Brief History of the Dead (Brockmeier)

The Brief History of the Dead 
Kevin Brockmeier, 2006
Knopf Doubleday
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400095957


Summary
From Kevin Brockmeier, one of this generation's most inventive young writers, comes a striking new novel about death, life, and the mysterious place in between.

The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the City’s only newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on.

Others, like Coleman Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is trapped in an Antarctic research station, her supplies are running low, her radio finds only static, and the power is failing. With little choice, Laura sets out across the ice to look for help, but time is running out. Kevin Brockmeier alternates these two storylines to create a lyrical and haunting story about love, loss and the power of memory. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—December 6, 1972
• Where—Little Rock, Arkansas, USA
• Education—B.A., Southwest Missouri State University; M.F.A, 
   Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Awards—3 O'Henry Awards, Nelson Algren Award, Italo
   Calvino Short Fiction Award, James Michener-Paul Engle
   Fellowship; National Endowment for the Arts grant
• Currently—lives in Little Rock, Arkansas

Kevin Brockmeier is the author of Things That Fall from the Sky (2002), The Truth About Celia (2003), The Brief History of the Dead (2006), and The Illumination (2011) He has also written two children's novels, City of Names and Grooves: A Kind of Mystery. His stories have appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Georgia Review, The Best American Short Stories, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and multiple editions of the O. Henry Prize Stories anthology.

He is the recipient of a Nelson Algren Award, an Italo Calvino Short Fiction Award, a James Michener–Paul Engle Fellowship, three O. Henry Awards—one of which was a first prize—and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. He has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. (From the publisher and Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
It's a striking premise and, for much of the novel, deftly told through hints and rumors. But as Brockmeier alternates between Laura's story of survival in Antarctica and the daily lives in the afterlife, he uses Laura's memories as a transition between the two worlds. As Tolstoy said, art is in the transitions, and here Brockmeier's seams are showing. Just after Laura survives a harrowing accident, we hear that "for reasons that were inexplicable to her, she began thinking about the small neighborhood park that was located just down the street from her apartment."
Andrew Sean Greer - Washington Post


Deliciously disquieting.... The Brief History of the Dead will stay alive in the memories of readers for years to come.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution


A gracefully written story that blends fantasy, philosophical speculation, adventure and crystalline moments of compassion.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel


A deadly virus has spread rapidly across Earth, effectively cutting off wildlife specialist Laura Byrd at her crippled Antarctica research station from the rest of the world. Meanwhile, the planet's dead populate "the city," located on a surreal Earth-like alternate plane, but their afterlives depend on the memories of the living, such as Laura, back on home turf. Forced to cross the frozen tundra, Laura free-associates to keep herself alert; her random memories work to sustain a plethora of people in the city, including her best friend from childhood, a blind man she'd met in the street, her former journalism professor and her parents. Brockmeier follows all of them with sympathy, from their initial, bewildered arrival in the city to their attempts to construct new lives. He meditates throughout on memory's power and resilience, and gives vivid shape to the city, a place where a giraffe's spots might detach and hover about a street conversation among denizens. He simultaneously keeps the stakes of Laura's struggle high: as she fights for survival, her parents find a second chance for —but only if Laura can keep them afloat. Other subplots are equally convincing and reflect on relationships in a beautiful, delicate manner; the book seems to say that, in a way, the virus has already arrived.
Publishers Weekly


Inhabitants of the City eat at Jim's sandwich shop and read Luka Sims's mimeographed News & Speculation Sheet—never mind that they are all deceased. They've made the crossing—each person's is uniquely beautiful—and they don't know what happens next. People do disappear, and it is surmised that you remain in the City as long as you remain in the memory of someone left behind. Hence the concern when people start vanishing in droves; evidently, a horrendous virus called the blinks has hit Earth (perhaps with some help from the Coca-Cola Corporation). Marion and Philip Byrd remain in the City, however, as do others who recall their daughter, Laura; she's stuck alone at a research station in the Antarctic and eventually launches on an arduous trek back to a civilization she does not yet realize is virtually wiped out. Even more painful than watching her struggle is realizing that she's going back to nothing: what's the point if there is no one with whom to share? Beautifully written and brilliantly realized, this imaginative work from the author of The Truth About Celia delivers a startling sense of what it really means to be alive. Highly recommended. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal


Three-time O. Henry Prize winner Brockmeier cleverly reveals the relationships between his characters, but he spends too much time on earthbound Laura...and not enough on the eerie and infinitely more interesting afterworld. Although it never quite lives up to its promising premise, the novel's Borges-like spirit will appeal to select readers. —Allison Block
Booklist


What if those enjoying the afterlife require for their continuing existence being remembered by Earthlings? And then a pandemic virus called "The Blinks" kills off everyone but an isolated researcher in Antarctica who is forced by an accident to make two heroic treks to save herself—and her dear departed, though she doesn't know that. In alternating chapters, Brockmeier describes life after death as a retro city where people don't change and tells the harrowing tale of plucky, 30-something Laura Byrd. Since the afterlife, as depicted here, is never believable (the denizens show little stress about their temporary status), the stakes of Laura's sledding aren't what Brockmeier hopes. Set in a future riven by planetary wars, global heating and the extinction of other mammals, the book wants to be an allegory of saving interdependence, what Emerson called "each and all," but not even the story's halves mesh. The highly detailed polar chapters seem composed for their own cinematic sake. And the newly united dead—Laura's parents, an old lover, an executive she worked for, a religious fanatic, people casually known—are too briefly sketched and allowed too little freedom to elicit much engagement. In this speculative fiction, perhaps the most interesting element to wonder about is how Brockmeier will get away with blaming Coca-Cola for causing the pandemic. After a charming first chapter that imagines highly individual "crossings" to the other side, a novelistic virus called "The Flicks" debilitates the rest.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. What makes the premise of The Brief History of the Dead—that the recently dead inhabit a necropolis very much like an earthly city but only as long as they are remembered by the living—so engaging? What basic human feelings does this idea draw upon?

2. What is the significance of the heartbeat that everyone hears during the passage into death? What happens when it can no longer be heard?

3. In what ways is the city of the dead reassuringly like our own cities? How do people feel about being there?

4. How likely is the future that Brockmeier paints in the novel—melting polar icecaps, the mass extinction of animals, a plague deliberately spread by terrorists? What aspects of our current situation point to such a possibility?

5. During Lindell Trimble’s Employee of the Year award acceptance speech, he insists that Coca-Cola must not rest on its laurels but keep its momentum going. “A body is more likely to die at sunset than at any other hour of the day—that’s a fact,” he says. “The trick, then, is to keep the sun from setting. That’s what we’re looking for at Coca-Cola, and what we in the PR division have been fighting so hard to achieve: a sun that never sets. A perpetual noon” [p. 125]. What is wrong with this kind of thinking? What are the consequences of such a philosophy of unbounded hubris and the refusal to accept natural limitation?

6. The dead are surprised by their memories. “They might go weeks and months without thinking of the houses and neighborhoods they had grown up in, their triumphs of shame and glory, the jobs, routines, and hobbies that had slowlyeaten away their lives, yet the smallest, most inconsequential episode would leap into their thoughts a hundred times a day, like a fish smacking its tail on the surface of a lake” [p. 11]. Does this seem an accurate description of how memory often works? Why would the dead forget the important things and remember the trivial ones?

7. What does The Brief History of the Dead reveal about the subtle ways a single, ordinary human life is interconnected with thousands of others? Does Puckett’s claim that he can remember between fifty and seventy thousand people seem exaggerated or plausible?

8. Explore the connections between the novel’s main plotlines—Laura’s struggle to stay alive in the Antarctic and the existential predicament of the recently dead. In what ways, obvious and subtle, do these stories connect?

9. Why has Kevin Brockmeier chosen Coca-Cola as the medium that carries the deadly virus? What larger cultural, social, political point is he making through this choice? In what ways do current instances of corporate disregard for public health prefigure such an event?

10. What is the next stage of death, “that distant world where broken souls are wrenched out of their histories”? [p. 252]. Is Brockmeier pointing toward heaven or some other kind of afterlife? What will happen to these souls?

11. What are the ironies of Luka Sims running a daily newspaper for the dead and Coleman Kinzler warning the dead about the Second Coming of Christ? What other appealing peculiarities does The Brief History of the Dead provide?

12. In what ways is The Brief History of the Dead both realistic and fantastic? How does Brockmeier balance naturalistic elements from the world as we know it with an imagined future of the human race and a visionary depiction of the first stage of the afterlife?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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