By BRAD WEISMANN
The Book of the Dead: Lives of
Justly Famous and the Unreservedly Obscure
John Lloyd and John Mitchinson
2009
Crown Publishers
New York
When I was a kid, the most
prevalent form of literature in our house was the Reader’s Digest and its
assorted ancillary products, derivatives, and uncategorized spawn. Condensed
Books. Spring 1961 through Autumn 1968? Check. Treasury of Great Operettas,
Mood Music for Listening and Relaxation, Joyous Music at Christmastime? On my
turntable.
One of these was what first
spawned by interest in biographies, and eventually obituaries. “Great Lives,
Great Deeds” is an out-of-print Readers Digest compendium of more than 80
little inspirational life sketches of heroic figures – sans warts,
contradictions, controversy, or depth.
Subsequent journeys through
Vasari, Plutarch, Suetonius, and modern counterparts such as Schonberg’s “Lives
of the Great Composers” and the Durants’ “Interpretations of Life” have proven
to be tasty samplers for me, gateway drugs that encourage deeper investigations.
How pleasant it was to find this
gem in a street rack a few weeks ago. “The Book of the Dead” is a delightfully
readable, completely disrespectful – and still thoughtful – mashup of bios from
across the historical spectrum.
It helps that the authors are the
redoubtable John Lloyd (Britain’s “Blackadder” TV series) and the master
researcher John Mitchinson. Between the two of them, they subsume a plethora of
fascinating facts about each subject into a charming, provocative, and
sometimes silly narrative.
Rather than categorize their
subjects by nation, vocation, or other criteria, the duo engages our minds by
lumping them together under unlikely banners such as sex, food, questing,
particularly rotten childhoods, imposters, and those who kept monkeys. Somehow,
it all works. For those who might otherwise fail to consider figures such as
Benjamin Franklin and Moll Cutpurse, St. Cuthbert and Bucky Fuller, or Oliver
Cromwell and Frida Kahlo as people with something significant in common, well.
(And for those intrigued by the outlandish details, there is a helpful list of
sources for further reading in the back of the text.)
The unifying element of this brisk,
absorbing read is its tone. “The Book of the Dead” is shot through with the
sheer pleasure of storytelling, the high spirits that come from shedding light
on dusty, musty old exemplars, and a kind of bitter optimism – the faith that
mankind’s peculiarities lead as often to good as to evil, and that the
unexamined life is not worth laughing at. This cheeky cynicism animates the
book and makes it something to purchase, hold onto, share, and read aloud to
someone who is easily upset by such things.