In Smoke Gets in Your Eyes Caitlin Doughty gives us a book that is part memoir part polemic about the
current American cultural attitude toward death. Doughty writes of her time working in a
crematorium, reminisces about her personal encounters or lack of them with
death, and posits that our current cultural practices around death & dying
reinforce a fear of death in the population at large. While her experiences are quite interesting
and her larger point has some merit she overplays her hand. I found her apparent belief that no one can
learn without direct concrete experience very irritating after a while and did
not recognize my own beliefs and attitudes nor those of my friends and family
in her depiction of the current cultural state of death.
The book was interesting for the personal experience
portions and it did raise questions about death and the way we handle it for
the reader to consider. While the author
does not make the case she thinks she is making she does tell an interesting
story. I would recommend it on those
grounds.
