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read by Shelly Frasier
(New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2003)
MP3 Audiobook, 109 MB, 8 Hours, Nonfiction
From the Cover: For 2,000 years, cadavers—some willingly, some unwittingly—have been involved in science’s boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. In this fascinating, ennobling account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and, in so doing, tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.
My Review: I need to state this fact up front: I am in love with Mary Roach. Sorry Alisa. Roach’s writing is incredible; her books are absolutely fantastic … she is funny, informative, frank, witty and smart. My first introduction to her books was, in fact, Stiff. As those of you who know me know, I have a morbid sense of humor and a sick fascination with the macabre, so a book about what our bodies do once we are done with them … piqued my interest, to put it mildly.
When I found Stiff on audiobook, I had to snatch it up because I could not pass up the chance to have an excuse to revisit such a beloved book. I was not disappointed. Shelly Frasier’s folksy reading is exactly how I envision Mary Roach’s voice in my head that at times I had to remind myself that it was, in fact, not Roach reading her own book. Frasier’s matter-of-fact delivery is so spot on for the book’s subject matter that it turns an already above average reading experience into something sublime.
I cannot recommend Stiff highly enough. This is an absolutely amazing book, and one that will make you think twice about dropping your body into an expensive box for the rest of eternity.
There is a lot of information (much of it as fascinating as it is macabre) to process in this book, but the most important message I took away from Stiff is the importance of organ and/or body donation for scientific research. In the last three years I have thought seriously about my own mortality. What has changed in that time, I hear you ask? Well, Connor and Deirdre were born. Having a child makes a parent seriously consider their own end.
I have made a number of decisions, though none of them are legally binding, as of yet. They are: (1) I do not want to languish away on life support being a burden (financially, mentally and emotionally) on my family; (2) If I do end up being buried … I do not want a coffin worth thousands of dollars … throw me—unembalmed (so as not to leech dangerous chemicals into the ground)—in an untreated pine box, and let me decompose/compost in the natural way; (3) if I am not buried I want to donate my body to science.
Roach points out, again and again, in the book that one can donate their body to science, but not specify where the body goes. However, if I were able to direct where my corpse were to go, I would want it to be used in one of these ways: (A) drop me off in a body farm where bodies are allowed to decompose in real world conditions in order to assist forensic investigators understand how a body breaks down in order to better determine cause and/or time of death in police investigations, (B) send me to a car company and let me be used as a human crash test dummy. They really do do this, Roach devotes an entire chapter of her book to the use of human crash test dummies, and I think that this is a very noble cause, or, and this is the most likely, (C) use me as a beating-heart cadaver. Harvest all of my organs as is humanly possibly and useable so that others can have a new lease on life. I won’t be needing them anymore.
Finally, if I had my real druthers and my final wishes were to be carried out to the letter, I would want one of the following to happen to my body: (A) there is a company in Sweden called Promessa that is developing a process for breaking down and composting the human body and presenting loved ones with a biodegradable pot of compost made from my composted remains in which a memorial bush or other such plant could be potted, or, (B) I want to be plastinated. I first heard about this process in Roach’s book when it was still relatively unknown, but now the idea is much more “mainstream.”
Plastination is the process by which the water in the human body is replaced with silicone to create—literally—a plastic version of the body that can be posed or displayed with out rotting or decomposing. It is a fascinating process and there is now a traveling museum show that displays plastinated bodies in order to showcase the human anatomy. It is called Body Worlds and I am actually quite excited because we missed the exhibit when it came to Seattle (we moved to Utah and then Body Worlds came) but it is now up in Salt Lake City at The Leonardo and will be there into January. (If you do click on the website for The Leonardo, give it a minute, and a video will come up showcasing the Body Worlds exhibit.) Alisa and I are making plans to go for our anniversary, and I for one cannot wait! If I had my druthers, that is what I would do with my body. (Though, cremation does hold a ... “certain” appeal…)
Because, after all, once I am gone from my body, there really is no need for it to be preserved in a box that will put my family in debt and planted in ground that could serve other, better uses. I do believe in the bodily resurrection, I am not an atheist, and my religion does teach of respecting our mortal bodies as temples of God … but is leaving my body rotting the ground really respectful, when you get right down to it? If my body can serve some benefit to mankind after I have gone, wouldn’t it be morally correct to let others benefit from the use of my body, or my organs, or whatever science may do to it? I believe so. I can think of no better thing to do with the body that God gifted me than to let other of His children benefit from what can be learned from mine.
Anyway, I think that that is one of the reasons that Stiff is such an hilarious book. Like Bonk, Stiff is a book that deals with one of the last great taboos in society: dead bodies … and when someone confronts that taboo and lays bare all of the many, often messy, details of what happens to dead bodies, then the Reader has one of two reactions: laugh or get outraged. I, and many of those who I know who have read Stiff, choose to laugh and really, when you get right down to it … that is the right reaction. Dead bodies are not something that needs to be tabooed, they are a natural, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes enlightening part of human life, and I for one am glad that Mary Roach decided to take on that taboo.
For another review of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (in print form) check out Reading By Pub Light.
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