The Nearly Departed: Inside the Art of Writing a Great Obituary
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Literary Hub has published an essay by Sam Roberts, who writes advance obituaries for the New York Times. Roberts explores what makes a great obituary, and argues it's not about death at all, but about how people lived. The essay weaves in voices on immortality and legacy: Mark Twain's anxiety about being remembered, Woody Allen's joke about achieving immortality by not dying, and Christopher Hitchens' observation that even heaven would get boring if it lasted forever. Roberts notes that almost everyone agrees to be interviewed for their advance obituary—reflecting what some philosophers call the mattering instinct, a fundamental human need for our lives to mean something. He concludes that a Times obituary is itself a form of immortality: validation that your life was compelling enough to merit a place in the paper of record.
Source: https://lithub.com/the-nearly-departed-inside-the-art-of-...
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