‘The Undertaking’ Reflects Everyday Life Through Essays

His book is subtitled “Life Studies From the Dismal Trade.”

How’s that for truth in advertising?

Thomas Lynch is an undertaker. He’s a writer, too, as evidenced by his book “The Undertaking” (Penguin Books, 202 pages, $12.95 paper), which is a collection of aptly titled essays. But he’s first and foremost an undertaker.

In a 1997 profile of Lynch, who will be in Spokane on Thursday to read from his book (see Reader Board below), Washington Post staff writer Peter Carlson told pretty much all you need to know about Lynch in just a few, sparsely worded sentences.

“Thomas Lynch is an undertaker in a town of 5,000 an hour north of Detroit,” Carlson wrote. “He makes his living by caring for the dead. He carries them from their deathbeds, washes them, shaves them, embalms them, dresses them, directs their funerals, sells caskets and burial vaults to the people who mourn for them. He is 48 years old, a dignified man whose close-cropped red beard is fading to gray. He has been doing this for most of his life.”

Carlson’s - and Lynch’s - point is simple: that you can learn much about life by being involved in such a career.

“But it’s the kind of knowledge that you’d have to be a poet to pass along,” Carlson wrote. “Fortunately, Lynch is a poet.”

In addition to two volumes of verse, Lynch has published his essays over the years in such publications as Harper’s, The New Yorker and Paris Review.

Sometimes, the essays themselves read like poems.

“To say, ‘I’m OK, you’re OK, and by the way, he’s dead!’ is, for the living, a kind of comfort,” he wrote in the title essay.

“It is why we drag rivers and comb plane wrecks and bomb sites.

“It is why MIA is more painful than DOA.

“It is why we have open caskets and all read the obits.

“Knowing is better than not knowing, and knowing it is you is terrifically better than knowing it is me. Because once I’m the dead guy, whether you’re OK or he’s OK won’t much interest me.”

In other words, says Lynch, “the dead don’t care” and the living do.

And the reaction of the critics? Their perceptions are varying, but their reactions are one and the same.

“His humor is as black as Jonathan Swift’s and as swift as S.J Perelman’s,” wrote USA Today reviewer Susan Cheever.

“Mr. Lynch reflects charmingly, lyrically, unsentimentally, sardonically on life,” wrote Richard Bernstein for the New York Times. “(He) emerges as a cross between Garrison Keillor and one of the Irish poets; one thinks of William Butler Yeats… lighthearted and funny.”

For further information, call Auntie’s at 838-0206.

Gastronomic mystery man

Earl Emerson is best known for his dual lifestyle: Seattle firefighter and best-selling mystery writer.

Emerson, who will read from his latest novel, “Catfish Cafe,” on Wednesday at Auntie’s Bookstore (see Reader Board below), is apparently something of a gourmand, too.

That was enough of a peg for Candace Dempsey, a writer for the Web site Seattle.sidewalk, to work up an Emerson-led tour of Pioneer Square dining places that you can read on the Internet.

“Thomas Black eats where I eat,” Emerson said of his main protagonist. “We have exactly the same taste in food.”

Big surprise. Among the places that Emerson takes Dempsey - and anyone else who reads along - are Trattoria Mitchelli (Thomas Black’s “favorite haunt”), Cow Chip Cookies, McCormick’s Fish House and Bar, the International District’s Kau Kau Restaurant for Chinese food.

“Though it was as unpretentious as a bowl of rice, the Kau Kau had some of the best food in town,” Emerson wrote in the Thomas Black mystery “Deviant Behavior.”

To check out the site, type in www.sidewalk.com/link/44235.

Or ask Emerson himself about it on Wednesday.

A romantic reward

Newport writer Sunni Jeffers has been rewarded for her romantic efforts.

To be exact, Jeffers was awarded the 1998 Golden Heart Award from the Romance Writers of America at an Aug. 1 ceremony in Anaheim, Calif. Jeffers’ manuscript “Kickin’ and Screamin”’ was judged Best Inspirational Romance.

A member of the RWA since 1989, Jeffers is Region 4 national director. She also is a member of the Inland Empire Chapter of the RWA.

The Reader Board

Earl Emerson, author of “Catfish Cafe,” will read from his novel at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Auntie’s Bookstore, Main and Washington.

Thomas Lynch, author of “The Undertaking,” will read from his book at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Auntie’s Bookstore.