Jessica Mitford - The American Way of Death Revisited

The American Way of Death Revisited has lost none of the original works power to shock, appall, anddespite the grim subject matterjolt 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 Mitfordof the notorious Mitford clanwas 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.

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

Copyright1998 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, 19171996
The American way of death revisited / by Jessica Mitford. 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Undertakers and undertakingUnited States. 2. Funeral rites and ceremoniesEconomic aspectsUnited States.
3. Mitford, Jessica, 19171996, The American Way of Death.
I. Title.
HD9999.U53U554 1998
338.47363750973dc21 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

A t a happy lunch with me early in 1995, Jessica MitfordDecca to everyone who knew heragreed 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 had remained close friends both through a number of other publishing ventures and after our professional relationship came to an end.) A lot had changed in the funeral trade since the first edition was published, in 1963, and not many of the changes were for the better. The plan was to retain from the original everything that still applied and to add new chapters as needed, such as the report on the Tiburon conference (Not Selling), an investigation of the new international funeral giants (A Global Village of the Dead), and an account of the failures of the Federal Trade Commission in the wake of new legislation that was written largely in reaction to the first edition of the book. Certain materialfor instance, most of the chapter on floral tributes (The Menace of P.O.)was excised as no longer relevant, although I suspect that the floral deluge that followed Princess Dianas death would have evoked some new commentary on this subject. And, of course, a great deal of updatingparticularly of priceswas needed.

Most of this workincluding the new chapters mentioned above, as well as the introduction and the final chapter, New Hope for the DeadDecca finished before her unexpected (and mercifully swift) death from cancer, in 1996. What remained to be done was accomplished by three people. First, there was her brilliant research and investigative assistant, Karen Leonard, who took on increasing responsibilities and, indeed, soon found herself drawn into the funeral reform movement. The second crucial person was Lisa Carlson, probably the most influential figure in that movement, who made many generous contributions to the book, not the least of which was her extensive help with the penultimate chapter, Pay NowDie Poorer, which sets out the complex realitiesand booby trapsinherent in pay-in-advance funerals. Finally, Deccas husband, Robert Treuhaft, had made a promise to her just before she died: the distinguished labor- and civil-rights lawyer, who had worked with her on many of her books, would retire from his practice and see this book through to completion. This he heroically did.

Almost until her final week, Decca was reveling in the job, bombarding me and other pals with faxes that gleefully skewered the more fatuous and/or hypocritical high jinks of the industry. She could be ruthlesssavage, evenwhen she was on the warpath, but she never stopped laughing, which is probably why The American Way of Death was not only welcomed as a necessary corrective in 1963 but was so enjoyed as a piece of writing. And why it still reads so well today.

The American Way of Death Revisited is being published exactly thirty-five years after the original edition. Unfortunately, the corrective is as necessary today as it was then. Fortunately, it is being applied.

ROBERT GOTTLIEB

T his would normally be the place to say (as critics of the American funeral trade invariably do), I am not, of course, speaking of the vast majority of ethical undertakers. But the vast majority of ethical undertakers is precisely the subject of this book. To be ethical merely means to adhere to a prevailing code of morality, in this case one devised over the years by the undertakers themselves for their own purposes. The outlook of the average undertaker, who does adhere to the code of his calling, is to me more significant than that of his shadier colleagues, who are merely smalltime crooks such as may be found in any sphere of business. Scandals, although they frequently erupt (misuse by undertakers of the coroners office to secure business, bribery of hospital personnel to steer cases, the illegal reuse of coffins, fraudulent double charges in welfare cases), are not typical of the trade as a whole, and therefore are not part of the subject matter of this book.