Media Release
September 19 2006
Life After Death: the definitive word
‘Nigel Starck is now the acknowledged world expert on the
obituarist’s craft.’
The Guardian
Obituaries, once considered the lifeless backwater of newspapers, are
making a comeback. Leading the way is
Life After Death: The Art of the Obituary, the first book by
globetrotting researcher of all things deathly literate and
international authority on the artform, UniSA’s
Dr Nigel Starck.
Life After Death investigates — and celebrates — the development of the
obituary in the British, American and Australian press. Dr Starck tracks
down the earliest exercise in obituary publication (in 1622), then
traces the evolution of the form over four centuries. Along the way he
delves into a multitude of lives, from the heroic to the comic, the
saintly to the downright villainous, the exemplary to the eccentric.
Meet, in the posthumous cast list, Major Digby Tatham-Warter of
Britain’s Parachute Regiment, who carried an umbrella into battle just
in case it rained; the absent-minded Australian barrister Pat Lanigan,
who drove from Canberra to Sydney and then flew back, leaving his car
behind; and the eccentric American publisher Eddie Clontz, whose
newspaper reported (exclusively, of course) that “tiny terrorists” were
disguising themselves as garden gnomes.
Dr Starck says the obituary underwent many “sign of the times”
transformations during its very rich history. In the late eighteenth
century, obits were often graphic and grotesque, recounting death with
blood and guts imagery. The obit all but died in the 1920s, and Dr
Starck says many believe the Great War simply put people off death.
The 1980s signalled the beginning of the robust writing style we see in
obit pages today. A 1986 obituary for Sir Robert Helpmann, former
artistic director of the Australian Ballet, was seen as a catalyst for
change.
“The Times in London described him as ‘a homosexual of the
proselytising kind, likely to turn young men on the border his way’,” Dr
Starck says.
“This was highly controversial and set the pattern for a new form. The
rule that you couldn’t speak ill of the dead no longer applied.”
Dr Starck also explores how the obit page, once reserved for royals or
the rich and famous, is now frequented by janitors, bus drivers ─ anyone
with a good story to tell.
He believes that these two shifts ─ from elitist to egalitarian, and
from effusive to objective ─ have greatly contributed the obit’s
resurrection.
Without doubt, Life After Death is a book that will outlive its
author as an enduring celebration of the art form.
“When you write an obit, you feel like you’re writing something for
history, it’s permanent, something that matters. It doesn’t have the
ephemeral quality that so much journalism has,” he says.
Life After Death: the Art of the Obituary is published by
Melbourne University Publishing
and is available in bookstores nationwide.
Media contact
- Rebecca Gill office (08) 8302 0096 mobile 0404 85 7977 email rebecca.gill@unisa.edu.au
Contact for interview
- Nigel Starck email nigel.starck@unisa.edu.au