Six Feet Under

My appreciation of HBO's Six Feet Under is in no small part due to my childhood. Two of my uncles owned funeral homes, thus by the age of eleven, I had probably seen enough dead bodies to earn me a few credits towards a degree in Mortuary Science.

Joe finds the show rather overwrought and macabre, a fact that disturbs me nearly as much as the fact that he does not drink the Divine Exlier (coffee). I find the show well-written and a simple presentation of one family's life against a familiar-to-me backdrop. I forgive Joe his transgressions for he is the one who introduced me to Agatha Christie's Poirot. In spite of my predeliction for "period pieces", whodunnits, and most things Anglo, Poirot was a stranger to me until I moved in with Joe.

The flames of my Anglophilia have been fanned further with repeated viewings of Gosford Park and the discovery of Nancy Mitford's writing. Having devoured both The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate on my sickbed last week, I was determined to fuel the fire; and during Sunday's trip through the Hudson Valley, I popped into Village Books of Tivoli. Disappointed that I was unable to find any further writings of Nancy Mitford, I was half-heartedly scanning the shelves for something to pop out at me. And pop it did! I was near to delirious with Jessica Mitford's (Nancy's sister) 1963 exposé of the American funeral industry, The American Way of Death.

On a lark, I checked a local shop yesterday for additional works by Nancy Mitford, only to be disappointed again, and in a similar fashion. "Oooh, I'm sorry, but we don't have anything by Nan-cy Mitford. Just Jess-i-ca...The American Way of Death Revisited."

By sheer fortuitousness I stumbled upon these companion volumes within two days of each other. A universal message that these were meant to be mine-mine-mine! Strangled by a mixture of lingering laryngitis and booklust, I spat out, "I'll take it!", lest some interloper intervene.

Anglophilia, Americana, muckracking and death -- Green Gable aside -- could I be any more delighted?