Dead or alive
The first thing I do when I get my New Yorker in the mail each week is glance at the table of contents to see if any of my favorite authors is there. This week I worked my way down to the fiction selection and saw that there was a new story by Truman Capote. “What the *%#&,” I mumbled to myself. “He’s dead!”
I was surprised at how certain I was of that fact. I rarely know for sure if a celebrity is dead or alive. Normally, it’s “Oh yeah, that guy. He’s dead, isn’t he? Or did he just guest star on ‘That 70s Show?’” Keeping track of who’s passed on and who’s still alive is a definite problem for me. It must be a problem for a lot of people. There are websites devoted to maintaining these ledger sheets. The two best are: whosaliveandwhosdead.com and deadoraliveinfo.com. I’m guessing a lot of money has changed hands on bets settled by these sites.
But as convenient as these websites are for settling questions of extinct versus extant in the world of the rich and famous, I tend to stay away from them. I like not knowing for sure. There is a sliver of immortality bestowed upon the deceased simply because I am too busy to pay attention or too forgetful to retain the information of their dead or alive status in my head for more than about five minutes. As a result, the dead continue to live on – at least in my uncertain mind. The flip side of this philosophy is that there are plenty of people living happily today who I have written off as goners. Surely that would be unwelcome news to them!
For every celebrity I am sure is either alive or dead, there are countless others that will stump me. Perhaps, you, too. Quickly, Don Adams, dead or alive? Ha, that’s easy. He just died. It's still fresh in your mind. Wait another year or two. You won’t be so certain. How about Herbie Hancock? Ann Landers? Audrey Meadows? Les Paul? Malcolm Forbes? Graham Greene? Jeane Kirkpatrick? Vincent Price?
So how did you do? What? You want the answers? I already told you I am clueless. Look them up yourself.
For an ordinary, non-famous guy like me, this notion of a temporary lease on immortality is about all I can hope for. When I die, I'm counting on childhood friends, old neighbors, long lost schoolmates, and, yes, bloggers, to keep my name alive. These are the folks who will continue to wonder how I am doing long after I am gone (many because I owe them money).
Getting back to Truman Capote. Apparently, the first novel he ever wrote has been found and will be published posthumously. The New Yorker piece is an excerpt from that work. After I saw Truman Capote's name in the New Yorker, I read somewhere else that there is a new Hollywood blockbuster movie opening soon that focuses on his life while he was writing "In Cold Blood." Capote, it seems, is all about town, and yet he is dead. Deader than ever. Funny how life works.
8:23:06 PM 
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