Grave Matters - Reviews - Book Review

Contemporary Review, Sept, 2002

Grave Matters. Mark C. Taylor and Dietrich Christian Lammerts. Reaktion Books. [pounds sterling]17.95 p.b. 192 pages. ISBN 1-86189-117-2. This book is a very personal discussion of graves and the methods of burying the dead as they have evolved over the centuries. The author, a professor of humanities in Williams College, Massachusetts, US, combines this interest with his own field, philosophy.

As he writes in his long introduction, 'graves matter'. They are the continuing presence in successive lives of those who have gone before. They are the foci of our reflections and self-examination. It is not surprising that as more and more people are cremated (at least in the UK and Europe) that history and family ties matter less and less. In the photographs (by Dietrich Christian Lammerts) the author combines his interest in graves with that in philosophy. The graves discussed here are of the 'ghosts that continue to haunt', the people whose lives and writings have influenced the author. He begins with Francis Baco n, John Donne and Galileo and ends with Ralph Ellison. The last photograph is of the cemetery in America where he will himself be buried. The book may sound macabre but it is not. It is a refreshingly honest look at the role of the dead in the lives of the living.