Scathing Online Schoolmarm doffs her Watkins Glen souvenir sun hat to Halliea Milner, famous author of famous Kenneth Kenne Joseph Pluhar, Jr’s obit.
Most of the many comments on Pluhar’s Legacy page are from people – from around the world! – who never knew him (one of the comments is this post’s headline) but were so stirred by Milner’s obit that they had to say something.
And if you click that link up there you’ll see why. The substance of almost anyone’s life, rendered with lucid accuracy, would occasion some species of laughter (‘Anyone with brains understands that he is destined to lead a stupid life because there is no other kind,’ says a character in Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater. ‘I’m fairly positive that I’ll regret my stupidity the most in my final moment of awareness,’ said Alec Guinness to James Grissom in an interview.), but his daughter’s rendering of redneck Kenne’s sojourn is so piercingly brilliant you’ll be peeing yourself. People adore this obit because there’s something exuberantly liberating about encountering not evasion and platitude and Hello Jesus but head-on honesty about the actual life an actual person lived.
Ol’ Kenne, an irredeemable rascal, finds himself rendered an irredeemable rascal by the truth-teller he raised.
SOS doubts he’s shocked/offended. Wherever his gin-soaked, weed-smoked spirit wafts, it’s laughing too.