Olivia: Okay, Jackson. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Five-word review. Go. Jackson: Funny, gross, profound, surprisingly hopeful. Olivia: I'll take it. Mine is: "Your future corpse will thank you." Jackson: Wow, okay. That's a bold promise. I'm intrigued and a little terrified. What kind of book earns a review like that? Olivia: We are diving into Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty. And what's fascinating is that Doughty isn't just an author; she's a licensed mortician with a degree in medieval history who went on to found The Order of the Good Death, a collective dedicated to making death less of a taboo. Jackson: Huh. So she's not just an observer writing a quirky memoir, she's an activist with a mission. That changes the frame completely. It’s not just about weird stories from a crematory. Olivia: Exactly. The stories are the vehicle, but the destination is a full-scale critique of how we handle death in the West. She starts the book not with a corpse, but with an execution. In 1917, the famous dancer Mata Hari is about to be shot by a firing squad. They bring out a blindfold. Jackson: Standard procedure, right? Olivia: Right. But Mata Hari looks at it and asks her lawyer, "Must I wear that?" The officer in charge, flustered, says no, it's not necessary. So she faces the firing squad with her eyes wide open. Jackson: That's an incredible image. Chilling. Olivia: It's the entire premise of the book in one anecdote. Doughty argues that our entire culture chooses to wear the blindfold. We actively avoid looking at death, and in doing so, we lose something vital.

Jackson: Okay, but isn't that just a natural human instinct? Who wants to look at death? It seems like progress that we don't have to see it up close anymore. We have hospitals and professionals for that. Olivia: That's the exact point Doughty challenges. She talks about how, just a century ago, over 85% of Americans died at home. Death was a domestic event. The family washed the body, held a wake in the parlor. It was a familiar, if sad, part of the life cycle. Jackson: And now it’s outsourced. Olivia: Completely. It's been medicalized and professionalized. Doughty describes her time volunteering at a hospital in Hawaii. When a patient died, a "code black" was called. They'd put the body on a special gurney with a hollowed-out metal cage and a stainless-steel lid, then cover it with a white sheet so it just looked like a supply cart. They would wheel it through the public elevators down to a secret morgue in the basement. Jackson: They literally hide the body in a box to avoid upsetting anyone. It’s like a magic trick. Now you see a person, now you see… laundry. Olivia: It's a perfect metaphor for the grander illusion. We've created a system where death is an invisible, sanitized event that happens behind closed doors. Doughty argues this creates a profound disconnect. She shares a personal story from her own childhood that really drives this home. When she was eight, she was at a mall and saw a little girl fall from a second-story balcony. Jackson: Oh, that's awful. Olivia: It was a deeply traumatic event for her. The sound, the mother's scream... it was her first real, unfiltered encounter with the reality of death. And because our culture provides no framework for processing that, it manifested as a years-long struggle with obsessive-compulsive behaviors. She developed rituals to try and control the universe, to keep death at bay. Jackson: Because she saw the one thing you're not supposed to see. The curtain was pulled back. Olivia: Exactly. Her argument is that by shielding ourselves so completely, we make death into a monster. When it inevitably breaks through the wall we've built, we have no tools to deal with it. We're left terrified and alone with the reality that everyone, including us, will die. The blindfold doesn't protect us; it just leaves us unprepared for the one certainty in life. Jackson: That makes a disturbing amount of sense. We’re so busy not looking at it, we forget how to see. So when we finally do have to confront it, say at a funeral, what are we actually seeing? Is that even real? Olivia: Well, that's where things get even stranger. What we see at a funeral is often the most elaborate part of the illusion.

Jackson: Okay, so we're disconnected. But when we do see death, at a funeral, the person usually looks… peaceful. They look 'natural.' Is Doughty saying that's a lie? Olivia: A complete and total fabrication. And she learned this on her very first day at Westwind Crematory. Her boss, Mike, hands her a razor and points to a deceased man named Byron. He says, "Go shave him." Jackson: Her first task is shaving a corpse? What kind of orientation is that? Olivia: That's the death industry. She has no idea what she's doing. She describes the profound awkwardness of it—trying to close his eyes but they keep popping open, the feel of his cold skin. She says, "A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves. It is the only event in her life more awkward than her first kiss." Jackson: I can believe it. That's an intimacy that is just… bizarre. Olivia: It is. And that experience is her entry point into the world of "restorative art." She later observes a trade embalmer, Bruce, working on a body. He's draining the blood and pumping the body full of a preservative fluid—a mix of formaldehyde and other chemicals that he calls the "pink cocktail." Jackson: The pink cocktail? That sounds… festive and horrifying. Olivia: It is. It's what gives embalmed bodies that waxy, vaguely lifelike color. And Doughty makes a crucial point: this process isn't ancient or sacred. It was largely invented and popularized during the American Civil War for the practical reason of shipping soldiers' bodies home without them decomposing. It was a business innovation. Jackson: Wait, so the whole embalming thing, which I thought was just what you do, is basically a 19th-century business venture that stuck? Olivia: Pretty much. An early embalmer is quoted as saying the practice was great because it made undertakers seem less like simple carpenters and more like mysterious practitioners of a science. It professionalized the industry and, more importantly, it allowed them to sell a high-margin service. Jackson: So it's about profit and mystique, not necessity. You're telling me the pink lips on my great-uncle weren't natural? Olivia: Not even close. Doughty calls it the "unnatural natural." The industry uses things like eye caps—spiked plastic discs placed under the eyelids to keep them shut—and mouth formers to create that serene, sleeping expression. She tells this one story about a woman, Elena Ionescu, whose body was severely swollen from edema. Her daughter insisted on a viewing. Jackson: Oh no, this sounds like it's going to be a disaster. Olivia: It was a technical nightmare. Doughty had to use a needle injector to sew the mouth shut, but the skin was so fragile. They struggled to get her into the clothes she was supposed to be buried in. The final result was a grotesque parody of life. Doughty says, "Put lipstick on a corpse and you’ve played dress-up with a corpse." The whole performance is to maintain an illusion for the family, an illusion that death is tidy and beautiful. Jackson: But it's not. It's messy and real. And later, Doughty has this experience with a cremation that goes wrong, right? With the molten fat? Olivia: Yes, the "grease fire," as she calls it. A very large woman's cremation goes awry, and molten human fat pours out of the machine. It’s a visceral, shocking, and utterly real moment. And in that moment of chaos, she feels this strange exhilaration. She realizes that this is death. Not the sanitized, made-up version, but this raw, transformative, and sometimes disgusting process. Jackson: Wow. So the industry is selling us a peaceful lie, and she's arguing we need the messy truth. If that's the case, what does the messy truth look like in a positive way? How do you engage with that and find comfort? Olivia: That's the final, and most important, part of her argument. It's about taking the blindfold off and participating.

Olivia: Doughty argues that this whole performance cheats us out of something real. She has this fantastic line where she says, "It was death that the public was being cheated out of by the funeral industry, not money." Jackson: That’s a powerful reframe. The problem isn't the cost, it's the experience we're denied. Olivia: Exactly. And she provides this beautiful counter-example: the witness cremation of Mr. Huang. The Huang family, who are Chinese, come to the crematory to be present for the entire process. They set up a makeshift altar, they bring offerings, they wail and mourn with this raw, open grief. Jackson: So this is the complete opposite of being ushered out of the room while the professionals handle the "unpleasantness." Olivia: The absolute opposite. The family is in the crematory room with the machine. A videographer is even there, filming them and encouraging them to express their grief fully. And when the time comes to start the cremation, Doughty's boss, Mike, tells her, "You gotta let 'em push the button, man. They love the button." Jackson: The son pushes the button himself? Olivia: The son pushes the button to begin his father's cremation. And in that simple act, the family transforms from passive spectators into active participants in the ritual. They are not shielded from the reality of the fire; they are the ones who initiate it. They are taking control of the final act. Jackson: That's incredible. It's active participation, not just passive viewing. The symbolism of that is just… immense. It’s about agency. Olivia: It's everything. And that's Doughty's ultimate point. She's not saying everyone needs to witness a cremation, but she is advocating for reclaiming the process. This could mean participating in a home funeral, washing and dressing the body of your loved one—like in the Muslim ritual of Ghusl—or choosing a natural burial where the body is placed directly in the earth to decompose, like the author Edward Abbey requested. Jackson: So it’s about finding a ritual that is honest and meaningful to you, rather than just accepting the default commercial package. Olivia: Precisely. It's about replacing the fear-based, sanitized illusion with an authentic, participatory reality. She believes that by doing so, we not only honor the dead more truthfully, but we also heal ourselves. Confronting the corpse, she says, tethers us to reality. It forces us to acknowledge that life is finite, and that understanding is not a morbid curse, but a profound gift. Jackson: It makes life more precious because you've looked its end right in the eye. Olivia: You’ve refused the blindfold.

Jackson: So, when you piece it all together, the book is really a journey. It starts with this cultural fear and denial, moves through the bizarre and often deceptive theater of the modern funeral industry, and lands in this place of advocating for active, honest engagement with death. Olivia: That's it perfectly. Doughty isn't trying to make everyone morbid or obsessed with death. She's arguing that by looking at death clearly, we see life more clearly. The book is widely acclaimed and has been hugely influential in the "death positive" movement, but it's interesting that some readers find its outlook nihilistic or depressing. Jackson: I can see how, if you just focus on the decomposing bodies and molten fat. But that feels like missing the forest for the trees. Olivia: I think so too. The message isn't "we're all just future corpses, so nothing matters." The message is "we're all future corpses, so everything matters right now." It's profoundly life-affirming, but it gets there via a very unconventional and unsanitized path. Jackson: It really makes you think about what other parts of life we put a blindfold on for, just to avoid discomfort. Olivia: That is the ultimate question, isn't it? What blindfold are you wearing in your own life? It's a challenging thought, but one that this book leaves you with in the most powerful way. Jackson: We'd love to hear what you think. Does the idea of confronting death more directly feel terrifying, or does it feel liberating? Find us on our social channels and let us know. This is a conversation worth having. Olivia: It certainly is. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.