First published 2008
Death dominates everything, as Cormac McCarthy observed. This reality prompted editor Bradford Morrow to commission David Shields, author of the bestseller "The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead," to assemble contemporary voices examining mortality's grip on human experience. Shields gathered essays and meditations from Dave Eggers, Joyce Carol Oates, Tom Robbins, Mark Doty, Robin Hemley, Daphne Merkin, and others who tackle death from multiple angles. Their responses span philosophy and consciousness, fear and doom, irony and humor. Some writers approach the subject with gravity, others with levity, but all grapple with the universal certainty that shapes every life. The collection emerged from the Fall 2008 issue of "Conjunctions" magazine, creating a diverse exploration of humanity's most inescapable truth.
Genres: philosophy, death, psychology, non-fiction
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: grappling-with-mortality
Period: Fall 2008
400 pages · Paperback · Bard College
Content warnings: death