{"id":2480,"date":"2026-08-01T11:41:42","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T18:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=2480"},"modified":"2026-08-01T11:41:46","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T18:41:46","slug":"bookshelf-i-see-youve-called-in-dead-john-kenney-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=2480","title":{"rendered":"Bookshelf — I See You’ve Called in Dead, John Kenney (2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I liked this sometimes sappy, sometimes wise, mostly humorous story more than others who have commented on it. Here are three reasons why:<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
    \n
  1. Bud Stanley, the main character, works as an obituary writer in the newsroom of a major news service, and, as a former wretch of that profession, I am a sucker for such ink-stained ambience and its accompanying cast of wise-cracking (but caring) characters.
    <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. The setting is New York, and Kenney (a longtime contributor to \u201cThe New Yorker\u201d) captures its zeitgeist with precision and gusto. (Describing parents in Brooklyn: \u201cThey were uniformly attractive men and women. They didn\u2019t look like regular people. They looked better, like people from New York. The men, youthful in appearance, possibly having squeezed in a quick 10K that morning, had superb hair.\u201d There\u2019s no better place than NYC to practice instant anthropology.
    <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. This sentence: \u201cI wonder why there isn\u2019t a rule that says that you cannot watch your mother die.\u201d Explanation to come.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    The story is simple: Bud \u2013 middle-aged, busted marriage, so-so career \u2013 is stuck waist-high in a depressive wallow. One night, after a blind-date dies on the vine when the woman shows up with her ex-boyfriend, Bud returns to his apartment, gets drunk, writes his own obituary, and accidentally sends it out on the news wire. The obit reads:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cBud Stanley, 44, former Mr. Universe, failed porn star, and mediocre obituary writer, is dead.\u201d It adds, among other inventions, that Bud was a one of the original Pips for Gladys Knight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As expected, Bud loses his job. As unexpected (I suppose), Bud finds his lost life: enduring friendship with a wheelchair-bound bon vivant; welcome stimulation of a woman who seeks emotional recovery at the funerals of strangers; and, rising realization that his mediocre adulthood is rooted in childhood pain, most deeply in the disturbing witnessing of his mother\u2019s death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Until that deathbed moment, the book had amused me. Then, quite suddenly, it moved me. It made me recall the death of my own mother, seeing from inches away the fright in her eyes of what was to come only a few breaths later. It is my most haunting memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There is also this comment by an ex-corporate exec about the death of her father: \u201cHe died while I was in the air, flying back. All because of a meeting. With a bank. About some fucking deal.\u201d Another gut bunch: My father died while I was on a work trip, waiting to board a flight in the Denver airport, hoping to get to his bedside before he passed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For these passages \u2013 and quite a few others — I recommend \u201cI See You’ve Called in Dead.\u201d I forgive its emotional excesses in favor of its insight into the human condition and the persistent but often rewarding complications of everyday life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I liked this sometimes sappy, sometimes wise, mostly humorous story more than others who have commented on it. Here are three reasons why: The story is simple: Bud \u2013 middle-aged, busted marriage, so-so career \u2013 is stuck waist-high in a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[770,837,1000],"class_list":["post-2480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book-review","tag-novel","tag-obituary"],"yoast_head":"\nBookshelf - I See You've Called in Dead, John Kenney (2025) - Tim Porter's Second Draft<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I liked this sometimes sappy, sometimes wise, mostly humorous story more than others who have commented on it. 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