美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Obit' Follows The 'Times' Team Charged With Turning Lives Into History

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

If you are the kind of reader who goes straight to the obituaries², here's something to look forward to - a documentary opens this week called "Obit." It follows the staff writers of The New York Times obituary³ desk. And to learn more about it, we went to our own obit laureate, NPR's Neda Ulaby.

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE⁴: To be clear, I don't only report obits, but I do do a lot of them for NPR. So it was easy to relate to the deadpan⁵ humor - sorry - of such obit writers as Bruce Weber and Margalit Fox in the film.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "OBIT")

BRUCE WEBER: Literally⁶, I show up in the morning, and I say, who's dead? And somebody puts a folder⁷ on my desk, and that's, you know - and that's what I do that day.

MARGALIT FOX: Starting the day, getting a name you've never heard of, knowing that you are going to have to have command of this person's life, work and historical significance in under seven hours - it is equal parts exhilaration and terror.

ULABY: The documentary takes viewers through the methodical steps of obit writing, starting with the awkward calls to next of kin¹.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "OBIT")

WEBER: Your husband's full name at birth - William P. Wilson. That's P-A-R-M-E-N-T-E-R.

ULABY: That's Bruce Weber, who left the paper after the film was shot, glasses pushed up on the bridge of his nose, as gentle and dispassionate as a doctor. Documentarian Vanessa Gould spent six days filming the five full-time⁸ obit writers of The New York Times as they did their jobs.

VANESSA GOULD: I was surprised at how grueling the work is. And the reporting process was just continually fascinating to me given how many facets⁹ it has.

ULABY: Facets polished by Times obituary editor Bill McDonald. He came to the obits desk after editing the arts pages and investigations¹⁰.

BILL MCDONALD: It's more sedentary. It's more scholarly, you might say. It's deep research.

ULABY: Once The Times obits desk was known as a dead end, so to speak, where reporters were sent to pasture or to be punished. But recently, McDonald says, obits have gained more respect. That may be partly because of the increased deaths of the big demographic slice known as the baby boomers, but, maybe, also because obits are increasingly a chance to compose something that can feel like a tiny novel.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "OBIT")

FOX: (Reading) In 1969, after six months alone on the Atlantic, battling storms, sharks and encroaching madness...

ULABY: Margalit Fox got to write a swashbuckling New York Times obit for John Fairfax, who crossed the Atlantic and Pacific in a rowboat.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "OBIT")

FOX: (Reading) Footloose and handsome, he was a flesh-and-blood character out of Graham Greene, with more than a dash of Hemingway and Ian Fleming shaken in. At 9, he settled a dispute with a pistol. At 13, he laid out for the Amazon jungle. At 20, he attempted suicide-by-jaguar.

ULABY: Obituaries serve a function larger than the bigger-than-life people who often inhabit them. New York Times editor Bill McDonald says in a culture that struggles with talking and thinking about death, obituaries are a secular¹¹ ritual.

MCDONALD: And I think a lot of people almost don't feel that the death has been fully¹² celebrated¹³, acknowledged, unless there's an obituary to go with it, as if to give that person a certain amount of immortality¹⁴.

ULABY: That explains why many of us like reading obits. Margalit Fox likes writing them, even though people often assume her job is morbid¹⁵. In the movie, she nails why it's not.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "OBIT")

FOX: It's counterintuitive, ironic¹⁶ even, but obits have next to nothing to do with death and, in fact, absolutely everything to do with the life.

ULABY: Newspapers, says Fox, are dedicated¹⁷ to events of the day. To find history, you usually have to read the obits.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "OBIT")

FOX: If you think about one of the slang ways of saying that somebody's died, we say, he's history. And what an obit actually does, which I find very compelling and very moving, is it captures that person at the precise point that he or she becomes history.

ULABY: The obit reporters of The New York Times made another point that resonated with me as an obituary writer. Every time you do an obituary, a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, you fall a little in love with the person you're writing about. Death becomes a moment of grace. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.

1 kin   

n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的

参考例句：

• He comes of good kin.他出身好。
• She has gone to live with her husband's kin.她住到丈夫的亲戚家里去了。

2 obituaries   

讣告，讣闻( obituary的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Next time I read about him, I want it in the obituaries. 希望下次读到他的消息的时候，是在仆告里。
• People's obituaries are written while they're still alive? 人们在世的时候就有人给他们写讣告？

3 obituary   

n.讣告，死亡公告；adj.死亡的

参考例句：

• The obituary records the whole life of the deceased.讣文记述了这位死者的生平。
• Five days after the letter came,he found Andersen s obituary in the morning paper.收到那封信五天后，他在早报上发现了安德森的讣告。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 deadpan   

n. 无表情的

参考例句：

• Some people don't catch his deadpan humor,that makes it even funnier.有些人不能了解他那种无表情的幽默，因此更有趣。
• She put the letter on the desk in front of me,her face deadpan,not a flicker of a smile.她把那封信放在我面前的桌子上，故意一 脸严肃，没有一丝的笑容。

6 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

7 folder   

n.纸夹，文件夹

参考例句：

• Peter returned the plan and charts to their folder.彼得把这份计划和表格放回文件夹中。
• He draws the document from its folder.他把文件从硬纸夹里抽出来。

8 full-time   

adj.满工作日的或工作周的，全时间的

参考例句：

• A full-time job may be too much for her.全天工作她恐怕吃不消。
• I don't know how she copes with looking after her family and doing a full-time job.既要照顾家庭又要全天工作，我不知道她是如何对付的。

9 facets   

n.（宝石或首饰的）小平面( facet的名词复数 )；（事物的）面；方面

参考例句：

• The question had many facets. 这个问题是多方面的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A fully cut brilliant diamond has 68 facets. 经过充分切刻的光彩夺目的钻石有68个小平面。 来自《简明英汉词典》

10 investigations   

（正式的）调查( investigation的名词复数 )； 侦查； 科学研究； 学术研究

参考例句：

• His investigations were intensive and thorough but revealed nothing. 他进行了深入彻底的调查，但没有发现什么。
• He often sent them out to make investigations. 他常常派他们出去作调查。

11 secular   

n.牧师，凡人；adj.世俗的，现世的，不朽的

参考例句：

• We live in an increasingly secular society.我们生活在一个日益非宗教的社会。
• Britain is a plural society in which the secular predominates.英国是个世俗主导的多元社会。

12 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

13 celebrated   

adj.有名的，声誉卓著的

参考例句：

• He was soon one of the most celebrated young painters in England.不久他就成了英格兰最负盛名的年轻画家之一。
• The celebrated violinist was mobbed by the audience.观众团团围住了这位著名的小提琴演奏家。

14 immortality   

n.不死，不朽

参考例句：

• belief in the immortality of the soul 灵魂不灭的信念
• It was like having immortality while you were still alive. 仿佛是当你仍然活着的时候就得到了永生。

15 morbid   

adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的

参考例句：

• Some people have a morbid fascination with crime.一些人对犯罪有一种病态的痴迷。
• It's morbid to dwell on cemeteries and such like.不厌其烦地谈论墓地以及诸如此类的事是一种病态。

16 ironic   

adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的

参考例句：

• That is a summary and ironic end.那是一个具有概括性和讽刺意味的结局。
• People used to call me Mr Popularity at high school,but they were being ironic.人们中学时常把我称作“万人迷先生”，但他们是在挖苦我。

17 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。