The fear of death, the pain of bereavement, the art of consolation, and the custom of mourning-these are experiences with which all mortals must reckon. In The Grim Reader, editors Maura Spiegel and Richard Tristman have gathered the best classic and contemporary writing on mortality-from Montaigne to Monty Python-to produce an essential resource for the heart and mind. These idiosyncratic and always enlightening pieces are grouped into thematic parts in which a diversity of perspective on death are revealed. From death in its most personal sphere to the major issues of death in the public realm, The Grim Reader offers a fresh and unmediated encounter with mortality and the many dimensions of grief and recovery.A compelling collection of poems, fiction, letters, historical documents, essays, and narrations from a wide variety of writers, including:Vladimir Nabokov- John Ashbery- Samuel BeckettAdam Smith- Simone de Beauvoir- Grace PaleyGiovanni Boccaccio- Bertolt Brecht- Roland BarthesJames Baldwin- Primo Levi- Anne SextonLuis Buñuel- Paul Monette- Jessica Mitford- Stanley Elkin

Acknowledgments Preface PART 1:  RECKONINGS WRESTLING WITH THE FACTSigmund Freud: On Transience Bertolt Brecht: On His Mortality Michel de Montaigne: To Philosophize Is to Learn to Die Thomas Nagel: Death C. P. Cavafy: The Horses of Achilles Vladimir Nabokov: Speak, Memory  BEING BRAVE AND BEING SCAREDPhilip Larkin: Aubade Paul Zweig: Departures John Keats: Sonnet Marguerite Yourcenar: With Open Eyes Adam Smith: On the Death of David Hume William Hazlitt: On the Fear of Death John Ashbery: Fear of Death Robert Louis Stevenson: Aes Triplex  TIME TO BE OLDA. R. Ammons: from Garbage Samuel Clemens: On Old Age Luis Buñuel: Swan Song Kingsley Amis: Lovely Philip Larkin: The Old Fools  PART 2: WHAT WORDS ARE THERE? LEFT BEHINDPaul Auster: Portrait of an Invisible Man Donald Justice: Sonnet to My Father Colette: He Died in His Seventy-Fourth Year . . . Alvin Feinman: True Night Emily Dickinson: Poems and a Letter Sharon Olds: The Death of Marilyn Monroe 129 ONE FIGHT MORESir Thomas Browne: Religio Medici James Merrill: An Upward Look Simone de Beauvoir: A Very Easy Death Nicole Loraux: A Woman’s Suicide for a Man’s Death  SONS AND DAUGHTERSGrace Paley: Mother James Baldwin: Notes of a Native Son Philip Roth: Patrimony Anne Sexton: The Child-Bearers Elizabeth Rosen: My Mother’s Death  PART 3:  GIVE DEATH THE CROWN: WAR, PESTILENCE, GENOCIDE IN ITS MIDSTJasper Griffin: On Epic Death Alan Moorehead: Gallipoli Giovanni Boccaccio: The Plague in Florence Samuel Pepys: The Plague in London Primo Levi: October 1944 Robert Jay Lifton: Immersion in Death  OUR PLAGUE: AIDSEmmanuel Dreuilhe: Mortal Embrace Thom Gunn: Terminal Paul Monette: 3275   PART 4: MAKING ARRANGEMENTS THE ‘‘FORMAL FEELING’’: RITES AND RITUALEmily Vermeule: A Very Active Dead Geoffrey Gorer: Death, Grief, and Mourning in Contemporary Britain Sheila Awooner-Renner: I Desperately Needed to See My Son George Bernard Shaw: On the Cremation of His Mother Richard Selzer: Remains  DEATH CULTURESPhilippe Ariès: The Modern Cemetery Jessica Mitford: The American Way of Death Rudolf Schäfer: Photographing the Dead Roland Barthes: Camera Lucida Siegfried Giedion: The Mechanization of Death Erwin Panofsky: The Dangerous Dead  LEGACIESE. A. J. Honigmann: The Second-Best Bed Carlos M. N. Eire: From Madrid to Purgatory  PART 5: DEATH ISSUES FINAL CAREGeorge Orwell: How the Poor DieAnne Munley: The Hospice Alternative Joseph A. Califano: Death Management  EUTHANASIA AND ASSISTED SUICIDETimothy Quill: The Burdens of Aggressive Medical TreatmentRonald Dworkin: Life’s DominionMichael Burleigh: ‘‘Euthanasia’’ in Germany  PART 6: A HEALTHY DISTANCESamuel Beckett: Malone Dies Stanley Elkin: The Beginning of the (Living) End Monty Python: The Dead Parrot Milan Kundera: Graveside Laughter  PART 7: RECAPITULATIONWilliam Shakespeare: Hamlet: The Graveyard