I know this is a little Harold Chasen of me, but obituaries make for good reading. Says Jack Gladney, the protagonist of my favourite novel, DeLillo's White Noise, "When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead." The reading of an obituary brings our own precious mortality to the forefront, whilst simultaenously feeling like an invasion of the deceased's privacy. With celebrity obituaries there is a third dimension- the star's achievements and character are finally judged and validated and become officially imprinted into popular culture. Celebrity obituaries give the plotlines of a life in a set of polished sentences, just as any other ordinary death notice does, but they are extended by the fact that they also sum up how the deceased celebrity shaped and/or reflected the times they lived in. And this year, sadly, the passing of famous people seems to be relentless. From Jade Goody ('Goody and Princess Diana were the most prominent avatars of a wide strand of English culture, defiantly anti-intellectualy and unashamedly emotional') to John Hughes ('His universe of jocks and nerds, socialites and misfits, rockers and rebels defined what it was to be an American teenager, and influenced a generation of movie-goers and makers') to Patrick Swayze, star's obituaries not only serve us up a neat narrative, but a chance to remember how each of them had a subtle influence on our lives, how each of them was a small brick in the house of our culture.
