Bookish Times

On the plane to New York last week, all the way across the country, I read a new novel, Dying Words, by K. Patrick Conner.

The book traces the final days in the career of a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, Graydon Hubbell, who, after a heart attack some years back, has been writing only obituaries and sits in a corner of the newsroom called Section Eight, which is populated by the final few elderly journalists not yet remaindered during the endless series of layoffs and buyouts that have virtually destroyed the newspaper over the past decade.

Early in the story, Hubbell learns he is dying of cancer and has very little time left. He continues to work and encounters a series of disasters that journalists know all too well can happen, even to the best of us. One name accidentally substituted for another in an article, embarrassing his boss who was a friend of the departed; a complaint from the paper's diversity committee that most of those whose deaths he covered were white men; and finally the worst calamity that can visit any obit writer...a premature obituary.

If this sounds like a depressing novel it isn't. I was riveted as I read page after page. I didn't want it to end. Ken Conner writes with a droll humor and insight of one who knows that his character is the perfect metaphor for a dying industry, with all of his (and its) frailties and principles, habits and courage.

The novel's strong sense of place captures San Francisco perfectly. Those of us who have lived here for decades know that it is a maddeningly special place, with many of its historic corruptions now replaced by a relentless technological determinism that is sweeping many of the Graydon Hubbells among us aside.

They feel, as my father once described himself to me, like "dinosaurs."

What is unusual about this book is Conner's ability to slow life down, even in its final weeks and months to all it ever is anyway -- a series of moments. After all, until you are dead you are still alive. Even in diminished circumstances, with mind and body no longer in anything resembling good working order, most humans choose to persist.

In the case of the fictional Hubbell, a wonderful mind continues to appreciate life's fine ironies, even those that bring him his greatest pain. Somewhere along the way, he still discovers love, pleasure, and how to give whatever he has left to others who might benefit by the exchange.

This is a book about kindness, and the generosity of spirit, an appreciation of tradition even after traditions no longer seem relevant. In that way, it is spiritually satisfying, and a reminder that no matter how bad things may seem to be in your life, you still have the power to set an example and make someone else's life better in the process.

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