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Welcome
Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
What's New at Arcadia
Historic Burial Grounds of the New Hampshire Seacoast By Glenn A. Knoblock
Arcadia Publishing has releases a new title in the Images of America series, the historic account of the cemeteries along the New Hampshire Seacoast. This collection is a must for anyone interested in local history, genealogy, or colonial-era art. Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Historic Burial Grounds of the New Hampshire Seacoast and browse other cemetery books!
Green-Wood Cemetery By Alexandra Mosca
Arcadia Publishing announces the release of the historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery.
Announcements
Quoting Death in Early Modern England: The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Tomb By Scott L. Newstok
An innovative study of the Renaissance practice of making epitaphic gestures within other English genres. A poetics of quotation uncovers the ways in which writers including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Holinshed, Sidney, Jonson, Donne, and Elizabeth I have recited these texts within new contexts. Visit Palgrave Macmillan and purchase your copy today!
Living by the Dead By Ellen Ashdown with illustrations by Mary Liz Moody.
A memoir about living beside a cemetery--and about the members of my family who came to rest at Roselawn Cemetery in Tallahassee, Florida. Please visit Kitsune Books for more information.
Graveyards of Chicago: The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski.
Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!
Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.
Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman
Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture is now available. Please visit Studio Indiana for more information.
West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark
Features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
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Patricia Cornwell, queen of forensic fiction |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Tuesday, 09 December 2008 |
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Patricia Cornwell returns to form in 'Scarpetta' and funds real-life science.
By Sarah Weinman
Patricia Cornwell's name comes with more than a whiff of myth and expectation. Almost every woman writing thrillers with extreme violence gets compared to Cornwell's bestselling work featuring forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta. Interviews focus less on the books and more on Cornwell's Armani suits, personal security concerns or her obsession with solving the Jack the Ripper murders. And the publishing industry's current grim fortunes lend an air of urgency to last week's publication of "Scarpetta."
The Cornwell I meet in her Midtown Manhattan penthouse is candid but firmly in control of the conversation. She is less about myth and more about reflection -- on the economy, her 2005 marriage to Staci Gruber, a Harvard neuroscientist, jettisoning artifice in favor of honesty and her career arc. Twenty years ago, Cornwell, now 52, wrote the final words on what would become "Postmortem" (1990). The novel was published by Scribner with a modest first printing and advance (6,000 copies and $6,000, respectively) that came just when Cornwell was about to give up on writing fiction. Rereading "Postmortem" and immediate sequels reminded me why Cornwell was showered with virtually every major mystery award at the time: Scarpetta's first-person viewpoint lends an intimacy to the serial killing horrors she observes as Virginia's chief medical examiner (in real life, Cornwell once worked as a technical writer and computer analyst in that office), a profession rarely at the forefront of crime fiction at the time. "It was unlike anything we'd ever read before," remembers Richard Goldman, who, with Mary Alice Gorman, owns the Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont, Pa., and who was an early champion of Cornwell's work. "There had been autopsies in detective fiction and police procedurals, but they were just one of the elements, a sideshow. It was fresh and exciting to see the medical examiner at the center of the story."
Getting back
As Cornwell became more successful, her books changed, and not always for the better. Starting with "The Last Precinct" (2000), the first-person vantage point gave way to multiple and more omniscient perspectives that opened up the narrative but removed the jolt of immediacy for the reader. Kay's motivations for getting involved in a case became more opaque as she changed from a regional medical examiner into a nationally sought-after star of almost superheroic proportions. And even though the forensic techniques stayed on the side of realism, a direct counterpoint to the "CSI"-style fantasy forensics that continue to feed public appetite for the subject, minute detail too often overwhelmed character and plot development. Even Cornwell recognized something had to change after a friend from college pointed out that he found the characters unlikable.
Cornwell views "Scarpetta" as something of a reset button on the series, a newfound attempt to rediscover what makes her characters tick and interact with each other within a less violent framework. The book's focus on reluctant celebrity and the downside of being a public figure, however, seems to suggest Cornwell still grapples with how to improve as a writer (she cited Hemingway and the script for "Amadeus" as especially helpful from a craft standpoint) when her brand-name status squeezes available writing time and, more unusually for a crime writer, benefits real-life forensic practice.
In recent years Cornwell has lent her name to more philanthropic pursuits on the criminal justice front out of concern about the state of forensic science in the country. She co-founded the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine in 1999, though she's no longer involved because "they don't really need my help anymore." She's still involved with the National Forensic Academy in Tennessee and in the last year donated $1 million each to the Harvard Art Museum for a conservation scientist position and to John Jay College of Criminal Justice for a crime scene investigation academy.
"I do admire her for recognizing the increasing public awareness for forensic science and putting money out there," said Jan Burke, author of the Irene Kelly novels and founder of the Crime Lab Project, a nonprofit forensic science awareness program. "Not everyone does, and it was a wonderful thing for [Cornwell] to do. There are a lot of writers who make use of forensic scientists -- they come through, ask a bunch of questions of overworked people -- and then don't do a thing to help them out."
Cornwell will be meeting with John Jay officials later this month and believes the direction of the program, delayedfrom a fall launch until a director is hired, is not yet set in stone. "It may not be a bona fide academy, but a consortium offering all sorts of training, conferences and other things in conjunction with the criminal justice community. And with the state of the economy, plans are going to change. You couldn't possibly establish a long-running academy with a million dollars. We might have to scale this down. It's a very different landscape than it was even a year ago when I made my first contribution."
But when comments Cornwell made to the Associated Press about sloppiness at crime scenes were taken out of context, she took out full-page newspaper ads as a "pre-emptive strike," to the tune of $250,000. "It was an unfortunate investment, but I had to make it and I would do it all over again. I'm not faulting the reporter; it was simply a situation where what I was really talking about what citizens were doing at crime scenes, and it was interpreted as me making fun of [law enforcement]. I did not and do not, ever, want anyone in law enforcement to think I am judging them."
Jack and Kay
She is still very much judged on "Portrait of a Killer" (2002), the controversial attempt to prove that British artist Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper. Cornwell admits she is sometimes bored with the subject ("If I'd known I would spend eight years on this I wouldn't have gotten involved, but I didn't pick this case, it picked me."), but with the copyright on Sickert's letters set to expire in 2012, she will update and revise "Portrait" "because I have to sail this ship to the end. You can't jump off. I will finish this job because it's the right thing to do."
Cornwell is already at work on the next Scarpetta novel, but because she has associated herself so closely with real-life justice as much as the fictional kind, I wonder whether she sees a future more directed toward public policy than writing fiction. "When it comes to the real decision-makers about criminal justice I don't think their first thought is what Patricia Cornwell has to say. I wish that were true. They might wonder what Scarpetta might say . . . but to answer your question, if somebody asked me to do something that made a huge difference I'd have to really think about that. I feel a certain social responsibility in general, but I can do more good by being me and doing what I do well and letting other people be involved in the policymaking, the politics of it."
Weinman writes the Dark Passages column at latimes.com/books.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-patricia-cornwell8-2008dec09,0,6506660.story
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Taphophilia Facts
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Michigan is home to one Presidential gravesite, Gerald Ford.
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Quote Repository
“Fear no more the heat o' the sun Nor the furious winters' rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages The sceptre, learning, physic, must All follow this and come to dust.” William Shakespeare - Cymbelin
Grave Epigrams
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This grave contains all that was
mortal of a young English poet who
on his death bed in the bitterness of
his heart as the malicious power
of his enemies desired these words
to be engraven on his tombstone:
"Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water" John Keats |
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Taphophilia Thanks
Taphophilia (dot) Com would not be possible without the knowledge, experience and talent of DarkestWeb. From its conception and early development, DarkestWeb was faced with many challenges; from inspiring and motivating, to providing guidance and direction. The continued dedication and support has produced results greater than ever expected, and for this, I owe a huge debt of gratitude.
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