Most people expect the same fundamental information to appear in every story about a person's death, but when it comes to writing about the death of a writer, the obituary writer
is tasked with a much harder job:
How should the obituary writer handle the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of words the immortal writer leaves behind? Are they part of the life to be directly summed up and synopsized, despite the impossibility of quickly doing so if one hasn't already read them? Should the obituary writer evaluate them directly, or is it OK to ignore the published writing, besides citing it? In short, should the obituary writer just convey everything taken for granted about the deceased, or is he or she the anointed reviser of received opinion -- tasked with shaping a spot-on goodbye to the major writer whose career now offers a crisp beginning and end?