Cranioklepty

Beginning dramatically with the opening of Haydn's grave two days after his death in October 1820, Cranioklepty takes us on an extraordinary history of a peculiar kind of obsession. The desire to own the skulls of the famous, for study, for sale, for public (and private) display, seems to be instinctual and irresistible in some people. And the lengths they'll go to for an acquisition can be a comedy of the grotesque.

The rise of Phrenology at the beginning of the 19th century only fed that fascination with the belief that artistic and intellectual brilliance leaves its mark on the very shape of the head. How better to measure that trace than with the cranial bumps and crannies of the departed genius.

The after-death stories of Franz Joseph Haydn, Ludwig Beethoven, Swedenborg, Sir Thomas Browne and many others have never before been told in such wretched detail and lightning vividness.

Fully illustrated with some surprising images, this is a fascinating and authoritative history of ideas carried along on the guilty pleasures of an anthology of real-after-life gothic tales.

Colin Dickey is the co-editor of Failure! Experiments in Aesthetic and Social Practices. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Cabinet, TriQuarterly, and The Santa Monica Review. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, he now lives in Los Angeles.