Do dead bodies look like wax scupltures? Sedaris says yes. Photo by Yo Shi/Wiki.
I had to read the top of this story three times to try and figure out exactly why Sedaris is hanging out with the medical examiner’s office for a day. I didn’t find any answers. Was he just curious? Was he doing research for his writing? Did he think it would be a laugh?
Unless he leaves me a comment here, I guess we’ll never know…
Gist of the Story
As mentioned, Sedaris visits the coroner’s and gets to see dead people. Not in the Sixth Sense style where other people do not see them, though. Everyone sees them. Sedaris describes them. But not really. I think he was trying to be respectful, i.e. not comedic about the actual dead people. The thing is, dead people are funny. If you don’t believe me, just ask any viewer of the series Six Feet Under. I hear it’s a real “laff riot.”
At any rate, Sedaris pokes good fun at an 80-year old man who decided to get on a ladder, change and light bulb and spend 4 days decomposing on his apartment floor alone because he fell and broke his neck. “The autopsy took place in the morning and was the best argument for the buddy system I’d ever seen.” Agreed.
Sedaris makes some very insightful comments about the ‘why’ of the death that doesn’t seem to phase the coroners. See also: woman standing in line for at a hamburger stand when she is hit by a truck that lost control. People buy hamburgers every day. How can someone avoid buying a hamburger? These are thoughts that haunt Sedaris (and me, to some extent. I find Sedaris much more paranoid than I. It’s kind of comforting.)
First Lines, Last Words
The thing about dead people is that they look really dead, fake almost, like models made of wax.
It was the look you get when facing a sudden and insurmountable danger: the errant truck, the shaky ladder, the crazy person who pins you to the linoleum and insists, with increasing urgency, that everything you know and love can be undone by a grape.
Quotable
They recalled finding the eye of a suicide victim stuck to the bottom of a bedroom door, and then they turned on the TV and started watching a horror movie, which I can’t believe had any real effect on them.
Book Rating
I’ll be rating When You Are Engulfed in Flames as a whole. See my book ratings and how they work.
My name is Britty and I'm chief bottle-washer at this site. I'm a book-lover, student and freelance writer when I'm not being a mom of three and wife of one.
