Where Will You Sit in the Great Bookcase of the Afterlife?

Between whose cheek and whose jowl?

Photo, author’s own.

What happens to us when we die? Where do we go? Do we go anywhere? Or do we just melt into the soil, our cells nourishing new life?

I’ve never been one for books that imagine an afterlife. After all, it’s anyone’s guess. It seems a fruitless quest, and besides, our earthly imaginations limit our visions.

But as a contribution to the conversation, I have come up with a theory of the afterlife. I posit that we writers end up on The Great Bookcase of Afterlife. We are, of course, arranged alphabetically, according to our surnames. We may be dead, but Dewey lives on.

According to my bookcase, with the surname of Scorziello, I would be between the Italian writer Leonard Sciascia and Scott Fitzgerald. Sciascia would be okay; I’m fond of an Italian man — who isn’t? — but S. F? I’ve read The Great Gatsby twice and it always has a flattening effect on me. I once tried to read Zelda Fitzgerald’s book, Save Me The Walz; I didn’t finish it. She would be beside him. No, this nook will not do.

I shall have to change my surname. Which got me thinking about where I might like to sit in the great bookcase of beyond…