EDITOR’S NOTE

My efforts to get this little book published were for the most part selfish. My clippings ofNew York Timesobituaries written by Robert McG. Thomas Jr. were unorganized and disintegrating. Some were tucked into books, several sat in various desk drawers, others rested on my kitchen table yellowing next to a stack of bills. One summer day, I found a well-worn obit of Patsy Southgate in the glove box of my old Cutlass and reread it with delight while passing through a car wash.

Missing Thomas’s byline for several weeks that same summer, I asked around and learned he was away from work, fighting cancer. I had never met him, but wrote him a fan letter and getwell note introducing myself. I explained that my friends and I adored his stories of the recently dead, even collected them and passed them around, that we called them McGs. and missed him every day.

I was hoping to hear back from Thomas but knew I never would when I read with sadness Michael Kaufman’s obituary of him in theTimesof January 8,2000 (brilliantly McG-ish in its own right, it is included at the end of this book). Several weeks later I was amazed to learn from a friend that my letter was read at his memorial service. Later still, I was told by his son, David, that the letter had hung on the wall of his hospital room. Thrilled to know Thomas had received my note, I pondered the nice irony of this last minute connection with the man I so admired for the connections he made with the dead.

After transferring to theTimesobit desk full time, Thomas wrote a total of 657 McGs. From that lot, with a couple of early exceptions, I have chosen these fifty-two to show Thomas at his coolest, corniest, smartest, sweetest and all-time greatest.Naturally, it was difficult to limit the selection and exclude over six hundred pieces—all true McGs.—but I liked the sound of fifty-two, and that is enough, I think, for a good sample of his ungovernable range. Plus, I want to suggest that the reader need not approach the book in the usual front-to-back way but can proceed randomly as one would pick a card, any card, from a deck. A loaded deck, however, for these are all aces.

I would like to thank Judy Greenfeld, Linda Lake, Marvin Siegel, Phyllis Collazo and especially Mike Levitas atThe New York Timesfor their time and generosity. Thanks to my friends Rick Woodward and Christine Buckley, who helped me with selecting and confirming the choices, and to Tom Mallon for his wonderful foreword. Thanks also to Mary Beth Keane and Rachel Sussman, who were instrumental to this project, and to Bob Thomas’s friends Bob Grossman, Bill Brink and Michael Kaufman for their encouragement and kindness. Finally, without the vision and wisdom of Gillian Blake, senior editor at Scribner, there would be no book. I thank her the most.

C HRISC ALHOUN