What do you think?
Rate this book
Love and Other Ways of Dying: Essays
In this moving, lyrical, and ultimately uplifting collection of essays, Michael Paterniti turns a keen eye on the full range of human experience, introducing us to an unforgettable cast of everyday people. In the seventeen wide-ranging essays collected for the first time in Love and Other Ways of Dying, he brings his full literary powers to bear, pondering happiness and grief, memory and the redemptive power of human connection.
In the remote Ukranian countryside, Paterniti picks apples (and faces mortality) with a real-life giant; in Nanjing, China, he confronts a distraught jumper on a suicide bridge; in Dodge City, Kansas, he takes up residence at a roadside hotel and sees, firsthand, the ways in which the racial divide turns neighbor against neighbor. In each instance, Paterniti illuminates the full spectrum of human experience, introducing us to unforgettable everyday people and bygone legends, exploring the big ideas and emotions that move us. Paterniti reenacts François Mitterrand’s last meal in a rustic dining room in France and drives across America with Albert Einstein’s brain in the trunk of his rental car, floating in a Tupperware container. He delves with heartbreaking detail into the aftermath of a plane crash off the coast of Nova Scotia, an earthquake in Haiti, and a tsunami in Japan—and, in searing swirls of language, unearths the complicated, hidden truths these moments of extremity teach us about our ability to endure, and to love.
Michael Paterniti has spent the past two decades grappling with some of our most powerful subjects and incomprehensible events, taking an unflinching point of view that seeks to edify as it resists easy answers. At every turn, his work attempts to make sense of both love and loss, and leaves us with a profound sense of what it means to be human. As he writes in the Introduction to this book, “The more we examine the grooves and scars of this life, the more free and complete we become.”
In the remote Ukranian countryside, Paterniti picks apples (and faces mortality) with a real-life giant; in Nanjing, China, he confronts a distraught jumper on a suicide bridge; in Dodge City, Kansas, he takes up residence at a roadside hotel and sees, firsthand, the ways in which the racial divide turns neighbor against neighbor. In each instance, Paterniti illuminates the full spectrum of human experience, introducing us to unforgettable everyday people and bygone legends, exploring the big ideas and emotions that move us. Paterniti reenacts François Mitterrand’s last meal in a rustic dining room in France and drives across America with Albert Einstein’s brain in the trunk of his rental car, floating in a Tupperware container. He delves with heartbreaking detail into the aftermath of a plane crash off the coast of Nova Scotia, an earthquake in Haiti, and a tsunami in Japan—and, in searing swirls of language, unearths the complicated, hidden truths these moments of extremity teach us about our ability to endure, and to love.
Michael Paterniti has spent the past two decades grappling with some of our most powerful subjects and incomprehensible events, taking an unflinching point of view that seeks to edify as it resists easy answers. At every turn, his work attempts to make sense of both love and loss, and leaves us with a profound sense of what it means to be human. As he writes in the Introduction to this book, “The more we examine the grooves and scars of this life, the more free and complete we become.”
464 pages, Hardcover
First published March 3, 2015
171 people are currently reading
3489 people want to read
About the author
Michael Paterniti
14 books78 followersMichael Paterniti won the 1998 National Magazine Award for his article "Driving Mr. Albert," which was first published in Harper's Magazine. A former executive editor of Outside, his work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, Details, and Esquire, where he is writer-at-large. He lives in Portland, Maine, with his wife and son.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 154 reviews
April 29, 2016
3 ½ stars. I listened to the audio of Love and Other Ways of Dying. It is a collection of essays by Michael Paterniti that he has written over the last 25 years or so. Most essays focus on different people around the world – dealing with themes of survival and death in one way of another. There is a certain whimsy to some of the essays – a man stranded at Charles de Gaulle airport for over 14 years, a man who showed up in a hospital in Toronto having ostensibly lost his memory and any clue about his past, a man who claims to have kept Einstein’s brain after conducting the autopsy on his body, and Francois Mitterrand’s last meal before his death. There are far more serious topics – a survivor of the Killing Fields in Cambodia and a survivor of the earthquake in Japan. Paterniti writes well – his language is very expressive and figurative, and his essays are as informative as they are contemplative and self-reflective. My 3 ½ star rating reflects my uneven reaction to the essays. I found some kept my attention more than others – there is a very powerful essay about an immigrant woman who owns and runs a motel in the Midwest that really got my attention. And at times I got a bit tired of Paterniti’s self-reflective and contemplative digressions – I just wanted to get to the crux of the story – was this really Einstein’s brain and what happened to it? Who was the guy who woke up with no memory in Toronto? Etc.. But overall, I found Love and Other Ways of Dying worth the time. It introduced me to a few interesting people and places, and while I didn’t always enjoy it I do appreciate that Paterniti has really taken the time to dwell on his subjects from many different angles.
A note on the audio: The reader has a deep baritone slow voice, which was not unpleasant but occasionally projected an unnecessary air of pompousness onto Paterniti’s narratives.
A note on the audio: The reader has a deep baritone slow voice, which was not unpleasant but occasionally projected an unnecessary air of pompousness onto Paterniti’s narratives.
August 16, 2016
Mike Paterniti is slyly profound. It is hard to pick a favorite among these essays, and it gets harder the more distance one gets from reading them. They stay around like a seed planted. They grow. It is easy to underestimate Paterniti because his writing voice is self-deprecating and meant to be goofily funny. But a couple of essays in this nonfiction collection prove his bonafides as someone who knows what seeing is, what wonder is. These essays range the world, and though early on I’d picked one or two I thought showcased his talent, two near the end of the collection spoke to me most directly. Ask me again in a week and I will choose a different set.
A GR friend pointed to this title, and his enthusiastic review made me want to see what he saw. The two essays David points to in his review, “Eating Jack Hooker’s Cow” and “Driving Mr. Albert,” are two I wish all the pundits and newscasters had read before the presidential campaign started in the U.S. Paterniti tells of warring motels along an ignored stretch of road in Kansas, one motel owned by the whites, and two on either side of that owned by the yellows. It is a transcendent piece of writing because both sides are understandable in their resentments and there seems no solution in sight unless they get to know one another to see what suffering is.
In his review David points to that bit in “Driving Mr. Albert,” a horrible and ghastly story about driving across country with Einstein’s brain in the car trunk, where Paterniti points out “Frankly, out in America, you get the feeling that America is dying.” There is a stench of formaldehyde in his words throughout which makes one want to wretch, and nothing he writes along the way makes it better. It is a kind of grotesquerie but we cannot pull away. This man went and witnessed and we can just say, “how about that?”
One essay—I want to say story because it reads so much like fiction—that stood out for me was “The Suicide Catcher,” set in Nanjing, China. A man takes it upon himself to try and keep people from jumping to their deaths along a stretch of bridge over the Yangtze River. Paterniti flew there to meet Mr. Chen:
“Never Forget” made me shake with fear and brought me to tears. For the first time since our presidential campaign started this time I realized that we human beings have many documented cases—here is another one—of mass delusion and slaughter of fellow humans. It can happen again. It makes no sense, but no matter how remote it seems, we must be vigilant. In this essay the author is in Cambodia with his wife and child. He walks in the park with his son “clutching him like a snake-spooked chimpanzee,” while everyone smiles and points at them. Everyone smiles so consistently he starts to get paranoid. “Why is everyone smiling?” he wonders. “Was the joke on me?…Or are they smiling because they can?” Chum Mey, a survivor of Cambodia’s Killing Fields, smiles too, though we may never understand how.
It may be worth pointing out that this type of nonfiction storytelling is kind of an unusual genre. Or is it? I mean, it is not journalism exactly. Where does a quirky, interested, interesting voice writing nonfiction fit in the canon unless one is telling news? He writes magazine pieces for GQ. But this is still an unusual category: not travel writing or memoir-writing or straight journalism. The author barely appears in these pieces except for playing straight man or adding an occasional editorial comment or two. It is more like the pieces published in The New Yorker, I guess. Anyway, if someone else were as quirky and observant as Paterniti and could write as well, they might find an audience. My guess is that Paterniti would say, “No, don’t. It ain’t that easy…” But he’d say it with a smile.
A GR friend pointed to this title, and his enthusiastic review made me want to see what he saw. The two essays David points to in his review, “Eating Jack Hooker’s Cow” and “Driving Mr. Albert,” are two I wish all the pundits and newscasters had read before the presidential campaign started in the U.S. Paterniti tells of warring motels along an ignored stretch of road in Kansas, one motel owned by the whites, and two on either side of that owned by the yellows. It is a transcendent piece of writing because both sides are understandable in their resentments and there seems no solution in sight unless they get to know one another to see what suffering is.
In his review David points to that bit in “Driving Mr. Albert,” a horrible and ghastly story about driving across country with Einstein’s brain in the car trunk, where Paterniti points out “Frankly, out in America, you get the feeling that America is dying.” There is a stench of formaldehyde in his words throughout which makes one want to wretch, and nothing he writes along the way makes it better. It is a kind of grotesquerie but we cannot pull away. This man went and witnessed and we can just say, “how about that?”
One essay—I want to say story because it reads so much like fiction—that stood out for me was “The Suicide Catcher,” set in Nanjing, China. A man takes it upon himself to try and keep people from jumping to their deaths along a stretch of bridge over the Yangtze River. Paterniti flew there to meet Mr. Chen:
"He had a paunch, blackened teeth, and the raspy cough of an avid smoker—and he never stopped watching, even when he allowed himself a cigarette, smoking a cheap brand named after the city itself. He wore a baseball cap with a brim that poked out like an oversized duck’s bill, like the Cyrano of duck bills, the crown of which read They spy on you."The piece is mesmerizing. Paterniti caught that “China feel” precisely, down to the eight-table local restaurant near the bridge, the walls of which held side-by-side posters of Buddha and liquor ads, and the cloudy glasses of which held beer or grain alcohol that Mr. Chen slammed down with a greedy satisfaction and pride. Paterniti caught the feel of suicide-catching, too, as he stood without Mr. Chen on the bridge later. A man, boozed to the gills, decided he could no longer take the pressure of caring for a sick relative and his family as well. He very nearly succeeded in rolling himself over the balustrade…
“Never Forget” made me shake with fear and brought me to tears. For the first time since our presidential campaign started this time I realized that we human beings have many documented cases—here is another one—of mass delusion and slaughter of fellow humans. It can happen again. It makes no sense, but no matter how remote it seems, we must be vigilant. In this essay the author is in Cambodia with his wife and child. He walks in the park with his son “clutching him like a snake-spooked chimpanzee,” while everyone smiles and points at them. Everyone smiles so consistently he starts to get paranoid. “Why is everyone smiling?” he wonders. “Was the joke on me?…Or are they smiling because they can?” Chum Mey, a survivor of Cambodia’s Killing Fields, smiles too, though we may never understand how.
"In the first spasm of violence, everyone wearing glasses was killed. Everyone who spoke a foreign language was killed. Everyone with a university education was killed. Word was sent to expats living abroad to come home and join the new Cambodia; when a thousand or so arrived on special flights from Beijing, they were killed. Monks, so revered in Cambodian society and long the voice of conscience there, were killed. Lawyers, doctors, and diplomats were killed. Bureaucrats, soldiers, and policemen, even factory workers (Who in the minds of the Khmer Rouge were equivalent to industrialization itself), were killed."I am not equating what is happening here with what has happened elsewhere. I am merely pointing out that people can be led to madness. Dystopia has its roots in that fear. In fiction it can be thrilling. In real life it is unqualified horror. Paterniti ended up returning to Cambodia for the trials which had dragged on so very long that everyone on both sides of the case were dying before sentencing. Chum Mey was there, smiling. Paterniti was strong to witness this episode in history, and brave.
It may be worth pointing out that this type of nonfiction storytelling is kind of an unusual genre. Or is it? I mean, it is not journalism exactly. Where does a quirky, interested, interesting voice writing nonfiction fit in the canon unless one is telling news? He writes magazine pieces for GQ. But this is still an unusual category: not travel writing or memoir-writing or straight journalism. The author barely appears in these pieces except for playing straight man or adding an occasional editorial comment or two. It is more like the pieces published in The New Yorker, I guess. Anyway, if someone else were as quirky and observant as Paterniti and could write as well, they might find an audience. My guess is that Paterniti would say, “No, don’t. It ain’t that easy…” But he’d say it with a smile.
February 26, 2015
I received a copy of this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review
After reading The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese with one of my book clubs and taking a class in creative non fiction, I was drawn to this book of essays. And like most books of essays, I found I really enjoyed some and skimmed through others. I don't think that's necessarily a comment on the author's writing as much as stylistic preference, interest in subject matter, and my attention span.
Some of my skimming moments seemed to fall into two categories - too much meander in the writing. This happens a lot in personal stories such as in the one about the high school car accidents. The other is the second-person employed in an essay about a traumatic or catastrophic event - you you you - I didn't like the combination and it felt confrontational somehow. So I didn't finish the tsunami essay for this reason.
My favorites seemed to be more about pleasant subject matter, which surprised me because it seems harder to write in a captivating manner about happy topics. But I think this is where Paterniti shines, rather than the Khmer Rouge.
Highlights:
"He Might Just Be a Prophet" - I never tire of reading about Ferran Adria, and now that he has closed El Bulli, it felt nostalgic to read this piece. Paterniti does not just eat there and write about it, he spends more time with the chef. The tone captures Adria's spirit and the descriptions are the best attempt I've seen to try to give someone the experience of the cuisine without having it in their mouth.
"The Giant" - about the tallest man in the world, Leonid Stadnik. It isn't putting him up as a hero, bearer of woes, but it does portray the good and the bad of having an incredibly large body. I spent so much time looking at pictures and reading other stories about Stadnik after reading the essay, I knew he had me hooked.
"Never Forget" - this is the one about the Khmer Rouge and S-21. Phew. Any time you read something about this, it's bound to be emotional, but he explored an aspect of it I didn't know anything about. 3 people surviving a prison that held 15,000. A person responsible for most of those deaths being given only a 19 year sentence. The connection between this genocide and the others, and the unclaimed American responsibility.
After reading The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese with one of my book clubs and taking a class in creative non fiction, I was drawn to this book of essays. And like most books of essays, I found I really enjoyed some and skimmed through others. I don't think that's necessarily a comment on the author's writing as much as stylistic preference, interest in subject matter, and my attention span.
Some of my skimming moments seemed to fall into two categories - too much meander in the writing. This happens a lot in personal stories such as in the one about the high school car accidents. The other is the second-person employed in an essay about a traumatic or catastrophic event - you you you - I didn't like the combination and it felt confrontational somehow. So I didn't finish the tsunami essay for this reason.
My favorites seemed to be more about pleasant subject matter, which surprised me because it seems harder to write in a captivating manner about happy topics. But I think this is where Paterniti shines, rather than the Khmer Rouge.
Highlights:
"He Might Just Be a Prophet" - I never tire of reading about Ferran Adria, and now that he has closed El Bulli, it felt nostalgic to read this piece. Paterniti does not just eat there and write about it, he spends more time with the chef. The tone captures Adria's spirit and the descriptions are the best attempt I've seen to try to give someone the experience of the cuisine without having it in their mouth.
"The Giant" - about the tallest man in the world, Leonid Stadnik. It isn't putting him up as a hero, bearer of woes, but it does portray the good and the bad of having an incredibly large body. I spent so much time looking at pictures and reading other stories about Stadnik after reading the essay, I knew he had me hooked.
"Holding my hand, he ceased to be a giant at all. Rather, in his world now, I became the dwarf.""Driving Mr. Albert" - a bizarre story where he is driving around with a doctor who stole Albert Einstein's brain (and with the brain itself). This didn't seem real. Does it have to be real? A bizarre thing happened where he mentions the Asmat of "Irian Jaya" (now called West Papua) and what they believed about consuming someone's brain... just a bizarre connection to all of my recent New Guinean reads, completely unrelated to the rest of the essay. (Well, not completely, but you know what I mean.)
"Never Forget" - this is the one about the Khmer Rouge and S-21. Phew. Any time you read something about this, it's bound to be emotional, but he explored an aspect of it I didn't know anything about. 3 people surviving a prison that held 15,000. A person responsible for most of those deaths being given only a 19 year sentence. The connection between this genocide and the others, and the unclaimed American responsibility.
"Or in other words, our own genocide forever comes next.""The Last Meal" - Oh my goodness. He writes about food best when it is slightly off-kilter and this is the story of the French President, François Mitterand, and his legendary last meal. The story is stretched to include the author also consuming the ortolan, complete with hood to block the noises from the others/God. What a fascinating, disturbing tradition that I thought only belonged in a fantasy novel!
November 6, 2017
Paterniti brings a blend of curiosity, empathy and spectacular writing to this remarkable essay collection. There were some essays that resonated more with me than others, but I learned from all of them and feel fortunate to have had this reading experience.
January 26, 2016
Let me set any of your misapprehensions aside from the outset. This really is a book about death. When I picked it up, I thought the title was catchy--a post-Gonzo-journalism way of alluding to the intensity of the writer's travels and experiences. But no. This collection is about death--death by plane crash, death by car accident, death by cancer, death by giantism, death by genocide, death by tsunami, death by plane crash (again). You get the picture. If you are not ready for an essay collection that is basically about death except for the two occasions when it's about eating (and really both of those essays about eating are about deriving pleasure before dying--the first one implicitly so, and the second one explicitly so), then put down this book.
If you are ready to meditate on mortality--its suddenness, its terrors, the pain that can lead up to it--then this may well be the book for you. Paterniti is a stylish writer who in the style of the New Journalism is deeply invested in character sketches and in his own tentative and emotional relationship to his subjects. Because of his eye for the strange detail--patterns of speech, idiosyncracies of event--these are memorable, thoughtful portraits, and he clearly cares as much about language as a quest for meaning as he does about its mimetic capacity.
I did have a few reservations about the book, and the two biggest ones are related. First, it felt very striking to read this essay collection during the same year when I read Between the World and Me because it made me think, as Paterniti traveled the world to participate in other people's despair, that only a first world white dude could need to work so hard to get in the middle of intense, catastrophic experiences. If he'd grown up black in America, his body would have experienced that proximity to violence, that explicit threat of dismantling, quite directly, and it would not have taken traveling back in time to Nazi Germany (as in the chapter on a terrible and beautiful anatomy book) or far in geographical space to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (as in the chapter on one of the very few survivors of a death camp there) to do so. This is not to say that first world white men cannot experience intimations of mortality, nor that first world white men should not report on terrors in the rest of the world; rather, Paterniti's obsession with uncovering other people's suffering feels a bit like emotional tourism, and I couldn't shake the feeling that his own relative comfort and privilege in the world exacerbated that.
The second reservation is related to this feeling, and it comes from Paterniti's delight in using the "you." He often uses the second-person address to ask his reader to identify directly with the characters in his story. While this works stylistically, I'm not sure it works ethically, and it feels to me that it's related to the white-man-thing (as in white men are taught that they are the philosophical, universal "human," the unmarked standard, thus projecting one's own experience into others, assuming your subjectivity can encompass someone else's point of view is second nature). I felt uncomfortable with it, even as I found it absorbing.
All this being said, these essays will stay with me because of the intensity and the humility of Paterniti's vision. Indeed, in spite of my reservations about his privilege and his subjects' suffering, he is not an arrogant writer, and he wants to parse human fragility and our quest to make meaning in the face of the meaningless and apocalyptic forms of loss. That made the most powerful chapter of all for me the personal chapter that he wrote about a friend from high school who died in a car crash and the friend from high school who was blamed for it. Here, Paterniti finally didn't feel like a tourist, and his own sense of ethical confusion (remembering with guilt that he wished that his closer friend would survive the crash and recognizing that that wish constituted a death wish for the other friend) feels poignant and true.
(I should say that even when he's borrowing someone else's experience, he can create the illusion of their interiority! The chapter on the tsunami and the man who loses his wife, his grip on her hand slipping as the wave takes them, their house, and their pigeon roost is absolutely harrowing. Even though I think it's an ethically sticky wicket, Paterniti does bring home these stories with grace and sympathy.)
If you are ready to meditate on mortality--its suddenness, its terrors, the pain that can lead up to it--then this may well be the book for you. Paterniti is a stylish writer who in the style of the New Journalism is deeply invested in character sketches and in his own tentative and emotional relationship to his subjects. Because of his eye for the strange detail--patterns of speech, idiosyncracies of event--these are memorable, thoughtful portraits, and he clearly cares as much about language as a quest for meaning as he does about its mimetic capacity.
I did have a few reservations about the book, and the two biggest ones are related. First, it felt very striking to read this essay collection during the same year when I read Between the World and Me because it made me think, as Paterniti traveled the world to participate in other people's despair, that only a first world white dude could need to work so hard to get in the middle of intense, catastrophic experiences. If he'd grown up black in America, his body would have experienced that proximity to violence, that explicit threat of dismantling, quite directly, and it would not have taken traveling back in time to Nazi Germany (as in the chapter on a terrible and beautiful anatomy book) or far in geographical space to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (as in the chapter on one of the very few survivors of a death camp there) to do so. This is not to say that first world white men cannot experience intimations of mortality, nor that first world white men should not report on terrors in the rest of the world; rather, Paterniti's obsession with uncovering other people's suffering feels a bit like emotional tourism, and I couldn't shake the feeling that his own relative comfort and privilege in the world exacerbated that.
The second reservation is related to this feeling, and it comes from Paterniti's delight in using the "you." He often uses the second-person address to ask his reader to identify directly with the characters in his story. While this works stylistically, I'm not sure it works ethically, and it feels to me that it's related to the white-man-thing (as in white men are taught that they are the philosophical, universal "human," the unmarked standard, thus projecting one's own experience into others, assuming your subjectivity can encompass someone else's point of view is second nature). I felt uncomfortable with it, even as I found it absorbing.
All this being said, these essays will stay with me because of the intensity and the humility of Paterniti's vision. Indeed, in spite of my reservations about his privilege and his subjects' suffering, he is not an arrogant writer, and he wants to parse human fragility and our quest to make meaning in the face of the meaningless and apocalyptic forms of loss. That made the most powerful chapter of all for me the personal chapter that he wrote about a friend from high school who died in a car crash and the friend from high school who was blamed for it. Here, Paterniti finally didn't feel like a tourist, and his own sense of ethical confusion (remembering with guilt that he wished that his closer friend would survive the crash and recognizing that that wish constituted a death wish for the other friend) feels poignant and true.
(I should say that even when he's borrowing someone else's experience, he can create the illusion of their interiority! The chapter on the tsunami and the man who loses his wife, his grip on her hand slipping as the wave takes them, their house, and their pigeon roost is absolutely harrowing. Even though I think it's an ethically sticky wicket, Paterniti does bring home these stories with grace and sympathy.)
March 14, 2015
4.5-stars, really.
right up front, i am going to apologize, this is a long ramble-y mess. i know that. but this book... ooof! it creates feelings, and my brain is fairly swimming for all the thinking. sorry!!
in this collection of 17 essays (all except one have been previously published in magazines like GQ, Harper’s and New York Times Magazine, and date from 1997 to present), michael paterniti offers readers a rich and challenging look at our world and some truly incredible people.
i was very fortunate to have the opportunity to meet paterniti when he was touring to support his previous book, The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese. we had a wonderful conversation and, perhaps strangely, we spent a lot of time talking about paterniti’s wife, Sara Corbett. i had just finished reading the book corbett co-authored with Amanda Lindhout - A House in the Sky. (lindhout is a canadian woman who had been captured and held prisoner in somalia for 460 days, during which she was beaten, abused, and raped.) so i asked mike (that’s right - “mike”. heh!) about that process between corbett and lindhout. as well, we talked about how he and his wife balanced their workloads, since both often travel for work and now have school-aged children. he could not have been lovelier - he was so kind and interesting, and also seemed interested (i didn’t feel like i was simply being tolerated). he came across as completely lacking in airs. so going into this new book, it was nice to have his voice in my head, and just this tiniest of interactions in my memory as an anchor for the book.
as i was reading this collection, i was all over the place with my emotions, and not sure about the fluctuating styles paterniti employed. a few of the essays feature the second person narrative, and while the subjects were compelling, the voice didn’t really work for me. oddly, i sensed something close to smugness coming through at some moments in the book. which was not a trait i would use to describe paterniti (though my encounter with him was no more than 10 or 15 minutes). there were also moments where i felt things were overwritten (“He loved Neil Diamond - “Cracklin’ Rosie,” “I Am … I Said” - played the guy’s music nonstop, incessantly, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.”) and at these times i did feel a bit bogged down by it all. in each essay, there is a lot going on, each is packed with wordiness, experiences, people, places, paterniti’s internal thoughts, observations, suppositions (in some cases). it’s a lot to digest and process.
but then… then i got to the end and sat with it for a few hours. and all i could think was the whole of this collection stands as a hugely impressive body of work. paterniti’s ability to capture and convey the depths and strengths of the human spirit is something that is going to sit with me for a long time, i think.
i found each essay to be fascinating, and paterniti’s curiosity and willingness (or perhaps restlessness, or maybe wanderlust) to go after each story honourable. there is an empathy, i think, which paterniti possesses and which may motivate him as he tries to convey this quality to readers. through his writing people can , if only a little bit, know what it’s like to be in another’s shoes, no matter the distance between circumstances. and i feel like paterniti is not being opportunistic or working with some agenda, beyond telling a good story and representing a person’s truth.
there were a few standouts in the collections for me: the long fall of flight one-eleven heavy, the giant, a most dangerous beauty, never forget, and the man who sailed his house. (links and descriptions below.)
i’m not sure there is only one connecting theme throughout all of the essays - certainly the ideas of how we live and how we die are obvious. but in-between, as REM would say, is life’s rich pageant. paterniti seems to be drawn to devastations- self -inflicted, manmade, natural. yet he seems to be motivated to find the love, beauty and justice in each story too. in fact, paterniti says just this in the introduction - as part of his underlying need to make sense of ‘some bearable, or at least, fathomable whole.’
**********
i have collected a whole whack of links for you:
• a great interview on paterniti’s writing process, and finding the ‘right voice’ for each essay:
~ part one: http://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/m...
~ part two: http://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/m...
essays:
• the long fall of flight one-eleven heavy - july, 2000 - esquire: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/...
• he might just be a prophet - july, 2001 - esquire: The true tale of the amazing alchemical miracles and transcendental gastronomy of Ferran Adriá, the world's greatest chef. Or: How to Eat.
http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/res...
• eating jack hooker’s cow - november, 1997 - esquire: This is the story of two competing motel owners in Dodge City, Kansas. One a former cattle owner, Jack Hooker, and his wife Bev. The other, a couple who immigrated from Laos. The Hookers don’t know Donna and Boun Sinhpraseut, and the Sinhpraseuts don’t know the Hookers. Jack Hooker is resentful that immigrants have seemingly one-upped him and other Americans who have been making a living through blue-collar work for as long as he and his family have. Donna’s story is one of fitting in in a country that doesn’t want her to be there. Read this story and feel the uneasy tensions, the questions about race, class, immigration, economics and the American dream. http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/...
• the giant - march, 2005 - GQ: A journey to the Ukraine to learn from the world's tallest man. Leonid S. is eight and a half feet tall, and he is still growing. He is 34 years old, weighs 480 pounds, and he is still growing. He can't fit in a car, wears size 26 EEEEE shoes, can pick apples eleven feet off the ground standing flat-footed, and yes, he is still growing. Paterniti journeyed 9,000 miles to a tiny village in the Ukraine to learn from the world's tallest man http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsm...
• driving mr. albert’s brain - october 1997 - harper’s: A trip across America with Einstein’s brain, and the 84yo doctor who took it when conducting the autopsy. this was turned into the book Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain.
http://harpers.org/archive/1997/10/dr...
• the accident - march, 2015 - GQ - recalls a decades-ago car crash in Paterniti’s hometown that killed a childhood friend, and remembers the program he participated in whereby high school students trained and volunteered as EMS responders. http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-i...
• the fifteen-year layover - september, 2003 - GQ: Mehran Karimi Nasseri was without a country, a family or a home. Then he landed at Terminal One at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The article that inspired the movie The Terminal. http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsm...
• the most dangerous beauty - september, 2002 - GQ Investigates the controversy surrounding the book 'Pernkopf Anatomy,' by Eduard Pernkopf. Link of the book with Nazi Germany; Personal backgrounds of Pernkopf's staff; Pernkopf's allegiance to the Third Reich; Pernkopf's use of human subjects in research.
• the american hero (in four acts) - november, 1998 - esquire Recounts the stories of courage of four American men. Details on the work of Jason Matus in Southern Sudan; Rescue of a drowning woman in Washington D.C. by Lenny Skutnik; Fight against drug pusher and the burning of a neighborhood crackhouse by Samuel Mohammed of West Palm Beach, Florida; Information on Gary Lee Litrell.
• city of dust - december, 2010 - new york times magazine: the 2010 haitian earthquake http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/mag...
• the suicide catcher - may, 2010 - GQ: In the rapidly modernizing, constantly churning city of Nanjing, China, there is a legendary bridge, four miles long, where day after day, week after week, the desperate and melancholy and tormented come to end their lives. Most end up in the Yangtze River, 130 feet below. But some do not meet their maker. They meet someone else. They are pulled back from the brink—sometimes violently—by an odd and unlikely angel
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-i...
• 11:20 - april, 2004 - GQ: columbine high school shooting http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsm...
• mr. nobody - june, 2007 - GQ - a strange story about a (possibly) amnesiac man trying to be someone else, distancing himself from his past, wanting to remain unknown/unknowable
• never forget - july, 2009 - GQ: In 1975, in Cambodia, there was a regime so evil that it created an anti-society where torture was currency and music, books, and love were abolished. This regime ruled for four years and murdered nearly 2 million of its citizens, a quarter of the population. The perversion was so extreme, the acts so savage, that three decades later, the country still finds itself reeling. Paterniti visits Cambodia, and a Khmer Rouge prison camp, 30 years after the genocide. http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-i...
• the man who sailed his house - october, 2011 - GQ - Two days after the Japanese tsunami, after the waves had left their destruction, as rescue workers searched the ruins, news came of an almost surreal survival: Miles out at sea, a man was found, alone, riding on nothing but the roof of his house. http://reprints.longform.org/the-man-...
• the house that thurman munson built - september, 1999 - esquire: The life, death, and ghost of a catcher. Trust me, he said, and the last great brawling sports team in America did. Twenty years after Thurman Munson's death, Reggie, Catfish, Goose, Gator, the Boss—and a nation of former boys—still aren't over it. http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/...
• the last meal - june, 2008 - esquire: recreation of the final orgiastic, and illegal, meal of French President François Mitterrand http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/...
right up front, i am going to apologize, this is a long ramble-y mess. i know that. but this book... ooof! it creates feelings, and my brain is fairly swimming for all the thinking. sorry!!
"I want to see it, whatever it is. If it's war, if it's suffering, if it's complete, unbridled elation, I just want to see what that looks like—I want to smell it, I want to taste it, I want to think about it, I want to be caught up in it." - Michael Paternitithe human body is an incredible thing. it can be so fragile, yet so resilient. we can be assaulted physically, emotionally, morally, spiritually. crisis after crisis, and yet… we keep on, we endure. we may even thrive (after tragedy). sometimes, people may not want to keep on. if they are lucky someone like mr. chen (featured in the suicide catcher) will be there to help avert a catastrophe and remind them of their value, their worth, their importance.
in this collection of 17 essays (all except one have been previously published in magazines like GQ, Harper’s and New York Times Magazine, and date from 1997 to present), michael paterniti offers readers a rich and challenging look at our world and some truly incredible people.
i was very fortunate to have the opportunity to meet paterniti when he was touring to support his previous book, The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese. we had a wonderful conversation and, perhaps strangely, we spent a lot of time talking about paterniti’s wife, Sara Corbett. i had just finished reading the book corbett co-authored with Amanda Lindhout - A House in the Sky. (lindhout is a canadian woman who had been captured and held prisoner in somalia for 460 days, during which she was beaten, abused, and raped.) so i asked mike (that’s right - “mike”. heh!) about that process between corbett and lindhout. as well, we talked about how he and his wife balanced their workloads, since both often travel for work and now have school-aged children. he could not have been lovelier - he was so kind and interesting, and also seemed interested (i didn’t feel like i was simply being tolerated). he came across as completely lacking in airs. so going into this new book, it was nice to have his voice in my head, and just this tiniest of interactions in my memory as an anchor for the book.
as i was reading this collection, i was all over the place with my emotions, and not sure about the fluctuating styles paterniti employed. a few of the essays feature the second person narrative, and while the subjects were compelling, the voice didn’t really work for me. oddly, i sensed something close to smugness coming through at some moments in the book. which was not a trait i would use to describe paterniti (though my encounter with him was no more than 10 or 15 minutes). there were also moments where i felt things were overwritten (“He loved Neil Diamond - “Cracklin’ Rosie,” “I Am … I Said” - played the guy’s music nonstop, incessantly, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.”) and at these times i did feel a bit bogged down by it all. in each essay, there is a lot going on, each is packed with wordiness, experiences, people, places, paterniti’s internal thoughts, observations, suppositions (in some cases). it’s a lot to digest and process.
but then… then i got to the end and sat with it for a few hours. and all i could think was the whole of this collection stands as a hugely impressive body of work. paterniti’s ability to capture and convey the depths and strengths of the human spirit is something that is going to sit with me for a long time, i think.
i found each essay to be fascinating, and paterniti’s curiosity and willingness (or perhaps restlessness, or maybe wanderlust) to go after each story honourable. there is an empathy, i think, which paterniti possesses and which may motivate him as he tries to convey this quality to readers. through his writing people can , if only a little bit, know what it’s like to be in another’s shoes, no matter the distance between circumstances. and i feel like paterniti is not being opportunistic or working with some agenda, beyond telling a good story and representing a person’s truth.
there were a few standouts in the collections for me: the long fall of flight one-eleven heavy, the giant, a most dangerous beauty, never forget, and the man who sailed his house. (links and descriptions below.)
i’m not sure there is only one connecting theme throughout all of the essays - certainly the ideas of how we live and how we die are obvious. but in-between, as REM would say, is life’s rich pageant. paterniti seems to be drawn to devastations- self -inflicted, manmade, natural. yet he seems to be motivated to find the love, beauty and justice in each story too. in fact, paterniti says just this in the introduction - as part of his underlying need to make sense of ‘some bearable, or at least, fathomable whole.’
**********
i have collected a whole whack of links for you:
• a great interview on paterniti’s writing process, and finding the ‘right voice’ for each essay:
~ part one: http://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/m...
~ part two: http://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/m...
essays:
• the long fall of flight one-eleven heavy - july, 2000 - esquire: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/...
• he might just be a prophet - july, 2001 - esquire: The true tale of the amazing alchemical miracles and transcendental gastronomy of Ferran Adriá, the world's greatest chef. Or: How to Eat.
http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/res...
• eating jack hooker’s cow - november, 1997 - esquire: This is the story of two competing motel owners in Dodge City, Kansas. One a former cattle owner, Jack Hooker, and his wife Bev. The other, a couple who immigrated from Laos. The Hookers don’t know Donna and Boun Sinhpraseut, and the Sinhpraseuts don’t know the Hookers. Jack Hooker is resentful that immigrants have seemingly one-upped him and other Americans who have been making a living through blue-collar work for as long as he and his family have. Donna’s story is one of fitting in in a country that doesn’t want her to be there. Read this story and feel the uneasy tensions, the questions about race, class, immigration, economics and the American dream. http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/...
• the giant - march, 2005 - GQ: A journey to the Ukraine to learn from the world's tallest man. Leonid S. is eight and a half feet tall, and he is still growing. He is 34 years old, weighs 480 pounds, and he is still growing. He can't fit in a car, wears size 26 EEEEE shoes, can pick apples eleven feet off the ground standing flat-footed, and yes, he is still growing. Paterniti journeyed 9,000 miles to a tiny village in the Ukraine to learn from the world's tallest man http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsm...
• driving mr. albert’s brain - october 1997 - harper’s: A trip across America with Einstein’s brain, and the 84yo doctor who took it when conducting the autopsy. this was turned into the book Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain.
http://harpers.org/archive/1997/10/dr...
• the accident - march, 2015 - GQ - recalls a decades-ago car crash in Paterniti’s hometown that killed a childhood friend, and remembers the program he participated in whereby high school students trained and volunteered as EMS responders. http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-i...
• the fifteen-year layover - september, 2003 - GQ: Mehran Karimi Nasseri was without a country, a family or a home. Then he landed at Terminal One at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The article that inspired the movie The Terminal. http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsm...
• the most dangerous beauty - september, 2002 - GQ Investigates the controversy surrounding the book 'Pernkopf Anatomy,' by Eduard Pernkopf. Link of the book with Nazi Germany; Personal backgrounds of Pernkopf's staff; Pernkopf's allegiance to the Third Reich; Pernkopf's use of human subjects in research.
• the american hero (in four acts) - november, 1998 - esquire Recounts the stories of courage of four American men. Details on the work of Jason Matus in Southern Sudan; Rescue of a drowning woman in Washington D.C. by Lenny Skutnik; Fight against drug pusher and the burning of a neighborhood crackhouse by Samuel Mohammed of West Palm Beach, Florida; Information on Gary Lee Litrell.
• city of dust - december, 2010 - new york times magazine: the 2010 haitian earthquake http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/mag...
• the suicide catcher - may, 2010 - GQ: In the rapidly modernizing, constantly churning city of Nanjing, China, there is a legendary bridge, four miles long, where day after day, week after week, the desperate and melancholy and tormented come to end their lives. Most end up in the Yangtze River, 130 feet below. But some do not meet their maker. They meet someone else. They are pulled back from the brink—sometimes violently—by an odd and unlikely angel
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-i...
• 11:20 - april, 2004 - GQ: columbine high school shooting http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsm...
• mr. nobody - june, 2007 - GQ - a strange story about a (possibly) amnesiac man trying to be someone else, distancing himself from his past, wanting to remain unknown/unknowable
• never forget - july, 2009 - GQ: In 1975, in Cambodia, there was a regime so evil that it created an anti-society where torture was currency and music, books, and love were abolished. This regime ruled for four years and murdered nearly 2 million of its citizens, a quarter of the population. The perversion was so extreme, the acts so savage, that three decades later, the country still finds itself reeling. Paterniti visits Cambodia, and a Khmer Rouge prison camp, 30 years after the genocide. http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-i...
• the man who sailed his house - october, 2011 - GQ - Two days after the Japanese tsunami, after the waves had left their destruction, as rescue workers searched the ruins, news came of an almost surreal survival: Miles out at sea, a man was found, alone, riding on nothing but the roof of his house. http://reprints.longform.org/the-man-...
• the house that thurman munson built - september, 1999 - esquire: The life, death, and ghost of a catcher. Trust me, he said, and the last great brawling sports team in America did. Twenty years after Thurman Munson's death, Reggie, Catfish, Goose, Gator, the Boss—and a nation of former boys—still aren't over it. http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/...
• the last meal - june, 2008 - esquire: recreation of the final orgiastic, and illegal, meal of French President François Mitterrand http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/...
January 3, 2016
Essays aren't my thing. Not usually. I've read a good essay now and then, but an entire collection of essays, especially a rather lengthy one, rarely breaks my top 100 most desired reads. But I was enticed by the pretty cover and the hype, so I decided to give Michael Paterniti's collection, Love and Other Ways of Dying, a try. I'm glad I did.
Paterniti begins with a quote from Steinbeck. Not just any quote, but the dedication Steinbeck included with his manuscript of East of Eden that he sent to friend and editor, Pascal Covici. This was also the epigraph used in East of Eden itself. In case you didn’t know, East of Eden, is the greatest book ever written; it’s a fact. The quote was a bold move, but it really encapsulates what Love and Other Ways of Dying is.
The essays in this collection are selected from among the best Paterniti's written over his long career. They span decades and many walks of life. From childhood baseball heroes to a Ukrainian giant, from the busy kitchen of the most imaginative restaurant in the world to the fields of a downed airliner, Paterniti clears a path around the world and makes it sound easy.
Not only does the travel seem effortless, but so does Paterniti's prose. He weaves sentences gorgeously. Such vibrant prose is not easy for a fiction writer, but it seems that taking a factual story and uncovering the beauty of it would be so much more difficult. Which brings me to the one thing that left me uncomfortable about Love and Other Ways of Dying: how true are some of these stories; how much of Paterniti's prying to discover the heart of the story left those behind heartbroken? Undoubtedly, the author works very hard for his stories. He gets confessions that I imagine required a great deal of confidence (or imagination). While reading the story of competing motels in Dodge City, Kansas, a story about unabashed racism that mentions specific individuals and motels, I was curious if the people and businesses truly existed. They do. Further research led me to Dodge City's shocked response and the reactions of those mentioned in the story, including the victim of the racism who herself felt saddened by Paterniti's portrayal of her. I couldn’t shake this feeling of how much was too much when it comes to a story. Brand a story as fiction, and as long as you don’t make it too obvious, you can say what you want. Sell it as fact, use actual names and events, and one must consider the consequences. Certain stories left me uneasy. Others left me inspired. All but one or two left me with strong feelings.
Love and Other Ways of Dying didn’t only tug at my heart, it stimulated my mind. Nearly every essay sent me to Google. My search history is full of names, places, and events. Paterniti successfully found the most unbelievable stories, made them sound even more unbelievable; yet, search after search proved that the subjects were indeed fact. I learned so much. It was this attainment of knowledge that really earned this book the highest rating.
Which bring us back to Steinbeck. Paterniti’s essays have a strangely similar feel and beauty to Steinbeck’s many stories. There’s the same pushing of emotional boundaries that some find manipulative, others find powerful. The subjects are just as unbelievable. The difference is found in the fact that Steinbeck’s unbelievable supposedly-true stories (eg, the itinerant Shakespearean actor in Dakota [Travels with Charley], the bluff of a small, unarmed troop that resulted in the capture of an army twice its size [Once There Was a War]) are likely tall-tales that mirror our hopes and entertain us. Paterniti’s stories, largely factual and certainly capable of stimulating the reader’s wonder, often leave behind a sense of sadness. There are exceptions; some really big exceptions, like the story of the heroes of Air Florida Flight 90. Largely these essays are meant to inspire awe, not hope. Love and Other Ways of Dying is educational, fascinating, and filled with beautiful words; the only things it might be missing are hope and compassion.
Paterniti begins with a quote from Steinbeck. Not just any quote, but the dedication Steinbeck included with his manuscript of East of Eden that he sent to friend and editor, Pascal Covici. This was also the epigraph used in East of Eden itself. In case you didn’t know, East of Eden, is the greatest book ever written; it’s a fact. The quote was a bold move, but it really encapsulates what Love and Other Ways of Dying is.
The essays in this collection are selected from among the best Paterniti's written over his long career. They span decades and many walks of life. From childhood baseball heroes to a Ukrainian giant, from the busy kitchen of the most imaginative restaurant in the world to the fields of a downed airliner, Paterniti clears a path around the world and makes it sound easy.
Not only does the travel seem effortless, but so does Paterniti's prose. He weaves sentences gorgeously. Such vibrant prose is not easy for a fiction writer, but it seems that taking a factual story and uncovering the beauty of it would be so much more difficult. Which brings me to the one thing that left me uncomfortable about Love and Other Ways of Dying: how true are some of these stories; how much of Paterniti's prying to discover the heart of the story left those behind heartbroken? Undoubtedly, the author works very hard for his stories. He gets confessions that I imagine required a great deal of confidence (or imagination). While reading the story of competing motels in Dodge City, Kansas, a story about unabashed racism that mentions specific individuals and motels, I was curious if the people and businesses truly existed. They do. Further research led me to Dodge City's shocked response and the reactions of those mentioned in the story, including the victim of the racism who herself felt saddened by Paterniti's portrayal of her. I couldn’t shake this feeling of how much was too much when it comes to a story. Brand a story as fiction, and as long as you don’t make it too obvious, you can say what you want. Sell it as fact, use actual names and events, and one must consider the consequences. Certain stories left me uneasy. Others left me inspired. All but one or two left me with strong feelings.
Love and Other Ways of Dying didn’t only tug at my heart, it stimulated my mind. Nearly every essay sent me to Google. My search history is full of names, places, and events. Paterniti successfully found the most unbelievable stories, made them sound even more unbelievable; yet, search after search proved that the subjects were indeed fact. I learned so much. It was this attainment of knowledge that really earned this book the highest rating.
Which bring us back to Steinbeck. Paterniti’s essays have a strangely similar feel and beauty to Steinbeck’s many stories. There’s the same pushing of emotional boundaries that some find manipulative, others find powerful. The subjects are just as unbelievable. The difference is found in the fact that Steinbeck’s unbelievable supposedly-true stories (eg, the itinerant Shakespearean actor in Dakota [Travels with Charley], the bluff of a small, unarmed troop that resulted in the capture of an army twice its size [Once There Was a War]) are likely tall-tales that mirror our hopes and entertain us. Paterniti’s stories, largely factual and certainly capable of stimulating the reader’s wonder, often leave behind a sense of sadness. There are exceptions; some really big exceptions, like the story of the heroes of Air Florida Flight 90. Largely these essays are meant to inspire awe, not hope. Love and Other Ways of Dying is educational, fascinating, and filled with beautiful words; the only things it might be missing are hope and compassion.
September 28, 2015
This book of essays read smoothly, like a glass of good wine, though not all the stories are easy reads. It’s a strong collection and a few were really memorable. I loved the one about his visit to El Bulli in Spain. The Long Fall of Flight 111 Heavy–which you can read here on Esquire–was particularly meaningful to me since I have family in the area.
July 19, 2018
3.5 stars. This is a harder one for me to rate. The writing in here is 5 stars all the way through --but it's an essay collection, and while some were among the best essays I have read, others just didn't interest me. I think that the unevenness for me is probably it's because this is just a collection of essays he has written rather than a collection of essays around a specific theme or topic.
December 6, 2018
This collection is excellent. Paterniti has a knack for finding the extraordinary ordinary and the ordinary in the extraordinary, not to mention the extraordinary. A strong collection of stories and essays spanning a couple of decades. The original essay that became the book Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain is in here and I especially enjoyed "The House that Thurman Munson Built." The giant in the Ukraine was unsettling as a visit with a giant might be.
December 18, 2015
Michael Paterniti writes the kind of journalistic pieces and personal essays that have that slow, delicious build I relish. As with all great long-form writing, the experience depends on you being a good reader. In other words, you have to be willing to go the distance and stick around even when the story wanders, even when you the story seems to digress and lose its way, or when the author seems to break journalistic boundaries.
Love and Other Ways of Dying is a collection that showcases Paterniti’s best work published in Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, and GQ. Collections should always be judged by the range demonstrated in the selected pieces and this collection doesn’t disappoint.
In the first story, “The Long Fall of Flight One-Eleven Heavy,” Paterniti writes about the disaster that met New York-bound Swissair Flight 111 as it went down off the coast of Nova Scotia. The reporting is cinematic. Paterniti tells the story from different perspectives: the coroner called to the scene, a TV reporter, the father of one of the passengers. The facts that are thrown to us are visceral. At one point, Paterniti writes how the impact of a plane crash “degloves” the human body, stripping flesh from bone and scattering organs on the water. It is the kind of showstopping story that you read and never shake long after you’ve turned the page. You read what a crash of that magnitude does to the human body and it becomes a barometer for the emotional devastation that follows.
We meet a widow torn asunder by the grief, who talks about reassembling her husband’s hand as she receives a finger or thumb from crash investigators. Families get belongings: clothing and toys picked up from the water. A husband and wife make promises to “stop their imaginations at that place where their daughter had boarded the plane, their minds would not wander past that particular rope.” Paterniti hops from one point of view to another, giving us backstories, giving us that stripped, innocent moment before the catastrophic moment: “Like lovers who haven’t yet met or one-day neighbors living now in different countries, tracing their route to one another, each of them moved toward the others without knowing it. … Do you remember the last time you felt the wind? Or touched your lips to the head of a child? Can you remember the words she said as she last went, a ticket in hand?”
Paterniti walks the line of literary nonfiction and elevated journalism.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are really personal stories that feel small, intimate, vibrating with a range of emotions—wonder, love, guilt, and regret—and secrets revealed. In the travel piece, “Never Forget,” Paterniti travels to Cambodia. He writes about the Khmer Rouge and his experience walking the haunted halls of Tuol Sleng, the prison camp where about 15,000 people were tortured and killed. Hard, brutal, and disconcerting. There is a moment where Paterniti meets one of the seven survivors who expresses remarkable sympathy when pondering the guard who tortured him. It floors him.
The collection in Love and Other Ways of Dying ranges in its stories but reveals two of Paterniti’s preoccupations: love and death. He writes: “The more willing we are to suffer pain and loss and even great throes of happiness, to live fully inside these big emotions, the closer we come to—what? The folded hands of the universe? Our humanity? Infinity? It must be something.”
Watch out for the high body count from plane crashes, earthquakes, and other disasters, but especially air disasters. “It’s possible that our most religious moments occur in airports rather than in churches … Apprehension, longing, and the fear of complete disintegration—what palpably animates an airport full of passengers about to take to heaven at the speed of sound—is what drives us to our gods.”
I hope magazine journalism stays strong. We need more stories that go big, more stories that dive deep and celebrate every corner of the human experience.
[Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher for an honest and candid review. This review was originally written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.]
Love and Other Ways of Dying is a collection that showcases Paterniti’s best work published in Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, and GQ. Collections should always be judged by the range demonstrated in the selected pieces and this collection doesn’t disappoint.
In the first story, “The Long Fall of Flight One-Eleven Heavy,” Paterniti writes about the disaster that met New York-bound Swissair Flight 111 as it went down off the coast of Nova Scotia. The reporting is cinematic. Paterniti tells the story from different perspectives: the coroner called to the scene, a TV reporter, the father of one of the passengers. The facts that are thrown to us are visceral. At one point, Paterniti writes how the impact of a plane crash “degloves” the human body, stripping flesh from bone and scattering organs on the water. It is the kind of showstopping story that you read and never shake long after you’ve turned the page. You read what a crash of that magnitude does to the human body and it becomes a barometer for the emotional devastation that follows.
We meet a widow torn asunder by the grief, who talks about reassembling her husband’s hand as she receives a finger or thumb from crash investigators. Families get belongings: clothing and toys picked up from the water. A husband and wife make promises to “stop their imaginations at that place where their daughter had boarded the plane, their minds would not wander past that particular rope.” Paterniti hops from one point of view to another, giving us backstories, giving us that stripped, innocent moment before the catastrophic moment: “Like lovers who haven’t yet met or one-day neighbors living now in different countries, tracing their route to one another, each of them moved toward the others without knowing it. … Do you remember the last time you felt the wind? Or touched your lips to the head of a child? Can you remember the words she said as she last went, a ticket in hand?”
Paterniti walks the line of literary nonfiction and elevated journalism.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are really personal stories that feel small, intimate, vibrating with a range of emotions—wonder, love, guilt, and regret—and secrets revealed. In the travel piece, “Never Forget,” Paterniti travels to Cambodia. He writes about the Khmer Rouge and his experience walking the haunted halls of Tuol Sleng, the prison camp where about 15,000 people were tortured and killed. Hard, brutal, and disconcerting. There is a moment where Paterniti meets one of the seven survivors who expresses remarkable sympathy when pondering the guard who tortured him. It floors him.
The collection in Love and Other Ways of Dying ranges in its stories but reveals two of Paterniti’s preoccupations: love and death. He writes: “The more willing we are to suffer pain and loss and even great throes of happiness, to live fully inside these big emotions, the closer we come to—what? The folded hands of the universe? Our humanity? Infinity? It must be something.”
Watch out for the high body count from plane crashes, earthquakes, and other disasters, but especially air disasters. “It’s possible that our most religious moments occur in airports rather than in churches … Apprehension, longing, and the fear of complete disintegration—what palpably animates an airport full of passengers about to take to heaven at the speed of sound—is what drives us to our gods.”
I hope magazine journalism stays strong. We need more stories that go big, more stories that dive deep and celebrate every corner of the human experience.
[Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher for an honest and candid review. This review was originally written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.]
April 30, 2015
I received a copy of this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
I was teetering between giving this book 2 or 3 stars because it really just did not thrill me. But I decided on 3 stars because some of the stories were beautifully written and interesting nonetheless.
I won’t pretend like I requested the book for any other reason than it looked interesting and I love free books. I had absolutely no idea who Michael Paterniti was and by the time I got the book to read I had actually forgotten what it was supposed to be about. So initially I began reading the book with absolutely no basis. I quickly remembered it was a book of essays but did not realize that it was a compilation of the author’s stories and magazine articles he had published over the last 2 decades. So initially I had a hard time getting into the essays, was a little bored, and didn’t quite understand the points he was trying to make with each story. Once I recognized that these were all true accounts and results of his journalism I enjoyed it a bit more. There were still some stories that I just wasn’t that into however and found myself flipping through them. Sometimes I felt that he was just storytelling and not really making any impactful points or eliciting any emotional response from me. Maybe this is the point of the essays, just to tell his stories, but I tend to want more from journalism. Michael Paterniti writes beautifully regardless of my interest in some of the stories. Sometimes his descriptions got away with him and I felt I lost the essence of the story and the people. Also, some essays were written in the second person narrative as though us, as the readers, were the character which I found hard to follow. But I will be honest in that I read most of these stories without any real knowledge of the people or the situations. Many that I did know about (Columbine, Haiti’s earthquake, Einstein’s brain) it was a treat experiencing it deeply with Paterniti. I also learned much more than I expected.
I would recommend some of the essays in the book and others not so much. If you’re looking for something easy to read that you can leave behind and come back to this is it. You can read some of it and skip some of it. I took a break from it for a little bit to finish another book and since it’s just a compilation of essays it’s perfect for that.
In case you’d like to know, the following essays are the ones I enjoyed from this book:
The Giant
The Accident
The Fifteen-Year Layover
The essays I had hard time getting through/skipped some parts:
Eating Jack Hooker’s Cow
American Hero
Most Dangerous Beauty
I was teetering between giving this book 2 or 3 stars because it really just did not thrill me. But I decided on 3 stars because some of the stories were beautifully written and interesting nonetheless.
I won’t pretend like I requested the book for any other reason than it looked interesting and I love free books. I had absolutely no idea who Michael Paterniti was and by the time I got the book to read I had actually forgotten what it was supposed to be about. So initially I began reading the book with absolutely no basis. I quickly remembered it was a book of essays but did not realize that it was a compilation of the author’s stories and magazine articles he had published over the last 2 decades. So initially I had a hard time getting into the essays, was a little bored, and didn’t quite understand the points he was trying to make with each story. Once I recognized that these were all true accounts and results of his journalism I enjoyed it a bit more. There were still some stories that I just wasn’t that into however and found myself flipping through them. Sometimes I felt that he was just storytelling and not really making any impactful points or eliciting any emotional response from me. Maybe this is the point of the essays, just to tell his stories, but I tend to want more from journalism. Michael Paterniti writes beautifully regardless of my interest in some of the stories. Sometimes his descriptions got away with him and I felt I lost the essence of the story and the people. Also, some essays were written in the second person narrative as though us, as the readers, were the character which I found hard to follow. But I will be honest in that I read most of these stories without any real knowledge of the people or the situations. Many that I did know about (Columbine, Haiti’s earthquake, Einstein’s brain) it was a treat experiencing it deeply with Paterniti. I also learned much more than I expected.
I would recommend some of the essays in the book and others not so much. If you’re looking for something easy to read that you can leave behind and come back to this is it. You can read some of it and skip some of it. I took a break from it for a little bit to finish another book and since it’s just a compilation of essays it’s perfect for that.
In case you’d like to know, the following essays are the ones I enjoyed from this book:
The Giant
The Accident
The Fifteen-Year Layover
The essays I had hard time getting through/skipped some parts:
Eating Jack Hooker’s Cow
American Hero
Most Dangerous Beauty
October 2, 2015
This collection of Paterniti's journalism articles on diverse subjects from downed flights to ingenious chefs to persistent immigrants has some fine examples of great long-form journalism. Paterniti has a knack for telling the story from the human point of view, sometimes even adding too much sentiment to call it just journalism, but a creative force that dissects and adds to what the eye can see, what the records show, what the eye witnesses can account for.
The Long Fall of Flight One-Eleven Heavy focuses on a few people's lives after the flight comes down; a coroner who's in charge of recovery, a father who's compelled to move to the village on the coast of where the flight fell taking his daughter... On the lighter side, He Might Just be a Prophet offers vignettes of Paterniti's experiences with the infamous chef Ferran Adria and his now-closed restaurant El Bulli. Eating Jack Hooker's Cow, perhaps my favorite in this collection, is about too many things, but mainly about being American and being the Other. The Giant is another favorite, though harmlessly light-hearted on the surface, it is a deeply sad and touching story about the tallest, biggest man on Earth. Driving Mr. Albert, The Fifteen-Year Layover, and Mr. Nobody present main characters who are not very likable, who are, in one way or another, in bizarre situations, stuck, unable to move on, forget, or remember. There are articles about natural disasters (City of Dust, about the earthquake in Haiti, and The Man Who Sailed His House, about the tsunami in Japan), and about human disasters (11:20, a short article about Columbine shootings). There are articles in third person and those that put "you" right on the spot; the latter an interesting choice that some will like, and others won't. I personally liked it.
The collection is diverse, the writing is clear and smart, and the subject matter, whatever it may be, is always interesting. In terms of writing style, Paterniti aims to invoke memories and induce feelings from deep within the human mind (or soul, if you believe in that kind of thing), usually with a good level of success.
Recommended for those who like reading The New Yorker and longform.org and those who like putting strange things (mostly strange food) in their mouths.
The Long Fall of Flight One-Eleven Heavy focuses on a few people's lives after the flight comes down; a coroner who's in charge of recovery, a father who's compelled to move to the village on the coast of where the flight fell taking his daughter... On the lighter side, He Might Just be a Prophet offers vignettes of Paterniti's experiences with the infamous chef Ferran Adria and his now-closed restaurant El Bulli. Eating Jack Hooker's Cow, perhaps my favorite in this collection, is about too many things, but mainly about being American and being the Other. The Giant is another favorite, though harmlessly light-hearted on the surface, it is a deeply sad and touching story about the tallest, biggest man on Earth. Driving Mr. Albert, The Fifteen-Year Layover, and Mr. Nobody present main characters who are not very likable, who are, in one way or another, in bizarre situations, stuck, unable to move on, forget, or remember. There are articles about natural disasters (City of Dust, about the earthquake in Haiti, and The Man Who Sailed His House, about the tsunami in Japan), and about human disasters (11:20, a short article about Columbine shootings). There are articles in third person and those that put "you" right on the spot; the latter an interesting choice that some will like, and others won't. I personally liked it.
The collection is diverse, the writing is clear and smart, and the subject matter, whatever it may be, is always interesting. In terms of writing style, Paterniti aims to invoke memories and induce feelings from deep within the human mind (or soul, if you believe in that kind of thing), usually with a good level of success.
Recommended for those who like reading The New Yorker and longform.org and those who like putting strange things (mostly strange food) in their mouths.
September 11, 2016
Like This American Life, but worldwide. Literary journalism, a term I hadn't ever heard (maybe that's weird?), but the blurb on the back described it this way and that's exactly what this is. Profound, chilling. Really well written. I'll be thinking of many of these essays for a long time.
I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. I should probably mention that.
I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. I should probably mention that.
September 30, 2016
Finally finished with this. It took forever, which I think is okay for essay collections, but it mainly took so long as the more stories I listened to the less I cared about them. Also the narrative style I liked in the beginning really got on my nerves as they were all the same - or at least similar. By the end I just wanted it to be over.
January 12, 2016
a collection of paterniti's magazine articles/essays. he has a strong talent of conjuring up reader's empathy and twisting it tight like a dish rag so that one becomes invested in the most varied and strange tragedies and wonders.
July 25, 2022
Love and other ways of Dying // Michael Paterniti
“It was summer; it was winter.”
I’m an idiot. You’d think I’d catch on from the title, but I read these essays over two months, and it wasn’t until today—today!—that I realized that all the essays are about death. Some I had to set aside until a sunnier day: the one about the killing fields of Cambodia, the one about the American hero. The essay that caused the most “setting aside” wasn’t for the sadness of death but because it was interminably long, the one about driving with the pathologist who performed Einstein’s autopsy—and with the brain itself. Maybe the incredible frustration I felt, thinking, finish up already, was akin to Paterniti’s frustration with the pathologist who was so slow all the time. (I'll give the benefit of the doubt.) The essays became a contemplation of death, but what struck me most was Paterniti’s versatility with his storytelling, as he slipped in and out of the scene and the story and the people. He’s a master of the essay craft. (I’ve read his work, come to find out, but I never registered his name.)
“It was summer; it was winter.”
I’m an idiot. You’d think I’d catch on from the title, but I read these essays over two months, and it wasn’t until today—today!—that I realized that all the essays are about death. Some I had to set aside until a sunnier day: the one about the killing fields of Cambodia, the one about the American hero. The essay that caused the most “setting aside” wasn’t for the sadness of death but because it was interminably long, the one about driving with the pathologist who performed Einstein’s autopsy—and with the brain itself. Maybe the incredible frustration I felt, thinking, finish up already, was akin to Paterniti’s frustration with the pathologist who was so slow all the time. (I'll give the benefit of the doubt.) The essays became a contemplation of death, but what struck me most was Paterniti’s versatility with his storytelling, as he slipped in and out of the scene and the story and the people. He’s a master of the essay craft. (I’ve read his work, come to find out, but I never registered his name.)
Read
September 21, 2017I only read the first few essays (and then got distracted by other books I'd been waiting to read) - airplane crash was heart wrenching but uplifting, El Bulli was good but odd, didn't like the Midwestern hotel. 3 stars based on what I did read.
October 31, 2018
Some essays require skipping (there are a few about sports figures and people who delight in driving a species of bird to extinction), but those that remain are terrific. Collected over many years, even those that are now outdated are fascinating.
August 15, 2017
Amazing stories, amazing writing, amazing collection!
February 7, 2018
Melancholy but bright essays on love and mortality written in a way I can only describe as writing for writers. The word choice was poetic and heartbreakingly beautiful at times.
July 18, 2022
Like 3.8? Some of the essays were confusing as to why they were included or whah their focus was but there were a couple that were incredibly profound so.
December 13, 2021
Had to keep reminding myself I was reading non-fiction. The author takes you on so many different journeys in this book... It's a lot to process. This is not a light sunny book but made me love humanity more even in all their messiness. Beautiful writing that varied enough from essay to essay things never got stale (except maybe the baseball one ;)
November 19, 2015
Whatever you call it—literary journalism, narrative nonfiction, or creative nonfiction—Michael Paterniti has been doing it for twenty years and for some of the biggest names in the magazine world (GQ, Esquire, Harper's, The New York Times Magazine). In Love and Other Ways of Dying, he introduces readers to 17 people and the places and events that made these interview subjects who they are. A collection of work like this can sometimes be monotonous to read, but I found the book riveting from page 1 to page 433 because of the variety—in structure (some essays written in first person, some in second person, and some in third person) and in subject matter. Through his keen eye, I was transported from the Ukraine to Nova Scotia to Haiti, China, and Dodge City, Kansas (and more) and into the lives of ordinary people living in, and through, extraordinary circumstances. In an interview with his GQ editor about the book, he says "I’m always looking off to the side to see what’s happening in the margin or to see what’s happening behind somebody." It's this looking-off-to-the-side reportage that captivated me and it's a writing tip I'll keep in mind when working on my own projects. Paterniti has been nominated eight times for the National Magazine Award; this book was longlisted for the 2015 National Book Award.
March 12, 2018
sonder - n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.
from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
This is exactly what this book feels like. Yes, it's about love and ways of dying and everything else in between, big and small, common and odd, but at its core, it's really a celebration of every person having a story to tell.
You can't rush through this book - you need time to ruminate each episode, and surprisingly the shorter vignettes might hit you harder than the few longer stories.
Not full marks because, unlike in The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese, where Paterniti's involvement in the story made it what it is, here there are bits and pieces where he should have stayed a more detached observer.
from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
This is exactly what this book feels like. Yes, it's about love and ways of dying and everything else in between, big and small, common and odd, but at its core, it's really a celebration of every person having a story to tell.
You can't rush through this book - you need time to ruminate each episode, and surprisingly the shorter vignettes might hit you harder than the few longer stories.
Not full marks because, unlike in The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese, where Paterniti's involvement in the story made it what it is, here there are bits and pieces where he should have stayed a more detached observer.
April 15, 2015
I received a complimentary copy of this from goodreads and would like to say some words regarding it.
Devastating. Every story was gut-wrenching in the way that you feel that having a normal day is an affront to the incomprensible enormity of the mass of human suffering. His stories remind one that one can die at any moment and there's no way to prepare for it. Very little is okay for the people he describes and meets in this book and any pleasantness seems an offensive forgetting of their suffering.
With respect to the writing, I was most impressed by the way that the author put himself in some stories and was totally removed from others. the stories came together better as a book in part due to the varied place of the authorial voice. I would very much recommend this book to others but I don't think it makes a good gift unless you want the recipient to feel awful about the world indefinitely.
Devastating. Every story was gut-wrenching in the way that you feel that having a normal day is an affront to the incomprensible enormity of the mass of human suffering. His stories remind one that one can die at any moment and there's no way to prepare for it. Very little is okay for the people he describes and meets in this book and any pleasantness seems an offensive forgetting of their suffering.
With respect to the writing, I was most impressed by the way that the author put himself in some stories and was totally removed from others. the stories came together better as a book in part due to the varied place of the authorial voice. I would very much recommend this book to others but I don't think it makes a good gift unless you want the recipient to feel awful about the world indefinitely.
March 27, 2016
"The more we examine the grooves and scars of this life, the more free and complete we become."
This quote is taken from the introduction to the book and is a philosophy in which I believe. Life gets its meaning by looking at "the grooves and scars" because without looking at them, life is artifice. Death gives meaning to life.
Personal favorite essays:
"He Might Just Be A Prophet"
"Driving Mr. Albert" (the story of the man who took Einstein's brain)
"The Fifteen Year Layover"
"The Suicide Catcher"
"Mr. Nobody"
"The Last Meal"
My top two are "The Suicide Catcher" that wrestles with what leads people to suicide, what it takes to stop that person, and the emotions behind both sides and "The Last Meal," which is about a former president of France (François Mitterrand) and his legendary last meal.
Don't let the name of this collection of essays keep you from picking it up. It is not depressing.
This quote is taken from the introduction to the book and is a philosophy in which I believe. Life gets its meaning by looking at "the grooves and scars" because without looking at them, life is artifice. Death gives meaning to life.
Personal favorite essays:
"He Might Just Be A Prophet"
"Driving Mr. Albert" (the story of the man who took Einstein's brain)
"The Fifteen Year Layover"
"The Suicide Catcher"
"Mr. Nobody"
"The Last Meal"
My top two are "The Suicide Catcher" that wrestles with what leads people to suicide, what it takes to stop that person, and the emotions behind both sides and "The Last Meal," which is about a former president of France (François Mitterrand) and his legendary last meal.
Don't let the name of this collection of essays keep you from picking it up. It is not depressing.
August 10, 2015
Every single one of the essay stands alone as a great piece of literature, but together they create something more. Paterniti has transcended writing in a way that few others do. He has managed to capture the true depth of human emotion, pain and death, hunger, happiness, love, regret - not only does he capture it, but he presents it with appreciation and curiosity and humanity. Not to sound overly metaphorical, but I feel like this book could breathe, that's how human it is. Few stories have made me cry as much as these. This is truly a beautiful work, every story almost better than the one before it. If I could describe my taste in books with only one example, I would use this one. Grim and dark and horrifying and heavy and painful, but at the same time stunning and moving and emotional, something light at the end of every tragedy and sorrow that Paterniti takes us through.
January 5, 2016
This author is really good at starting off making you wonder why in the world you're reading a story about baseball, then he starts developing the characters, and pretty soon, you're weeping because you lost your father. But it's not really you, but couldn't it be? I really really loved the audio version of these essays. I kept reminding myself that they are essays, because I was swept away like they were fictional short stories. I kept thinking I found my favorite, but now that I've heard them all, I can't decide.
July 17, 2016
Superb journalism that is worth reading and rereading. My favorite is "Eating Jack Hooker's Cow" because it went in a different direction from what I had expected.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 154 reviews