Author: allen0997

From Here To Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death ~ A Capsule Book Review

From Here To Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Did you know that 99.9% of people in Japan are cremated since a cemetery plot in Tokyo costs the equivalent of $53,000 American dollars? Did you know that there’s a “body farm” in North Carolina where people can choose to have their bodies “composted” after death? Did you know that the American funeral industry came into being with the sole purpose of selling you a casket? Did you know that, beginning in 2017, more Americans are choosing cremation over conventional burial? Did you know that the American funeral industry fears cremation because it’s cheaper (no embalming and no casket) than burial? Did you know that in Bolivia there are people who pray to human skulls, believing the skulls can intervene for them in heaven?

Did you know that cemeteries that require a casket to be buried in a steel or concrete vault do so to make maintaining the grounds easier? Did you know that in Colorado there’s a small town where you might have a “natural” cremation (as opposed to “industrial” cremation) for as little as $500? Did you know that many cemeteries have added a section for “natural” burial where (un-embalmed) bodies are buried in a wicker basket or a cardboard box? Did you know that, in Victorian times, crowded cemeteries in large European cities might have as many as twenty bodies in one grave and that dead bodies were frequently displaced to make way for somebody else? Did you know that these overcrowded cemeteries exuded noxious odors, especially after rainfall?  Did you know that, in a section of Indonesia, there are people who exhume the bodies of their long-dead relatives, talk to them, dress them, and bring them offerings of food?

These and other interesting nuggets of information are revealed in From Here To Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, by author/mortician Caitlin Doughty. She writes on the grimmest of death-related subjects with humor and insight that only a person who works in the “death industry” could have. It’s an interesting, informative, nonfiction book that will expand your knowledge and make you ponder on your own mortality, unless, of course, you are planning on living forever, which I don’t think is a very pleasant prospect for most of us.

Copyright © 2021 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Shadow Over Innsmouth ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Shadow Over Innsmouth ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

H. P. Lovecraft, the foremost American horror writer of the twentieth century, lived from 1890 to 1937. His imaginative novels and short stories are the stuff of which nightmares are made. This “Belle Epoque Original” contains the short novel (or extremely long short story) The Shadow Over Innsmouth, plus three (long) short stories: “In the Witch’s House,” “The Lurking Fear” and “The Rats in the Walls.”

Innsmouth of The Shadow Over Innsmouth is a coastal town in Massachusetts unlike any other. Once a thriving fishing community, it is now a hellish nightmare. The buildings are falling down because they are so old and untended. Most of the people (the ones with any sense) have left. A black reef offshore about one mile has been a curse to the town. The reef is inhabited by frog-fish creatures that come ashore whenever they want. I’m not sure what the frog-fish creatures do to the people of Innsmouth, but whatever it is, it isn’t pretty. (I think they mate with them to make more frog-fish creatures like themselves.)

The unnamed narrator telling the story is touring the region to study the architecture and comes across Innsmouth by chance. Innsmouth isn’t really where he intended to go, but it’s where he ends up on his way to some other place. He becomes more interested in the history and appearance of the town than is good for him and does some investigating (some would call it snooping), incurring the displeasure of the locals. He ends up having to stay the night in Innsmouth, in a creepy hotel; it’s not the kind of home-away-from-home experience he hopes to repeat any time soon. The frog-fish people are after him all night long, to do him great bodily harm. He never sees them up close, but that somehow makes them scarier.

In the short story, “In the Witch’s House,” a young student is staying in a house (because the rent is cheap) where a legendary witch once lived. He is a studying ancient folklore, travel to another dimension, and ancient mathematical secrets that have long since been forgotten by man. He is influenced by the long-ago witch that once occupied the space he now occupies. He becomes slowly unhinged. Is what is happening really happening or is it only happening in his mind?

“The Lurking Fear” is about the Martense family, a New England family that has cut itself off from the world and lives in a “haunted house” on a remote hill that is affected by violent thunder storms. With inbreeding, the family “degenerates,” into a path of reverse evolution. (Each family member has one blue eye and one brown eye.) When a kind of grotesque, mole-like creature is found living in the ground underneath the house, investigators deduce that this is what the Martense family members have become.

In “The Rats in the Walls” a man owns an ancient “priory” in England that goes back to medieval times. He makes a lot of repairs to the structure and makes it his home until he discovers there is a terrible problem with rats living, not only in the walls, but in the vast underpinnings of the priory. The rats living there are especially hungry and aggressive. It’s probably not a good idea to make them a part of your life.

The life and work of H. P. Lovecraft are frequently compared to that of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). They both wrote on disturbing subjects, they were both New Englanders, they both had verbose writing styles, and they both died in their forties. During their lifetimes they were under-appreciated and under-recognized but achieved well-deserved literary immorality in death.

Copyright © 2021 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Mrs. Bridge ~ A Capsule Book Review

Mrs. Bridge ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Mrs. Bridge, the superb novel by Evan S. Connell (1924-2013), was first published in 1959. It is a classic of realist fiction, a piece of Americana, an indelible portrait of the kind of Midwestern American woman who lived in the 1940s and who no longer exists. (The companion piece to Mrs. Bridge, titled Mr. Bridge, was published ten years later.)

India Bridge is a Kansas City “country club matron” of the 1940s. She is married to Walter Bridge and they have three children: Ruth, Carolyn (Corky) and Douglas. Walter is an attorney and he is busy, busy, busy all the time to make enough money to “take care of” his family. In fact, he believes that “providing” for them is much more important than spending time with them or showing them he loves them (even though he does love them). He works from morning ‘til night and sometimes when he gets home all he can do is fall into bed to rest up for the next day of work. (Do we detect a heart attack in the making?)

Walter and India Bridge are “well to do” rather than rich. They have enough money for just about anything. They live in a lovely house and have two cars; they belong to the country club and they have plenty of snooty friends. They can afford a tour of Europe, which they are enjoying until the Nazis invade Poland and they have to go back home.

Mrs. Bridge can afford a maid to run the household, do the cleaning, shopping, laundry, cooking, etc. The maid’s name is Harriet and she is both a blessing and a curse to Mrs. Bridge. She is efficient, but in the very fact of her efficiency she places Mrs. Bridge in a dilemma because it leaves her (Mrs. Bridge) with plenty of time to try to find something to do and think about the past when she had to do all the housework herself and her three children were little and needed her.

One of Mrs. Bridge’s endearing qualities is that she is “traditional” and resistant to change. As her three children grow to adulthood, she is frequently baffled and hurt by their behavior. Her son, Douglas, is aloof and secretive. When she finds a naked girly magazine in his dresser drawer, she burns the magazine and gives Douglas an old-fashioned marriage manual from when she herself was young. The older daughter, Ruth, is something of a bohemian and nothing like her mother. She leaves home as soon as she can and goes to New York to work and become a libertine, unashamedly “sleeping” with a number of different men that she doesn’t care about. The younger daughter, Carolyn (Corky), goes off to college and finds an “inappropriate” man that she wants to marry. Mrs. Bridge must accept the fact that Carolyn’s husband’s father is a low-class plumber instead of a doctor or a lawyer. Carolyn soon finds herself with a baby and discovers that that she “can’t stand” the man she’s married to.

Mrs. Bridge is a slice of life, a chronicle of a specific time in twentieth century American life, an engrossing account of  the small moments that make up a life. India Bridge is a conflicted character: a woman with all the material comforts to make her happy but with plenty of reasons not to be happy. By the time you reach the end of the novel, you will have the feeling that India Bridge not only a character in a book but a person you know, or have known, intimately.

Copyright © 2020 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997