BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. This week saw the death of the Malian guitarist, Ali Farka Toure, the photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks, and the actor and stem cell activist, Dana Reeve. It's likely the three never met, but there they were on Wednesday, sharing the intimate space of the obituary page. It is these strange conjunctions and the details of lesser-known lives that fuel the obsession of many obituary readers. Marilyn Johnson is one of them. She's penned obituaries of Johnny Cash and Marlon Brando, and she's written a book about the form called The Dead Beat. Johnson argues that obituaries demand the most creative writing in journalism because so much is conveyed in so few words.



MARILYN JOHNSON: And that is one reason that I think obituary writing is so incredibly demanding. You're doing it in this tight form. You are trying to capture a life. You're trying to bring someone back for a curtain call, essentially, and you're trying to make it all accurate. You're doing that in the span of a couple of hours. I think it's an incredible act of writing. One thing that I found very interesting is that there are young writers going into the obituary field and going into it, leaning into it with incredible wit and skills.

BOB GARFIELD: So there was a time not too long ago when everybody [CHUCKLES] wanted to get into the business to be Woodward and Bernstein. Now people are coming into the business hoping someday to bury Woodward and Bernstein.

MARILYN JOHNSON: [LAUGHS] Well, you know, you get to talk about everything under the sun. You get to cast your eye on whole eras and try to sum them up, try to say what the impact of Johnny Cash was on music. I mean, these are big juicy topics. And you can pretend all you want that you're just stringing the facts out, you know, chasing down dead people, but, in fact, what you are doing is writing our history.

BOB GARFIELD: Give us a brief history of this history recording process. How has the form involved?

MARILYN JOHNSON: There were some very flowery ones that you could read in, for instance, the 19th century, with wonderful details and fabulous death scenes. Tolstoy's death is rather more specific than you would [LAUGHS] want to hear about. That used to be in the newspaper. Things got very cut-and-dried in the 20th century. There you would find obits of white men who belonged to a lot of clubs and had a lot of degrees and left survivors. And you would see basically strings of facts.

BOB GARFIELD: I was struck by one quote from Gay Talese, who said that, “40 years ago women and Negroes hardly ever seemed to die.” When did that begin to change?

MARILYN JOHNSON: It's hard to say in things like that, because there are little newspapers across the country where people were sending off their neighbors with real affection and detail. But in the big city papers, you saw that turning in the early eighties. Jim Nicholson, you know, he was a burnt-out newspaperman. He filled the old model of somebody sent to the obit desk. He was writing for the Philadelphia Daily News, which had a nickname "the People's Paper." And so he thought, and his managing editor thought, “to heck with the famous people, they're being well covered by the Enquirer, let's go write about the people who actually read our newspaper.” He had the ability to both inhabit the world he was writing about and give it perspective. Quote, "They were married three months later and not because they had to." Quote, "He was a good pool player, had an eye for women, never broke his word." Quote, "It was one hot day when she watched her oldest son Thad plowing, that she decided her children wouldn't spend their lives following a mule through the South Carolina dirt."

BOB GARFIELD: I gather there are two schools of obituary writing. There's the American school, which is approximately straightforward, and then the British school, which seems to take a very different path into the lives of the recently departed.

MARILYN JOHNSON: They love to sit around and be savage. And so if they have the opportunity, they'll make the joke. Here's one that appeared in The Daily Telegraph. They have particular savage fun there. "Carly Simon probably wrote 'You're So Vain' not about James Taylor or Warren Beatty or Mick Jagger, but about the dissipated eccentric William Donaldson who left her when she was still quite naïve. Donaldson wrote wonderful satirical books, but he also ran through several fortunes, pimped and enjoyed crack cocaine and the date-rape drug Rohypnol. He liked to use it on himself." "'It's such a nuisance," The Daily Telegraph quoted him in his obit. "'The trouble is, it wipes your memory. You have to video yourself to appreciate just what a good time you had.'"

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHING] Now, British obits have become famous for their use of euphemism. Can you read from your list?

MARILYN JOHNSON: I had the pleasure of sitting in an audience in England and hearing Hugh Massingberd, who is the father of the witchy obit, give me some of the euphemisms himself. "Gave colorful accounts of his exploits - Liar. No discernible enthusiasm for civil rights - Nazi. Affable and hospitable at every hour – chronic alcoholic. [BOB LAUGHING] Funloving and flirtatious – nymphomaniac."

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS]

MARILYN JOHNSON: "An uncompromisingly direct ladies' man – flasher and rapist." [LAUGHTER] They use this all the time.

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] May I not die in England. That's all I can say. [MARILY JOHNSON LAUGHS] Okay. Now, that's surprising and probably quite illuminating, but eulogies are supposed to recall the best of us. [BOTH AT ONCE] If you've just buried William Donaldson and you pick up The Daily Telegraph, why aren't these newspapers, you know, besieged by angry mourners with flaming torches?

MARILYN JOHNSON: I don't know that they're not, particularly. But it's interesting. I mean, why do you presume that we should be hushed and respectful? That's definitely an American bias. We're conditioned to throw our hands over our heart and speak only good words about the dead. I don't think that's something that people are presuming so much anymore. And why should it be? They're gone.

BOB GARFIELD: Marilyn, thank you very much for joining us.

MARILYN JOHNSON: Well, thank you. It was my pleasure.

BOB GARFIELD: Marilyn Johnson is the author of The Dead Beat, published by Harper Collins.