Abstract
In his story, “Picking Up the Dead,” stand-up comedian Louis Bishop describes how he became a mortuary assistant to finance his goal of becoming a full-time comedian. When a woman overdoses on heroin and decomposes for more than two months inside her mobile home, Bishop is called upon to pick her up and drive her to the mortuary. Dr. Eric Shouse adds a response to Bishop’s story that explains how Bishop is like Sisyphus, the protagonist of an ancient Greek myth, who was sentenced by the gods to an eternity of rolling a stone up a hill only to have it roll back down again.
Response The Death of Sisyphus: Reflections on Louis Bishop’s “Picking Up the Dead”
By Eric Shouse
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References
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Bishop, L. (2020). Picking Up the Dead. In: Oppliger, P.A., Shouse, E. (eds) The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy. Palgrave Studies in Comedy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37214-9_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37214-9_15
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