Obituary
Obituary
An obituary is an article about a recently deceased person. Newspapers often publish obituaries as news articles. Although obituaries tend to focus on positive aspects of the subject's life, this is not always the case. According to Nigel Farndale, the Obituaries Editor of The Times, obituaries ought to be "balanced accounts" written in a "deadpan" style, and should not read like a hagiography.
"Three decades ago, my Midwestern friend, Joe Rosenfield, then in his 80s, received an irritating letter from his local newspaper. In blunt words, the paper asked for biographical data it planned to use in Joe’s obituary. Joe didn’t respond. So? A month later, he got a second letter from the paper, this one labeled “URGENT.”"
"I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction."
"Decency is not news; it is buried in the obituaries — but it is a force stronger than crime."
"Luciano Pavarotti, who has died aged 71 of pancreatic cancer, grew up in the 1940s listening to the previous golden generation of tenor stars on record and radio... His family were enthusiastically musical and, aged four, he was apparently standing on the kitchen table singing the Duke of Mantuas La donna é mobile from Rigoletto as a party trick. He modelled himself on what he heard, and used recordings to take account of the competition, dead or alive, throughout his career. Nature equipped him with one of the most individual, unmistakable and beautiful voices there has been."
"It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books... It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: He made the books and he died."
