The Times' obits are not so much about death as they are about life.
Some may even think that these carefully crafted obituaries are really to die for.
Indeed, the lives of Times' obit subjects are usually rich with accomplishment, success, or at least one single remarkable moment— good or bad— that buys the subject a ticket into that fabulous club that is the Times’ obituary page.
All it takes is the headline to tell you why someone got such a ticket.
Long before the era of the 140-character Tweet, the Times managed to capture the spirit of a life in often not more than two or three words.
it is those headlines that entice us to read obits about people of no interest whatsoever to you and me, until you realize that this woman got her obit page entrance because she “painted self from inside out”. That is the case of Maria Lassnig, “an Austrian painter whose fierce devotion to self-portraiture — in lacerating, darkly funny, often grotesque ways — led her through decades of obscurity to a celebrated late-flowering….”
It must be difficult to reduce the essence of someone’s life to less than a tweet in most cases. Yet, at the NY Times, editors do it daily.
Take a look at some recent examples, and decide which of these obits you would like to read to find out more, based on the headline:
Gabriel García Márquez, Conjurer of Literary Magic, Dies at 87
William Worthy, a Reporter Drawn to Forbidden Datelines, Dies at 92
David Balding, Producer Who Adopted an Elephant, Dies at 75
Jerry Vale, Who Crooned Smoothly of Love, Is Dead at 83
Tony Palladino, Designer of ‘Psycho’ Lettering, Dies at 84
Dobrica Cosic, First Friend Then Foe of Serbia’s Milosevic, Dies at 92
Death is a constant and so are the Times’ obits, with their own peculiar style, sense of dignified grace and fascinating stories of people who made a mark, sometimes in strange and always disconnected fields: the boxer, the ballerina, the scientist and the collector of antique lamps. They all converge on the obit page of the Times.
The obituary of the future?
At the Times, those obituaries remain quite traditional in terms of their repertorial style. I often wonder why, in the digital age of the media quartet, we are not beginning to see more interactive obits, complete with audio and videos that remind us of a person’s life work.
What fun it would have been to see a Gabriel Garcia Marquez obituary complete with a bit of audio, as with Gabo reading from his work.
It’s a matter of time before the obit as film documentary arrives, perhaps making that ticket to the Times’ obit page a bit more precious to get.