The Last Word investigates the debased art of eulogy. Through insightful, surprisingly playful readings of famous eulogies (from a scene in Love Actually to Jacques Derrida’s heart-rending essays on the deaths of his peers), Cooper argues against the socially sanctioned desire to avoid thinking about death that results in clichéd memorials, honoring neither the living nor the dead.
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This is not about how to write or give an eulogy. Cooper would much rather write about all the other aspects of grief after the death of a loved one, about pop culture eulogies, about social media eulogies for celebrities. So more pain than advice, although many people who've lost loved ones will appreciate the argument that our culture does not give enough space or time to grieve, or allow for the ugliness of the emotions that follow death.
