vacation--yet he was violently ill with flu. Frost, while old, largely famous worldwide, and still writing poetry, went to the hotel where Capote was staying to give a reading.

Knowing he was from The New Yorker, the hotel manager convinced Capote to attend Frost's reading, which he did. After a short while, and feeling sickly, Capote stood up and started to leave the room. Frost, indignant, allegedly threw a book of poetry at Capote as he exited.

The next day, Frost contacted the editors at The New Yorker and asked, "Who the hell is this Truman Capote, anyway?"

Capote, later in life, described Frost as "the meanest man who ever drew breath, an old fake dragging around with a shaggy head of hair and followed by pathetic old ladies from the Middle West."

Admittedly, Frost did have one hell of a head of hair.

Where Dead Writers Reside, Part Seven: Seamus Heaney, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Zora Neale Hurston, William Shakespeare

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:  Seamus Heaney, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Zora Neale Hurston, William Shakespeare


Seamus Heaney:

You know that kid in class that always won everything? You knew they were smart and talented, but, damnit, you just wished you could come out on top once?

That kid was Seamus Heaney. From winning scholarships to attend high school, to winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995--to seemingly every possible award granted in poetry--Heaney always won eventually. The only thing he ever really lost? His life.

In 2013, Heaney fell coming out of a Dublin restaurant. He went to a private hospital to have a procedure done the following morning (nothing specific was ever detailed), but died before he ever made the operating table. Irish food has killed lesser men.

According to Heaney's son, the 74-year old poet texted his wife minutes before he died. Ever the literary type, Heaney texted in Latin (you mean you don't text in Latin?) to his wife "noli timere"--or, for us living in the 21st century, "do not be afraid."

I'm afraid someone else is going to win a poetry award from this point onward though.

Tombstone Notes:
Originally Heaney was buried with just a wooden cross over his plot, but he eventually received a tombstone months later. The epitaph says, "Walk on air against your better judgment," proving that even Nobel laureates can end on a low note.


Nathaniel Hawthorne:

New England writers from the 1800s always seemed to stay in New England. They might hopscotch around, visit Europe, but they all seemed to die somewhere back in those six little states.

Hawthorne was born in Salem, MA, then moved to Maine with his family, attended college in the same state, bouncing around all of Massachusetts working various jobs (like being the official surveyor of the towns of Salem and Beverly, or the official weigher and gauger at Boston's Custom House), all the while writing.

Somehow, in all his travels, he befriended a slew of other famous people. He met Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in college, became close to future president Franklin Pierce after randomly meeting him at a stage stop in Maine, and once went to a picnic where he met Herman Melville before Moby Dick was ever written.

He also befriended death on one of his travels. While not feeling well in 1864 (so much so that his neighbor, Amos Bronson Alcott [yes, Louisa May's dad], suggested he stay home and rest), Hawthorne decided to visit New Hampshire's White Mountains with (now former president) Pierce. He went to bed one night and never woke up.

Alcott never opened a psychic business, but he should have.

Tombstone Notes:
Buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, MA, on Author's Ridge, nearby Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, and anyone else who felt like going by three names--Hawthorne bucks the trend. And only his last name appears on the grave marker in an understated manner you'd expect from a pauper.


Zora Neale Hurston

When you think about small town living, you think about the sort of town Zora Neale Hurston was born in. Odds are if you know of Notasulga, Alabama, it's because you live there. The town has an estimated population in 2014 of 868 people. That's down from 965 in 2010. No one is sticking around, and neither did Hurston.

Hurston's life was like the worst adaptation of Cinderella possible, with no happy ending. Her family moved to Florida when she was three, and a decade later her mom died. Hurston's father quickly remarried. The new stepmom and Hurston's dad shipped young Zora off to boarding school--but then eventually stopped paying her tuition. Hurston ended up expelled from the school and on her own as a 15-year old. But Hurston worked odd jobs for years to survive, and was determined to finish high school. She did, graduating at the age of 26.

Hurston attended Barnard College at Columbia University, graduating with her B.A. in anthropology at the age of 37. She worked various positions before publishing her seminal work Their Eyes Were Watching God. But widespread fame eluded her. For every Hawthorne who had it easy, there's a Hurston who had it hard.

By the time old age rolled around, Hurston was poverty stricken, to the degree she was forced to live at the St. Lucie County Welfare Home. There she suffered a stroke--and later died of heart disease by 1960.

Tombstone Note:
Hurston was buried in an unmarked grave. By 1973, novelist Alice Walker and others searched for Hurston's plot and, based on a best guess where Hurston was buried, placed a burial marker. No one is certain Hurston actually exists under the tombstone. Nonetheless, an educational placard is placed beside the tombstone, so by Florida standards it's official.


William Shakespeare

Do you really need a short biography of him?

No. No you do not.

Tombstone Notes:
Shakespeare died suddenly at 52-years of age for reasons unknown. He was buried at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, underneath a stone slab with an epitaph that swears a curse on anyone who moves his bones. The threat (in modern spelling):

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.

Two snaps and a twist! Isn't he gettin' sassy?!

And guess what? The threat worked. When the church was undergoing restoration in 2008, the Bard's grave remained untouched.

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?

Where Dead Writers Reside, Part Five: Rudyard Kipling, Gertrude Stein, Ayn Rand, T.S. Eliot

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 occasionally post collections of tombstones to see where famous writers are hanging out today.


Today:  Rudyard Kipling, Gertrude Stein, Ayn Rand, T.S.Eliot


Rudyard Kipling

The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, Kipling would spend the next two decades still writing with some regularity. By the 1930s and in his mid-60s, Kipling's output slowed. You know how they say "60 is the new 40!"? Yeah, not in Kipling's case. 60 was still 60 then.

On January 12, 1936, Kipling suffered a hemorrhage in his small intestine. He underwent surgery, but died six days later on January 18th of a perforated duodenal ulcer. Whatever that is, perforated-anything is never good, and isn't the most pleasant of endings. Kipling was 70-years old.

His funeral included his body lying in a marble casket adorned with a Union Jack, after which his body was cremated and his ashes buried in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.

Tombstone Notes:
Kipling's remains at Westminster Abbey are surrounded by a who's-who of British literary history, including Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. It's tough when, in death, you're probably the third most famous person in the immediate neighborhood.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein lived a wealthy life as the child of Daniel Stein, a businessman who owned real estate and street car lines in San Francisco. After her mother and father died while she was a teenager, Stein and her two brothers largely lived off a trust supplied by their parents--using that money, in part, to purchase vast sums of artwork from the likes of Picasso, Matisse, Renoir, and Cézanne. In time, that trust was also used to pick up their lives and move to Europe. A scrappy, ramshackle bunch, those Stein kids.

In was in France she met her life partner, Alice B. Toklas, and it was in France where Stein would die. Such is the yin and yang of life. By 1946, Stein developed stomach cancer--and when wheeled into an operating room for surgery famously asked Toklas, "What is the answer?" Toklas, apparently not a fan of opaque riddles, didn't speak. Stein followed-up, asking, "In that case, what is the question?"

If this all sounds like Stein was impersonating her inner Alex Trebek, you're right. The answer--and question--is how old was Gertrude Stein when she died shortly after this surgery? She was 72, having died in the French town of Neuilly-sur-Seine.

Tombstone Notes:
Stein's headstone references Alice B. Toklas on the back, continuing in perpetuity the years Toklas always spent in Stein's shadow.

Stein's remains are buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, where the likes of Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, Georges Bizet, Molière, Frederic Chopin, Richard Wright, and Jim Morrison are buried. And, yes, that's the only time Jim Morrison and Gertrude Stein are ever mentioned together in the same breath.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ayn Rand

The creator of the Objectivist philosophical movement, Rand loved smoking cigarettes fiendishly. One can only assume the chain smoking came out of stress, because she was usually busy offending large swaths of citizenry--from calling homosexuals "immoral," Vietnam War draft dodgers "bums," citizens of Arab nations "savages," and claiming that western European nations had every right to take land of Native Americans. A lover of humanity, that Ayn Rand!

That love of nicotine led to a battle with lung cancer in 1974, for which she underwent surgery. While slowly pulling away--and eventually retiring--from writing, Rand held on for another eight years. She eventually died of heart failure (also not helped by smoking) in 1982 at the age of 77 while living in her home in New York City, proving once and for all that even Death is objective, too.

Tombstone Notes:
Rand is interred at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, NY, where the likes of Danny Kaye, Lou Gehrig, Rachmaninoff, and a who's who of B-grade celebrities from the 20th-century are buried.

Fun Fact: At Rand's funeral, a 6-foot floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar bill was placed near her casket. I've always said that nothing keeps a funeral classy quite like subtly obnoxious floral displays that channel your inner backwoods hillbilly just yearning to breathe free.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

T.S. Eliot

Continuing on the chain smoking parade...

Eliot was in declining health in the final decade of his life, but that didn't stop him from getting married (for a second time) at the age of 68 to his 30-year old secretary. Nothing turns on young women quite like nebbish academics with wheezing lungs.

And wheezing lungs Eliot indeed had, from habitual bronchitis to tachycardia caused by his heavy smoking. That addiction led to emphysema, which eventually took his life. Eliot's remains were cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, where the likes of Bram Stoker, Sigmund Freud, H.G. Wells, Amy Winehouse, and Keith Moon were also cremated.

Best collection of potential dinner guests ever? Best collection ever of potential dinner guests ever.

Tombstone Notes:
Eliot's ashes were taken to St. Michael's Church, in East Coker within the village of Somerset, where a plaque commemorates and quotes his poem "East Coker."

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" just didn't fit apparently.

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.

Where Dead Writers Reside: Part One

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:  Ralph Ellison, John Steinbeck, George Eliot, Aldous Huxley

Ralph Ellison

Ellison died in 1994 from pancreatic cancer at the age of 80.

His grave is located at the Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum in Manhattan, NYC, NY.

Tombstone Notes:
It looks like one of those memorial bricks in a park used to raise money for a new swingset.





John Steinbeck
Steinbeck died in 1968 of congestive heart failure at the age of 66.

His grave is located at his mother's family plot (last name Hamilton) in Salinas, CA.

Tombstone Notes: 
Understated for a Nobel Prize winner. Memorial plaques on park benches are flashier than this.

George Eliot

Eliot died in 1880 from a throat infection mixed with a kidney illness. (Yeah, your guess is as good as mine.)

The former Mary Ann Evans is buried in Highgate Cemetery (East), in Greater London, England.

Tombstone Notes:
Channeling an inner Egyptian vibe, it reminds us of everything great about Ramses I.

Aldous Huxley

Huxley died from laryngeal cancer on November 22, 1963--the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated and C.S. Lewis died. Not a good day for famous people.

He's buried in Watts Cemetery, Compton, near Guildford, Surrey, England.

Tombstone Notes:
Lumped in the middle of a family history of death--a who's who of dead Huxleys.

Bonus points for not being the Huxley with the wiped-out name.