Over your dead body

Mary Roach talks about decay, body recycling, gravediggers and her new book, "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers."

By Sheerly Avni

Apr 17, 2003 | It's a lovely, sunny Tuesday afternoon in California's famous "City of the Dead," the only incorporated city in America in which the deceased outnumber the living. Nowhere is this ratio more obvious than here at the Cypress Woodlawn Memorial Park, where we are looking out on an ocean of tombstones. With the exception of one hearse -- which rolls by at about the same time as the day's lone cloud -- the cemetery is almost empty.

We make a cozy party of five, nestled on the grass: me, Mary Roach, Bong, Rosita, and Clarita. Roach and I are here to talk about her new book, "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers." The other three are here because this is their home. Bong (1966-1987), Alicia (1899-1987) and Clarita (1904-1987) make for silent but gracious hosts.

It should be a morbid gathering, just as Roach's book should be a morbid read, with its tours of embalming rooms, crashed jetliners, medical dissecting labs, and Swedish mausoleums. But reading "Stiff" is a funny, intellectually stimulating experience -- one that makes you realize that there really is a chance for life after death. As a cadaver, you can advance medical knowledge (though be forewarned, your body may be used to practice face lifts rather than lung transplants), or you can become part of a human compost pile in Scandinavia. You can even serve time as a crash-test dummy in Detroit.

It's actually a comforting proposition. Roach, a former Salon columnist whose coverage of the "dead beat" gave birth to her book, is a tall, slim, exceedingly alive and vibrant California transplant in her early 40s. She sees nothing macabre about her work. "This isn't a book about death," she explains. "It's a book about dead bodies. They're two very different things."

What kinds of reactions did you get while you were working on the book? Did people just think you were crazy?

No one actually said, "Oh, I think it's disgusting what you're doing," but I get a lot of "huhs?" If you haven't read it, it's a hard book to sum up. Using cadavers to test auto safety, the rate of bodily decay, munitions testing -- most people know nothing about it, so they have no concept of what I write about. But I think that's something that makes the book fresh and interesting, though I guess "fresh" would be the wrong word. But it was a fun book to research for the most part -- not really disturbing at all.

Even the chapter about the "body farm" at the University of Tennessee, where there's that garden full of decomposing bodies?

That chapter is the hardest part of the book for anyone to get through, and it's pretty gross. But you know, most people have no idea what goes on with cadavers behind the scenes.

So you were cool with all the maggots swarming over corpses?

Well, that was pretty bad, mostly because of the smell. It's kind of a sweet smell, but in a cloying way, nothing floral. Something between rotting fruit and rotting meat.

You wrote that the dead body smell stayed on your boots for a long time.

Yes, it was months. I mean it really lingered. I used Clorox. Actually, hey, it's these boots I have now. [extends legs]You want a whiff?

[The interviewer declines]

So, yeah. The Body Farm was the grossest thing I saw, a combination of sight, sound and smell, thankfully not taste. I mean, maggots actually make a sound: snap, crackle and pop, just like Rice Krispies, and between that and the blue and unraveling skin ... yes, that was the worst.

I'm going to change the subject now. Did you have any existential moments while you were doing your research? Did what you were learning change the way you thought about your own body, your own life, dying?

Well there was this one cliché moment, when I visited the San Francisco Mortuary College. There was a man being embalmed, and I saw his ID, his information card, his next of kin, what he had done, where he had worked (at a veterans hospital), and suddenly this man wasn't just an anonymous body, he became a person for me. I started thinking about his family, and yes, that was very sad. I remember afterwards looking at the trees and the birds and thinking "God, living is a much better situation to be in." That's sort of the most emotional moment of the book.

Was there any vestigial fear of the afterlife that informed your decision to do this research? Were you afraid of ghosts as a child?

Was I afraid of ghosts? I was always sort of scared of cemeteries, but in a good way. I would go to them at night, because they were creepy and I loved that.

Does where we are right now seem creepy to you?

No, not at all. This is beautiful. A cemetery during the day is a quiet, private place.

Next Page: The dead bodies on "Six Feet Under" don't compare to the real thing

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