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A review by mc_easton
The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story by Edwidge Danticat
4.0
This is a beautiful memoir of grief after a mother’s death. And because writing is at the core of Danticat’s experience of her grief, it’s also a concise compendium of the literature that has helped her approach and make sense of death and grief. The passages where Danticat examines Toni Morrison’s or Gabriel García Márquez’s portrayals of death are rich, packed with the stylistic insights of a woman who is not only a master writer but also a master reader.
She quotes García Márquez as he explains that he knew how to write Remedios the Beauty’s death only once he had the detail of the sheets flapping on the clothesline. Danticat also breaks down the scene where Morrison writes an infanticide in BELOVED, examining where Morrison’s word choice allows children and mothers to be children and mothers, and where it does not, as well as how her use of the slave catchers’ point of view renders the scene’s horror more effectively, focusing our gaze on the moment of violence rather than Sethe’s internal experience. These are the passages I picked up the book for, and Danticat doesn’t disappoint.
However, it is a departure from “The Art of” series in several significant ways. The first and most noticeable is the prevalence of memoir. It is as much, often more, about Danticat’s grief and the literature she finds solace in, as it is about literature itself. At root, it is a book about a writer trying to make sense of grief after a loved one’s death, not a volume exploring the technical how’s and why’s of death‘s depictions in literature.
And while the book is divided into chapters addressing different types of death in literature (suicide, executions, natural disasters), there are no chapters centered on two of the most common death scenes in literature: murder and illness. This may be due to the fact that Danticat collected essays published elsewhere and repurposed them for this volume. Whatever the reason, it is a regrettable omission, in a book whose title promises a broader investigation of how novelists “write the final story.”
Finally, much of the book—perhaps all, from a certain vantage point—is about grief, not death. It is a wonderful meditation on grief, its circularity, and the way it permeates our world. For those experiencing grief, it can offer solace. But for those looking to read about literary craft, it teases, more than satisfies.
Ultimately, it is a book of two minds, torn between death and grief, literary craft and memoir, and by the final chapters, it comes down firmly on the side of memoir and grief. If I’d picked it up knowing this, or if the title had been more accurate, my reading experience would have been quite different, less frustrating and more pleasurable. A magnificent meditation on our mortality that simply needed better packaging or a clearer focus.
She quotes García Márquez as he explains that he knew how to write Remedios the Beauty’s death only once he had the detail of the sheets flapping on the clothesline. Danticat also breaks down the scene where Morrison writes an infanticide in BELOVED, examining where Morrison’s word choice allows children and mothers to be children and mothers, and where it does not, as well as how her use of the slave catchers’ point of view renders the scene’s horror more effectively, focusing our gaze on the moment of violence rather than Sethe’s internal experience. These are the passages I picked up the book for, and Danticat doesn’t disappoint.
However, it is a departure from “The Art of” series in several significant ways. The first and most noticeable is the prevalence of memoir. It is as much, often more, about Danticat’s grief and the literature she finds solace in, as it is about literature itself. At root, it is a book about a writer trying to make sense of grief after a loved one’s death, not a volume exploring the technical how’s and why’s of death‘s depictions in literature.
And while the book is divided into chapters addressing different types of death in literature (suicide, executions, natural disasters), there are no chapters centered on two of the most common death scenes in literature: murder and illness. This may be due to the fact that Danticat collected essays published elsewhere and repurposed them for this volume. Whatever the reason, it is a regrettable omission, in a book whose title promises a broader investigation of how novelists “write the final story.”
Finally, much of the book—perhaps all, from a certain vantage point—is about grief, not death. It is a wonderful meditation on grief, its circularity, and the way it permeates our world. For those experiencing grief, it can offer solace. But for those looking to read about literary craft, it teases, more than satisfies.
Ultimately, it is a book of two minds, torn between death and grief, literary craft and memoir, and by the final chapters, it comes down firmly on the side of memoir and grief. If I’d picked it up knowing this, or if the title had been more accurate, my reading experience would have been quite different, less frustrating and more pleasurable. A magnificent meditation on our mortality that simply needed better packaging or a clearer focus.