Saving the Best for Last

There’s something stirring about a well-written obituary. It provides a compact recollection of a life well (or, perhaps, poorly) spent, and there have been whole books written about the penning and appreciation of expertly crafted obits (The Dead Beat, by Marilyn Johnson, and The Last Word, by Marvin Siegel, come immediately to mind). Most of these published testaments are composed by people who didn’t know the deceased, and that’s probably for the best, since it assures that the results veer clear of the maudlin. However, a personal association with the departed can, in the hands of a writer who knows how to tell a good story, inform the obit with a warmth impossible to communicate by someone who didn’t know the subject.

A terrific example of this is Wallace Stroby’s final tribute to Charles Einstein, a veteran journalist, editor, novelist (The Bloody Spur, 1953), and screenwriter who died in New Jersey last week at the age of 80. Stroby, of course, is the author of The Barbed-Wire Kiss and The Heartbreak Lounge, and he got to know Einstein “over the last six or so years, while serving as his editor at The Newark Star-Ledger.” The two obviously formed a bond, the richness of which shows through in Stroby’s comments about his friend’s remarkable career. I, for one, had never heard of Einstein until I read about him in Stroby’s Live at the Heartbreak Lounge blog; yet now I feel that I ought to rush out and find one of Einstein’s works, just so I can see in his prose the creativity and heart that Stroby himself witnessed. That’s how powerful an obituary can be.

Read the piece here.

READ MORE: “Obituary: Charles Einstein (1926-2007),” by Steve Lewis (Mystery*File).