The American Way of Death Revisited - Jessica Mitford [0]
The American Way of Death Revisited
“The American Way of Death Revisited has lost none of the original work’s power to shock, appall, and—despite the grim subject matter—jolt the funny bone.”
—Business Week
“Jessica Mitford was sui generis.… Even in death, Mitford continues to serve as the scourge of those who would profit obscenely from dying.”
—Portland Oregonian
“No less startling, or entertaining, than the original.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“The ‘value added’ of this edition is considerable.… Nobody will ever bring to [the battle against the funeral industry] the combination of irony, brio, grit and vitriol that stamped the Mitford style.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Excellent.… Her revealing interviews allow unscrupulous funeral-industry honchos to dig, as it were, their own graves.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Even in death, Jessica Mitford continues to serve as the scourge of those who would profit obscenely from the dead.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
JESSICA MITFORD
The American Way of Death Revisited
Jessica Mitford—of the notorious Mitford clan—was one of the most celebrated muckraking journalists of our time. Among her books are Daughters and Rebels, The Trial of Dr. Spock, and Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking. Until her death in 1996, she lived in Oakland, California, with her husband, the labor lawyer Robert Treuhaft.
Also by JESSICA MITFORD
Daughters and Rebels
The American Way of Death
The Trial of Dr. Spock
Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business
A Fine Old Conflict
Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking
Faces of Philip: A Memoir of Philip Toynbee
Grace Had an English Heart
The American Way of Birth
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, JANUARY 2000
Copyright © 1998 by The Estate of Jessica Mitford
Copyright © 1963, 1978 by Jessica Mitford
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1998, and in very different form as The American Way of Death by Simon & Schuster, New York, in 1963, and revised in 1978.
Vintage Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Mitford, Jessica, 1917–1996
The American way of death revisited / by Jessica Mitford. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Undertakers and undertaking—United States. 2. Funeral rites and ceremonies—Economic aspects—United States.
3. Mitford, Jessica, 1917–1996, The American Way of Death.
I. Title.
HD9999.U53U554 1998
338.4′736375′0973—dc21 97-49349
eISBN: 978-0-307-80939-1
www.vintagebooks.com
v3.1
Dedicated to Karen Leonard, Lisa Carlson,
and Father Henry Wasielewski,
who, each and all, have inherited the mantle of
Scourge of the Undertaking Industry
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Editor’s Note
Foreword
Introduction
1 Not Selling
2 The American Way of Death
3 The Funeral Transaction
4 The Artifacts
5 The Story of Service
6 The Rationale
7 The Allied Industries
8 God’s Little Million-Dollar Acre
9 Shroudland Revisited
10 Cremation
11 What the Public Wants
12 Fashions in Funerals
13 The Newest Profession
14 The Nosy Clergy
15 The Federal Trade Commission
16 A Global Village of the Dead
17 Funerals in England Then and Now
18 Press and Protest
19 Pay Now—Die Poorer
20 New Hope for the Dead
Directory of Not-for-Profit Funeral and Memorial Societies
EDITOR’S NOTE
At a happy lunch with me early in 1995, Jessica Mitford—“Decca” to everyone who knew her—agreed to prepare an updated version of her classic work The American Way of Death. (As she reports in her introduction to this volume, we had worked on that book together in the early sixties, and