Round-Trip to Deadsville
Subtitle: A Year in the Funeral Underground
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Company
Published: June 2000
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 146
ISBN-13: 9781890132910
Subjects: United States; Social Science; Sociology; Death & Dying; General; Funeral rites and ceremonies; Undertakers and undertaking
Description: "Tim Matson, assaulted by middle-aged existential doubt and morbid preoccupations, sets out to confront the demons of death and the denizens of the funeral trade. His odyssey begins when he stares down a photograph of Ginseng Willard, a flinty old Vermonter who built his own coffin from a piano case, then used it as a bed for the rest of his natural days. Matson ups the ante by deciding to build his own coffin.

Like any self-respecting American literary hero, he heads out on the road to learn how to go about it. Along the way he meets an unforgettable cabal of characters who populate the funeral underground - among them the Undertaker and the Crusader, the Anatomist and the Astrologer, the Organist and the Grave-digger - and learns why the living always get the last word, and why when sprinkling ashes it's best to use a wide-mouthed urn."--BOOK JACKET.