Wiping the Smoke From Your Eyes and Going From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Goo

Best-selling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Caitlin Doughty searches the world to discover how different cultures handle death in her new novel From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death. With her signature gallows humor, Doughty guides the reader through detailed rituals completely unfamiliar to Americans. Seeking the good death around the world, Doughty invites the reader to examine our burial customs and what exactly the American funeral industry sells to the public.

Taking on the American funeral industry is nothing foreign to Doughty. Since the beginning of her career she knew that the attitude towards death needed to be changed in the United States. She is the founder of The Order of the Good Death, an association of professionals who all share the goal of changing Western views on death, mourning, and funerals. Doughty advocates for families to be hands on and completely involved in the decision making of a funeral to help with the grieving process. In her YouTube series “Ask a Mortician” she has been frank about discussing death and embracing the inevitable, and that continues in her new book.

In her book, Doughty encounters a wide variety of burial rituals from around the world such as the Japanese kotsuage ceremony, a ceremony that entails picking family members’ bones from their ashes. When contrasted to the chemical based and extremely expensive services offered in America, it becomes clear that the system in place continues a deeper separation between the dead and the living. Mourners around the world encounter different traditions but still maintain closeness to their loved-ones that is discouraged by the American system. Doughty argues that the closeness provided by the traditions allows the mourner to properly mourn and gives them the option to be active in the burial.

From Here to Eternity takes the reader on a voyage and indulges in Doughty’s curiosity about death, all while raising the argument that our burial traditions are antiquated and impersonal. There are more environmentally friendly methods available, some existing since the dawn of time, but the American funeral industry is presented as the most respectful method with many Americans fearing being disrespectful by deviation. Examining this method through other traditions while maintaining a lightness is Doughty’s true talent. With illustrations by artist Landis Blair, the novel creates an immersive journey through death traditions and reminds us that it’s perfectly natural to be involved in death. After all, someday it will be us on the recieveing end of a burial. From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death is currently available for pre-order and will be officially released on October 3, 2017.

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