Caitlin Doughty opens Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by establishing her unusual vantage point: years of direct, hands-on experience working within the death care industry, from crematory operator to eventually funeral home owner, providing an unusually candid, close-up perspective on death and dying most readers never directly encounter.

Why this vantage point matters:

• Doughty's direct, physical experience with death — handling bodies, operating crematory equipment, interacting with grieving families — provides a level of concrete, unflinching detail rarely present in more removed or theoretical writing about mortality
• Rather than writing from clinical distance, she candidly documents her own evolving relationship with death anxiety throughout her career, from initial discomfort toward greater acceptance and even a kind of professional fascination
• This personal, evolving narrative arc — rather than pure detached reportage — gives the book its distinctive memoir quality alongside its broader cultural argument

This opening establishes the book's core credibility: Doughty isn't theorizing about death from a comfortable remove, but drawing on genuinely direct, often visceral professional experience most readers will never have.