Funny Obituary That Made People Miss Man
A n unusual item appeared, recently, in a newspaper in North Carolina. "A plus-sized Jewish lady redneck died in El Paso on Saturday," the article announced – before careening through a thousand words of one of the more outrageous obituaries ever written.
Renay Mandel Corren – a "bawdy, fertile, redheaded matriarch" and "talented and gregarious grifter" – has "kicked it," the obituary lamented. "There will be much mourning in the many glamorous locales she went bankrupt in," including McKeesport, Pennsylvania, where the Jewish mother and grandmother "first fell in love with ham, and atheism" and Fayetteville and Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, "where Renay's dreams, credit rating and marriage are all buried".
The rollicking, manic tribute delighted in subverting the respectful conventions of the small-town obituary – such as listing the deceased's achievements ("Yes, Renay lied a lot"), domestic virtues ("Renay didn't cook, she didn't clean, and she was lousy with money") and hobbies ("pier fishing, rolling joints and buying dirty magazines").
The obituary promised a "very disrespectful and totally non-denominational memorial", "most likely at a bowling alley", adding, "The family requests absolutely zero privacy or propriety, none whatsoever" – a stipulation that proved apt when the obituary went viral on Twitter, where thousands of readers proclaimed it a masterpiece.
"I just thought a few friends would read it," the author, Andy Corren, told me.
I tracked down Corren, 52 – described in the obituary as Renay's "favorite son, the gay one who writes catty obituaries in his spare time" – by email. After asking if I was writing to beg that he "pay for a subscription to the Guardian after ignoring your desperate pleas all these years", Corren eventually agreed to speak to me by phone from his weekend house (a "wretched little fortress of wind") in upstate New York.
He's still in shock at her death, he said. "But I didn't want to pass up the chance – would never pass up the chance – to make sure that this absolutely fascinating libertine and vulgarian that I was lucky enough to call my mother is remembered."
He began writing the obituary while sitting next to her, and read a few passages aloud before she died. "She laughed at some of it. She raised her eyebrow, archly disdaining some of it." That was the extent of her participation. "She refused to indulge in any post-life planning. She only planned the day she was alive."
It was an irreverent obituary for a defiantly irreverent person, he said, and a stylistic statement. Obituaries are expected to be staid and earnest. "I don't have any interest in formats or straitjackets that deprive you of your humanity or seek to create a totally artificial whiteboard. Who needs a report card after you die?"
The obituary describes abortions and an affair with Larry King, but he said that he actually toned down some of Renay's life – for the protection of those living and dead, and because not all statutes of limitations have expired. "I didn't want to cause too much scandal. Let's just say that the attorney general of North Carolina tweeted my mom's obituary and my first thought was, I really feel like we should be getting a posthumous pardon."
Corren is a talent manager who splits his time between Manhattan and the Catskills. He has also written, produced, and performed small stageplays and has two decades of experience writing "tight 1,500-2,500-word pieces" to perform at storytelling shows such as "Sit 'n Spin" and "Listen to This."
But his rowdy obit reads like something by one of the great Southern comic novelists – Charles Portis, say, or John Kennedy Toole. "I come from three ancient and proud traditions of storytelling – Jewish, gay, and Southern," he said. (He emphasized that the obituary is his point of view and that he doesn't claim to speak for his brothers.)
Corren has spent recent days processing his mother's death at his "dirt hovel on the side of a mountain", lamenting the feeble Internet connection and patrolling the property with his dog and a .22 rifle, on the lookout for dog-hungry coyotes. On Saturday he returns to New York to sing kaddish – the Jewish hymn for the dead.
He was "deeply touched" by readers' response to the obituary, and speculated that it may have to do with the pandemic. With Covid killing so many people, "Maybe we all needed a laugh, and a way to talk about death in a funny way."
He's currently working on a writing project about a "tumultuous" period of early-career misbehavior in LA – "a redneck Less Than Zero." I asked what it's about. "Are you sitting down?" he said. "Shocker! It's about me and my family."
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/dec/20/outrageous-viral-obituary-renay-mandel-corren
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