American Way Of Death

Jessica Mitford’s The American Way of Death is the book that took one look at the funeral business, folded its arms, and asked why grief had suddenly acquired a price list. Death, you might think, would be one of the few occasions on which commerce might quietly stand at the back of the room and behave itself. Mitford discovered, with magnificent bad manners, that commerce had instead pulled up a chair, polished the coffin handles, and begun recommending the superior model.

This is her famous assault on the American funeral industry: the embalming, the caskets, the “services”, the language, the ceremony, the emotional pressure, the respectable furnishings, the velvet-lined euphemisms, and the curious ability of death to become a retail opportunity just when the customer is least inclined to comparison-shop. The dead cannot complain, the living are distraught, and into this tender little marketplace comes the professional solemnity of people who know exactly how to say “dignity” while pointing at something more expensive.

Mitford’s genius is that she treats the whole arrangement with the appalled clarity it deserves. She is not shocked by death. Death is straightforward enough, in its unhelpful way. What fascinates and enrages her is the machinery built around it: the way sorrow can be packaged, upgraded, upholstered and invoiced; the way plain words are replaced with soft commercial fog; the way a body becomes “the loved one” and a bill becomes “arrangements.” It is satire, investigation and public service, all wearing black and quietly checking the small print.

The great irony, of course, is that the funeral trade sells peace of mind at the exact moment the mind is least peaceful. Everything is presented as choice, but the choices arrive wrapped in expectation, guilt and mahogany. Would you like the modest farewell, or would you prefer not to look like a heartless cheapskate in front of the relatives? Would you like simplicity, or the deluxe gesture of eternal affection with optional handles? Capitalism rarely looks more intimate, or more absurd, than when it is leaning sympathetically over the coffin catalogue.

This is a classic of consumer muckraking, and still has that wonderful Mitford bite: elegant, furious, funny, precise, and wholly unwilling to let polite society hide behind curtains and tasteful lighting. It belongs with books that make an industry wish everyone would go back to being vague. After reading it, one may never hear the phrase “final tribute” without wondering whether someone has added VAT.

Good copy, as sold by Crappy Old Books. A sturdy second-hand survivor of a book about how even the final journey can be over-managed, over-dressed and overcharged. Sensibly, this copy comes without embalming, satin lining or a commemorative invoice, which already puts it ahead of several of the options under discussion.

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