SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Bud Stanley writes obituaries for a living. He knows you are more likely to be killed by a cow than a shark, among many other important facts. One night, he has a disaster of a blind date, gets bad news from his ex-wife, goes home, has too much to drink and then writes too much.
JOHN KENNEY: (Reading) Bud Stanley, the first man to perform open heart surgery on himself, died today in a hot air balloon accident. He was 44. His wife, Miss France, has confirmed the death.
SIMON: At the wire service where he works the next day, the security guard tells him, I'm so sorry, Mr. Bud, but it appears you are maybe expired. Bud Stanley had written and posted his own obituary. "I See You've Called In Dead" is the new novel from John Kenney, the longtime New Yorker contributor. He joins us now from our studios in New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
KENNEY: Thank you for having me, Scott.
SIMON: Quite an inventive obit he writes for himself, isn't it?
KENNEY: It is. It's more wishful thinking than actual fact. It's one of those late-night things that he shouldn't have done.
SIMON: Is it, in addition to being maybe a product of too much to drink, a kind of electronic Freudian slip? Is that what he's really feeling about himself?
KENNEY: Yeah, I think that's fair to say. Bud is a guy who is lost but doesn't quite know it. As you said, he's two years into a divorce. His wife has left him. He's lost the spirit of his job, and he's not quite sure what to do. So he's sitting there making up these absolutely ridiculous things about his own life, kind of wondering what the point of it all is.
SIMON: He's fired, but then he can't be fired. What happens?
KENNEY: Well, they desperately want to fire him. But then, after a few days, they realize that he is dead to the company's enormous system, and they cannot legally fire a dead person.
SIMON: Since he can't quite stop living or working, Bud starts going to funerals of people who've - it makes you wonder, maybe he should have been going to them all the time before.
KENNEY: Yeah. The catalyst for that first wake he goes to is his ex-wife's mother passes away, and he was kind of close with her. And he goes, and that's a nightmare because he's seeing his ex-wife for the first time in two years. She's happily remarried to a far better-looking and more interesting man with an English accent. And...
SIMON: As she tells him, too, yeah.
KENNEY: Indeed. After the wake, he meets a young woman who is there for no other reason than she wanted to come to the wake and funeral of a stranger. And Bud is stunned by this and says, well, why? And she said, well, it's the secret. And he says, the secret to what? And she said, well, you have to find that out. And she suggests a funeral to him, and he goes, and he keeps going. That's really the essence. It's this journey, physical and emotional journey, that Bud is making with his good friend, Tim, to these wakes and funerals.
SIMON: And tell us about Tim. He's an especially vital character and - a lot going on in his life, doesn't he?
KENNEY: Yeah. So after Bud is divorced, he finds a small apartment in Brooklyn, and it's owned by this sort of - I don't know. It's a Gatsby-esque character, except he's a true Renaissance man. He's this remarkable guy. He was in a bad accident and is in a wheelchair. And yet his physical wound doesn't keep him from living and from, every few months, having a Gertrude Stein-esque salon in Brooklyn for sort of ne'er-do-wells, part-time poets and cellists. And Bud finds a community with Tim and relies on Tim in a way that he desperately needs.
You know, in a way, I think the bulk of this story is about male friendship. You know, my wife has many close friends. And the intimacy with which they talk, whether it's on the phone or in person, is so radically different than myself with my very small group of guy friends. You know, I'll say, you know, how are you doing? And they'll say, fine. What they really mean is, I'm doing terrible. I wake up at 3 a.m. crying. I lost my job, and I'm worried about money.
SIMON: What sparked your interest in obituaries?
KENNEY: I was a journalism major in college. And as part of the many different assignments we had, one of them was to write our own obituary. And I did not remotely take it seriously, which I know will come as a surprise to you, Scott.
SIMON: (Laughter).
KENNEY: And so it stuck with me. But I grew up in Boston, and my parents always read the Boston Globe obituaries. They called it the Irish sports page. I find them fascinating because there are these whole lives in 2-, 3-, 400 words. And when they're done well - and they often are - you know, it's a hard thing to do, to capture someone's life - the little nuances, not just where they went to school or their children's names. I find them really fascinating.
SIMON: I came across some words recently. Art Buchwald...
KENNEY: Great man.
SIMON: ...Ostensibly a humorist, like you?
KENNEY: Absolutely.
SIMON: Once said, the - I don't know what happens to us when we die. The question is, why are we here in the first place?
KENNEY: Yeah, and that's an individual question. And I know my answer, which is to try to be a decent friend and a great father and a semi-unannoying husband and to try to enjoy myself. You know, I did want to share - it's an intense subject, death, but the flip side of it is this valve release of humor, and I very much wanted that to be part of the book.
The catalyst for the book came in 2019. I'm one of five brothers, Boston Irish family. And one of my brothers passed away in 2019, Tom, and I dedicate the book to him. A really remarkable guy - like our father and grandfathers, he was a firefighter and just a big, handsome guy who loved life and loved his job. And he was on the Massachusetts FEMA team down at 9/11. And we think he contracted his illness, pancreatic cancer, during his time at 9/11.
But during those five months, we would visit, my brothers and I. I'd come up from the Boston area. And his wife called and said, you know, you really should get up. And I arrived first. And Tom was in a lounge chair with a blanket on him, far thinner than his normal self but still very much in there in that dark Irish humor. And we chatted, and I heard a car pull into the driveway. And I saw it was my other brothers, and I turned to Tom and I said, the others are here. And with this Buster Keaton-like stone face, but a little grin on his face, he dropped his head to one side and dropped his arm off the chair and, trying to hide a smile, said, tell them they're too late.
SIMON: (Laughter).
KENNEY: And I thought...
SIMON: Can I laugh?
KENNEY: Absolutely, because I did, too. And I thought, I want that in a book. I want to write a funnyish book about death because it gave me chills, too. In the face of the great unknown, he knew what was about to happen. He was able to find that dark, wonderful humor that makes life worth living.
SIMON: John Kenney - his new novel, "I See You've Called In Dead." Thanks so much for being with us.
KENNEY: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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