The Big Book of the Dead

Winik arranges her arresting portraits of the dead chronologically, spanning Friends of My Youth, Mostly in New Jersey 1958-1978, The Austin Years, Including New Orleans 1977-2009, We Were Ten Years in Pennsylvania 1999-2009, and Love in the Time of Baltimore 2009-2018. Featuring 12 additional vignettes, The Big Book of the Dead continues Winik's work as an empathic chronicler of life.

List of contents

I. Friends of My Youth, Mostly in New Jersey 1958 - 1978

The Alpha

The Driving Instructor

The Perfect Couple

Two First Cousins

Their Mother

The Eye Doctor

The Fourth

The Cat with Nine Lives

The Man Who Could Take Off His Thumb

The Painter

The Mah Jongg Player

The Queen of New Jersey

The Diplomat (NEW)

The Golf Pro

The Social Worker

The Second Cousin Once Removed

The Young Uncle

The Neighbor

The Classmate

The Big Sister

The Virgin

The Mensch

The Thin White Duke

The Camp Director

The Tomb of the Unknown Yogi (NEW)

My Advisor

The Golden Boy

The Role Model

The Competition

The Showgirl

The Professor of Desire (NEW)

II. The Austin Years, Including New Orleans 1976-2009

The Jeweler

The Carpenter

The Warrior Poetess

The Publisher

The Clown

The Humanoid from Houston

The Junkie

The Skater

The Brother-in-Law

The Jewish Floridian

Who Dat

The Counselor

Three Lost Boys

The Art Star

The King of the Condo

The Photographer

The Rancher

The Texan

The Neatnik

The Democrat

The Wunderkind

The Young Hercules

The Dentist

The Sikh

The Counselor

The Second-Grade Teacher

The Velveteen Rabbit

The Werewolf

The Queen of the Scene

The Volunteer

The All-American

The Father of the Bride

The Belle of the Ball

The Southern Writer

The Paid Professional Codependent

The Bon Vivant

Portrait of a Lady

The Statistic

The Man of Letters

The Old Rake

The Realtor

The Graduate

III. We Were Ten Years in Pennsylvania 1999-2009

The Mother of Four

The Quiet Guy

The Bad Brother

The Little Brother

The Conscientious Objector

The Last Brother

The Last Straw

The Bad Influence

The Nurse

The Burning Man

The R.A.

The Soldier

The House

The Family Guy

The Baby

The Maid

The Man of Honor

The Fairy Festival (NEW)

The Little Bird

The Montessori Teacher

The Ambassador's Wife

The Playwright

IV. Love in the Time of Baltimore 2009 - 2018

The Belligerent Stream

The Grandmother-General

The Southern Gentleman

The Squash Player

The Assistant Superintendent

His Brother

Her Son

The Artist

The French Horn Player

The Big Man

The Very Tiny Baby

Two Slips of the Knife

The Perfect Friend (NEW)

The Lacrosse Player (NEW)

The Cult Member (NEW)

His Dog

The Talent

Jack (NEW)

The Pirate

Dr. Food (NEW)

The Suicides (NEW)

The A Student (NEW)

The Happy Man

The Babydaddy

The Innocents

The Jews (NEW)

The Leader of the Pack

El Suegro

The VIP Lounge

The Living

About the author

Longtime All Things Considered commentator MARION WINIK is the author of First Comes Love, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead, and seven other books. Her Bohemian Rhapsody column at BaltimoreFishbowl.com has received the Best Column and Best Humorist awards from Baltimore Magazine, and her essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and many other publications. She is the host of The Weekly Reader radio show and podcast, based at the Baltimore NPR affiliate. She reviews books for Newsday, People, and Kirkus Reviews and is a board member of the National Book Critics Circle. She is a professor in the MFA program at the University of Baltimore.

Summary

Marion Wink is esteemed for bringing humor and wit to that most unavoidable of subjects: death.

At last, Winik's critically acclaimed, cult favorites, Glen Rock Book of the Dead and Baltimore Book of the Dead, have been carefully combined in their proper chronological order, revealing more clearly than ever before the character hidden throughout these stories: Winik herself.

Featuring twelve additional vignettes along with a brand–new introduction, The Big Book of the Dead continues Winik's work as an empathetic, witty chronicler of life.

Additional text

Praise for The Big Book of the Dead

"The image that suffused my reading was one of stringing pearls. Each pearl is gorgeous and luminescent . . . Each of them seemed to me better than the one previous to it, and I continued reading even as I wiped away tears . . . Regardless of the proximity of her relation to Winik’s subjects, each of these pieces is written with gorgeous turns of phrase and her recognition of the quiet dignity of their lives." —Lorraine Berry, Star-Tribune (Minneapolis)

"Marion Winik’s The Big Book of the Dead is a masterclass in flash fiction. It is a grand tapestry of life that you get to see created thread by thread . . . Cathartic and strangely comforting." —Rachel Gonzalez, Paperback Paris

Praise for The Baltimore Book of the Dead

A Finalist for the 2019 NAIBA Book of the Year in Nonfiction
A PBS NewsHour Best Book of the Year
Winner of the 2019 Towson Prize for Literature
One of the Top Ten Books of the Year, The Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ)

"An affecting collection of brief, incisive portraits of departed figures both public and private." —People

"You'll want to read The Baltimore Book of the Dead as slowly as possible because every observation is a marvel, every sentence a heartbreak or a revelation of joy. This book is both brief and miraculous, and it will be finished before you're ready to let it go. Like life." —Ann Patchett, author of Commonwealth

"Crystalline remembrances . . . By turns reverent and wry, intimate and universal, these pieces capture the essence of friends, neighbors, a tiny baby, a young man lost to fentanyl, and even a few celebrities . . . [Winik's] mission is not to be morbid but to find a place in our collective conversation for grief, which might be one of the last social taboos . . . A welcome salve to all of us, and encouragement to honor the people we've lost who are forever with us." —Oprah.com

"Few among us, when we die, will be lucky enough to be eulogized as intriguingly as the individuals in Marion Winik's The Glen Rock Book of the Dead. The slender and elegantly illustrated volume chronicles the stories of some 50 individuals the author once knew, compressing their lives and personal significance into brief, two-page essays. The eighth book from this critically acclaimed writer and poet is a sort of modern-day version of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology – the almost century-old classic that told the tale of a town in the voices of its deceased." —Susan Carpenter, The Los Angeles Times

"Spending time with dead people might make you wonder: Do I want to take this trip? You do, when Winik is telling the stories, two-page hits that read like flash nonfiction, highlight reels of what these people have meant to her, and sometimes to American culture, over the past 60 years . . . Winik's voice is strong and clear, as if she has been called to sing these paeans and she will do it, she's honored to do it, but she's going to do it her way, with elation and sadness . . . Death is always in season, and it takes someone of Winik's good humor and willingness to say, in essence, see that big door there? The one we are all going to walk through? Let's just take a little look now, and know you will be remembered, that you are loved." —Nancy Rommelmann, Newsday

"Feast on Marion Winik's jewelbox of a book filled with gold nuggets of prose and a fevered passion for life even though much is an homage to death itself. Every sentence is a carefully considered slam dunk . . . Breathless, heartbreaking, invigorating." —Literary Hub

"With the same candid and humorous writing style she fine-tuned through her years as an All Things Considered commentator, Winik memorializes the departed in short essays that evoke a tender sense of connection in readers." —Lauren LaRocca, Baltimore Magazine

"Every so often I stumble across books where my first reaction is regret. How have I never heard of this writer? My second reaction is a hunger to read all he or she has written. This does not happen often enough so, please know I do not toss this sort of praise lightly. Marion Winik is one of the most elegant, evocative and incisive writers I have encountered . . . Her gift is using the fewest words to capture their spirits, and though as the title broadcasts, this is a book about the dead, it is a glorious account of living." —Jacqeline Cutler, Newark Star-Ledger

"Empathy figures in Marion Winik's The Baltimore Book of the Dead (Counterpoint, Oct.), along with her sharp eye and wicked wit. This sequel to The Glen Rock Book of the Dead has more achingly beautiful and succinct obituaries of the people (and a few pets) from Winik's wide, idiosyncratic circle of family, friends, colleagues, lovers, and enemies. This superfast read will spur rereading and the terrible wish that more people in Winik's circle would expire just so she could memorialize them. " —Library Journal, Editors' Pick

"In writing about these dozens of deaths, the author is writing about life in general, how quickly it can change and how long a memory can persist, and her life in particular, 'how big ideas about art and revolution were so easily infected with the stupid romance of self-destruction' . . . Insightful pieces with a cumulative impact." —Kirkus Reviews

"[An] unconventional though captivating blend of memoir and biography . . . Throughout these understated portraits, Winik writes with a delightfully light and nuanced hand." —Publishers Weekly

"This slim, deeply moving book is full of elegies that bear witness to the departed and remind us of the beauty and pain and complexity in every life, no matter how obscure. Marion Winik's prose is deceptively rich, suffused with quiet emotion and tender humor. She teaches us how to remember." —Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers and Mrs. Fletcher

"Marion Winik's writing is always a wild and true marvel and never more so than in her latest work, The Baltimore Book of the Dead. With riveting compassion, she looks at all the love and the pain and the detritus that accumulates in the corners of all of our lives and pieces together something sad and lovely and new out of it." —Bill Clegg, author of Did You Ever Have a Family

"Marion Winik is such an excellent writer that you will want to gobble up The Baltimore Book of the Dead, but you won't. After each chapter, you will pause and take a breath. You will have experienced the life and death of a stranger made friend, made familiar, through Winik's compassionate genius. Savor every word." —Abigail Thomas, author of What Comes Next and How to Like It

Praise for The Glen Rock Book of the Dead

"I read this book in one sitting. It's so beautiful, sad, interesting, funny, and true that I simply could not put it down. This is one cool book. Each chapter is about a dead person the author knew. The chapters are short and intense and riveting and beautifully written. Winik has many gifts as a writer, but one I appreciate the most is her ability to write about the hardest, darkest subjects with a light, knowing hand. Situations are bleak, but life is not. Life is hard and hilarious and good and complex and often, entirely inexplicable. Winik shows us that in this book. I love The Glen Rock Book of the Dead. I think you will too." —Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild

"Spoon River Anthology as told by a female Jack Kerouac." —This Week's Book

"Although she's known many people who died young, in sad or unsavory ways, the book is uplifting, funny and deep. This is partly because Winik resists the temptation to be overly reverent or poetic, though there are plenty of graceful passages. Her fascinating, tiny tributes tell the bare-assed truth about relationships while coming together to create a portrait of Winik's own imperfect, love-filled life." —Marcia Menter, More

"Winik offers memoir, prose and warmth – expressed with precise evocative details." —Diane Scharper, Baltimore Sun

"The Glen Rock Book of the Dead is a quiet tour de force from former Austinite Marion Winik." —Mike Shea, Texas Monthly

"I only hope that Winik will continue to write, and share her insightful stories with the world. If that requires her to use a sixth sense, talk to dead people, reminisce old times, I won't be one to judge." —Jess Krout, Hanover Evening Sun

"The truth, so tragic and so exhilarating, is the gift Marion Winik offers up with honesty and compassion in this incomparable book." —Harvey Freedenberg, Harrisburg Patriot-News's Sunday magazine

"If you have read First Comes Love—Winik's memoir about her marriage to a gay man and his death from AIDS—you may imagine what you are in for: equal parts laceration and exhilaration, 100% brilliance. To say there has never been a book like this doesn't begin to get at my admiration for what Winik does here—I'm dazzled by the highwire act of her writing, her willingness to go deep and then go deeper, and her immense wisdom about life . . . If you have the guts to read this book—easily the most powerful document I've read in years—you will almost surely make your own list of the lost. You can't not. The Glen Rock Book of the Dead is that haunting, that beautiful, that necessary." —Jesse Kornbluth, HeadButler.com

"Much of literature is elegiac in nature. Much of Winik's propulsive, come-clean writing has been about coping with loss. So it makes sense that her newest essay collection comprises tributes to her dead . . . Bold and funny, Winik is the queen of pithiness and punch, and the micro-lives she has created here are far more difficult to forge than their brevity and blithe tone might suggest." —Donna Seaman, Booklist

"Alongside the numerous deaths from AIDS and the poignant lament that there are no gay couples of Winik's generation, there is a house ravaged by Katrina, a soldier lost in Iraq, the World Trade Center, Winik imbuing each departed with a dignity and grace everyone deserves in death but might not have had in life . . . Death comes, they say, like a thief in the night. It comes for all of us; if we're lucky, there is a Marion Winik in our lives to document who we were and what we meant as we cool our heels in the VIP lounge of the afterlife. We all deserve it, and, as evidenced by this book, no one knows that more keenly than Marion Winik." —Melanie Haupt, Austin Chronicle

Product details

• Authors: Marion Winik, Winik Marion, Winikmarion Winik Is the Is the Author o
• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 17.09.2019
• EAN: 9781640092532
• ISBN: 978-1-64009-253-2
• No. of pages: 320
• Dimensions: 108 mm x 178 mm x 22 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Humanities, art, music > Education > Social education, social work; Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Biographies, autobiographies; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs, Autobiography: general, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Death & Dying, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Essays, Gender studies: women, Gender studies: women and girls, Sociology: death and dying, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs