Dealings with the Dead, Volume 1 (of 2)

Meet the sexton, that indispensable figure of the old churchyard, who has spent his life among the graves. In this comic masterpiece of 1856 American literature, Lucius M. Sargent gives us an unexpected philosopher whose observations on death are as unsettling as they are hilarious. The narrator looks back on his apprenticeship under the legendary Grossman, a sexton of such fearsome presence that even the gravediggers trembled, and mourns the passing of proper burial dignity. Modern funeral customs have grown dangerously casual, he complains, and the old rituals that commanded respect for the dead have been replaced by something approaching indifference. Through a series of anecdotes both macabre and absurd, this grumpy antiquarian mounts his defense of solemn tradition while revealing the comedies hidden in humanity's relationship with mortality. It's a book that balances morbid fascination with genuine cultural critique, asking what we lose when we stop taking death seriously.