Where Are They Buried? (55 page)

Marx was buried in London’s Highgate Cemetery. This elegant Victorian cemetery is at the top of Highgate Hill on the north side of town, near Hampstead Heath, off of Swain’s Lane.

Marx’s grand monument is surrounded by a black iron fence and topped by his intimidating, bearded bust.

FEBRUARY 3, 1907 – OCTOBER 16, 1997

Abandoned by his parents shortly after birth, young James was adopted by a Quaker widow, Mabel Michener. In his memoir,
The World Is My Home
, he wrote that his wanderlust sprouted upon realizing that the road outside their home continued forever, to strange lands and adventures he could not even imagine. He went on lengthy hitchhiking trips before he was old enough to drive and, ultimately, James came to be the consummate traveler.

But it wasn’t until he was in his 30s, when the Navy sent him to the primitive South Pacific islands to gather wartime information, that he found his calling as a writer. The visits later provided the backdrop for some of his most memorable novels, which were invariably laden with geographical and historical details. James himself once admitted that he wasn’t a “stylist” and wasn’t very good at composing dialogue, but he also knew he could “put a good narrative together.” Perhaps because he never knew his own roots, foreign backgrounds intrigued him. “I feel myself the inheritor of a great background of people,” he said. “I could be Jewish, part Negro, probably not Oriental, but almost anything else, so I can’t afford to be scornful about anyone.”

On his first try as a published author he won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1948 collection of short stories,
Tales of the South Pacific
. These were later adapted into
South Pacific
, a long-running Broadway musical and motion picture. For the next five decades James
took readers on obsessively detailed journeys across time to the far corners of the planet. Many of his 44 works had simple, one-word titles like
Hawaii
,
Sayonara
, and
Poland
and, often for 600 pages, the epics entertained while arguing James’ universal ideals: religious and racial tolerance, hard work, and self-reliance.

Beginning in 1993, James waged a battle against kidney failure and, three times a week in three-hour-long sessions, his blood was pumped out, cleansed, and pumped back into his body by a dialysis machine. His once wide world was reduced to only the city of Austin, which he lamented as “my prison.” He never quit working, saying, “as long as the old brain keeps functioning, I know the desire will always be there,” but life eventually became too much of a burden. “For the first time I understand how a person could say ‘the hell with it,’” he confided.

Finally, the globetrotter refused to undergo anymore life-sustaining dialysis treatments, and he died of kidney failure two weeks later.

At 90, James was cremated and his ashes buried at Austin Memorial Park in Austin, Texas.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From Highway 1, the Mopac Expressway, take the 45th Street exit and head east for a short distance to Bull Creek Road, where you’ll turn left. After a half-mile, Bull Creek ends at a “T” with Hancock Drive, and the cemetery is across the intersection to the left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery, turn at the first drive on the right, and follow it up the hill. The last section on the right is Section 11, and there next to the curb is the reddish-colored Michener monument.

NOVEMBER 8, 1900 – AUGUST 16, 1949

While growing up, Margaret Mitchell was regaled with stories of Confederate Atlanta by her father, who was president of Atlanta’s Historical Society. By the time Margaret was 27, she had written over a hundred feature stories for the
Atlanta Journal
newspaper but, once she was confined to her home after breaking her ankle, her second husband encouraged her to change gears and pursue her fiction-writing aspirations. Night and day, Margaret labored over her Remington typewriter and, after three years, she had completed a draft of
Gone With the Wind
, a fictitious epic featuring the experiences of a beautiful and manipulative Southern
Belle, Scarlett O’Hara, and describing the secession, Civil War, and Reconstruction periods from the seldom-heard Southern point of view.

The next half-dozen years were spent perfecting the book’s historical accuracy and, once it was finally published in 1936, Margaret’s 1,037-page novel immediately broke all previous records, selling two million copies within a year. Many critics panned it for being “overly Southern” but, nonetheless,
Gone With the Wind
was awarded the Pulitzer Prize the next year, and Margaret soon sold the film rights for $50,000. In 1939, its archetypal celluloid adaptation starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh premiered. This too was a smash. The film broke box-office records and the catch phrases it spawned—“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” and “Tomorrow is another day,” (Margaret’s original title for the book)—haven’t fallen from favor some 70 years since.

Remarkably, Margaret never wrote again.
Gone With the Wind
was the only book she ever authored and she was very adamant that, as the story could stand on its own, no sequel was necessary. Though it brought her fame and fortune, the book seems to have yielded her little joy. Chased by the press and public, Margaret and her husband lived modestly and traveled rarely.

On a hot Atlanta night in 1949, Margaret and her husband decided to go downtown to see a movie. After parking the car across the street from the theater, the couple hurried across Peachtree Street arm-in-arm when a car suddenly sped toward them. In a panic, Margaret ran without her husband back to the curb, but the car skidded and struck her, breaking her pelvis and fracturing her skull. She never fully regained consciousness, and, at 48, she died five days later. The driver, who had 23 prior traffic violations, was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter and served ten months in prison.

In her will, Margaret instructed her secretary to burn all of her letters and the original
Gone With the Wind
manuscript, save for a few pages preserved to prove her authorship. And so, shortly after her death, her secretary and the custodian of the apartment building in which Margaret had been living burned nearly all of her documents in the building’s boiler.

Margaret was buried at Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-75/85, take Exit 94 and head east on Edgewood Avenue. At the first light, turn right onto Hilliard Street and proceed a half-mile to Martin Luther King Drive. Turn left and you’ll see the cemetery a couple hundred yards ahead.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery and turn left at the first paved drive. Just after crossing another paved drive, as the road bends to the right, stop. On the left is a brick walk that extends in the direction from which you were just driving. Follow this walk and then, at the second walk, turn left. A short distance on the left, behind the Peel mausoleum, is Margaret’s grave.

JUNE 25, 1903 – JANUARY 21, 1950

The British author George Orwell achieved prominence in the late 1940s as the author of two brilliant satires that attacked totalitarianism. He established himself as one of the most influential voices of the century.

His first important work,
Animal Farm
, was a fantasy novella, a mocking allegory of the Russian Revolution played out by sentient animals, some of who were declared “more equal than others.” Later, in a prophecy of a world laid waste by warring dictators,
1984
offered a bitter protest against the nightmarish direction in which Orwell believed the modern world was moving, complete with Thought Police and professional History Revisionists. At their core, both works are concise illustrations of the manner in which the degradation of language and the suppression of free speech precede all other oppressions. These powerful works are required reading at many schools of higher learning.

Just four months after the publication of
1984
, Orwell died at 46 of complications arising from a chronic tuberculosis condition.

He was buried in the yard of the All Saints Church in Sutton Courtenay, England. The large village is just a few miles south of Oxford, while this early fourteenth-century church is at the north end of the town square. Orwell is buried under his own name, Eric Arthur Blair, and there is nothing on his headstone to indicate his achievements.

OCTOBER 12, 1935 – SEPTEMBER 6, 2007

As a maestro of classical music, Luciano Pavarotti was acclaimed for the clear-as-a-bell tone and terrific projection of his pristine tenor, but his more enduring legacy is for a Midas touch that he lent to opera, extending its presence far beyond the traditional limits.

Born near Milan, in the heart of opera country, he dreamed of being a soccer player until the day his voice emerged. He then devoted himself to a serious opera career, spending every spare moment studying the fine points of phrasing and repertoire. By 35, Luciano had established his rich sound as the great male operatic voice of his generation, and in 1990 expanded his franchise exponentially with the Three Tenors projects, sharing the stage with Placido Domingo and Jose Carerras. Reviving the act in 1994 at Dodger Stadium, they attracted a worldwide television audience of 1.5 billion. Performing with rock stars as varied as Elton John and Jon Bon Jovi—and even the Spice Girls!—at his Pavarotti and Friends charity concerts, he earned renown with the MTV generation who responded by pushing his Christmas CD, “O Holy Night,” to the top of the British charts, an astonishing achievement and the first ever for any classical artist.

Raising money for international causes, he won new friends onstage and off. Joking on talk shows and cooking programs, riding horses on parade, and even playing an improbable sex symbol in the movie
Yes, Giorgio
, Luciano solicited adoration from large numbers of people and they fell at his feet. But as he became increasingly celebrated, he spent less and less time preparing for his operatic roles or studying new ones and traditional opera aficionados became disenchanted. Rudolf Bing, manager of the Metropolitan Opera, complained that “seeing that stupid, ugly face everywhere I go is getting on my nerves. It’s all so unnecessary, so undignified.” But despite a string of artistic failures, Luciano’s fan base grew steadily.

Luciano ultimately allowed success to turn him into an Elvislike caricature of himself. Everything about him became outsized and, as his girth increased exponentially, along with a new air of self-importance and untouchability, even the Hermes scarves he draped over his frame as a trademark during recitals had to be manufactured in a supersize range. Superstitious about retiring, but in poor health and hardly able to walk, the maestro regularly canceled appearances on a whim and, when he did perform, he appeared remote from the music. Controversy followed Luciano offstage as well; tax collectors dogged him for millions, and he left his wife of 37 years for his secretary, a woman 35 years his junior.

In poor health, Luciano announced his retirement in 2001, though he mustered the strength for a worldwide farewell tour in 2005. But after a handful of dates, the tour was postponed when a malignant tumor was found in his pancreas. His performance of “Nessun Dorma,” during the opening ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, turned out to be his last and Luciano Pavarotti never performed in public again.

At 71, the pancreatic cancer claimed Luciano and he was buried at Montale Rangone Cemetery in Modena, Italy.

OCTOBER 25, 1881 – APRIL 8, 1973

Pablo Picasso is considered by many to be the most influential artist of the twentieth century, and he almost single-handedly created modern art. He was the first artist to enjoy the obsessive attention of the mass media. No artist, not even Michelangelo, has ever been as famous as Picasso in his own lifetime, and it is quite possible that none ever will be again, now that the mandate to set forth social meaning and generate memorable images has been largely transferred to the electronic media. Picasso’s audience, meaning people who’d heard of him or who knew of his work, was possibly in the hundreds of millions, and his efforts were the subject of unending analysis, receiving both criticism and adoration.

Picasso is best known for his invention of revolutionary art styles and for his experimentation on a range of themes. In fact, one of the more remarkable qualities of his career was the rapidity and ease with which he evolved. Picasso’s most important contributions include pioneering the Cubism movement, and using collage and assemblage as artistic techniques.

In 1907, after his Blue and Red periods (so named for the dominant use of each color in his paintings), Picasso worked on the simplification of art and shocked the masses with his distortion of the human form in his Cubist works: a demonstrative style of pictorial dissection that creates an abstract, multi-angled representation.

Around 1912 Picasso and his contemporary, Georges Braque, began experimenting with new techniques: Using
papier collé
—a type of paper glued onto canvases with various other materials—they created a new form known as
collage
. Later, with the advent of the Surrealist movement in the 1920s, Picasso’s work turned to the grotesque, and he created figures endowed with several heads, displaced noses and mouths, and enlarged limbs. One of Picasso’s most historically significant works,
Guernica
, painted in 1937, expressed Picasso’s horror at the fascist brutality of the Spanish Civil War.
Guernica
remains one of the most powerful political images in modern art. Deemed a masterpiece, its completion marked the final major turning point in Picasso’s career.