Wyoming Arts Council

Morbid in Yellowstone: What's wrong with that?

Featured News | November 23, 2015

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From The Paris Review (Nov. 13):

Today in national parks and the macabre: “For years, I’ve been an avid reader of what I call the Death in …  books. It’s not quite an actual series—there are four so far, from three different publishers—but the Death in …  books all do the same thing: They chronicle accidents, murders and mishaps in several of America’s most treasured national parks, giving us Death in Yellowstone, Death in Yosemite, Death in the Grand Canyon, and Death in Big Bend. The Yellowstone, Yo­semi­te and Grand Canyon books purport to chronicle every single death (excluding illness and car accidents) from the mid-nineteenth century onward, sorted into chapters by type: flash floods, bear maulings, murder, falls, poison gas and so on … The Death in …  books are morbid documents, and their authors’ defensiveness about that only proves the point. But what’s so wrong with being morbid?”

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