LINCOLN IN THE BARDO (2017)
By George Saunders
Random House, 368
pages
★★★★
What happens the moment we die is the ultimate mystery, so
it’s hardly surprising that not even religious traditions agree. Eternal
non-existence? Reincarnation? Life after death? Quite a few belief systems
speculate a temporary middle ground; Roman Catholicism’s Purgatory is by no
means the only doctrine on such matters. George Saunders’ Booker Prize-winning Lincoln in the Bardo draws upon a
Tibetan belief in an in-between space in which the departed is neither alive
nor dead—the novel’s namesake bardo.
Lincoln in the Bardo
was a controversial choice for the Booker Prize and not just because of its
subject matter; Saunders is the first American writer to win the Booker and it
infuriates many in the Brit Lit crowd that Yanks are even considered. That such
an “experimental novel” has been honored is another level of debate, though the
Booker often goes to works that cause traditionalists to spit out their Earl
Grey. The only real question is whether this is a great novel. My verdict?
Almost.
The year is 1862 and it has become apparent that the
American Civil War will be more charnel house than a hall of heroes. Death
becomes very personal to President Lincoln when a typhoid epidemic carries off
his eleven-year-old son Willie, a jovial boy beloved by all and the president’s
favorite child. This would be a fine book for its unvarnished look at grief
alone—many speculate that Willie’s death drove Mary Todd Lincoln mad—but Saunders
has a far more ambitious goal in mind. NPR called this book a “worm’s-eye view
of death,” and that’s a pretty good way of describing it. Saunders claims part
of what he wanted to communicate is embodied in the way Mary cradles the
crucified Jesus in Michelangelo’s sculpture The
Pieta.
The bardo is where one comes to grips with being dead; hence
many there are as yet unaware of their fates. Each is present in the condition
in which they arrived plus whatever ravages time takes on the physical body. The
bardo is imbued with Edward Gorey levels of creepiness stripped of its
Edwardian sense of propriety. Young Willie has been (temporarily) laid to rest
in a Georgetown crypt until he can be carried back to the family home in
Illinois. He doesn’t have much to say, but 166 other “ghosts” have views on
everything—some of it unsettling, some amusing, some philosophical, but little
of it self-aware. The narrators come from all walks of past lives: slaves,
soldiers, hunters, prostitutes, laborers, homemakers…. This many voices would
be a muddle, thus Saunders focuses mostly on three. The Rev. Everly Thomas
knows he’s dead, but hasn’t moved on for a reason. Our sad ghost is Roger
Bevins III, a closeted gay man who committed suicide; and the resident Falstaff
is Hans Vollman, an older man who married a younger woman and was just about to
consummate their union when a beam fell from the roof and snuffed out of his
life, but not his engorged erection.
Saunders spins tales in snippets, few of which are longer
than few sentences. His is a masterful job of imagined dialogue stitched to
cut-and-paste passages from diaries, history books, memoirs, newspaper
accounts, and other written sources. The ghosts are aware of each other and
interact—often in unexpected ways. Sometimes they are as amusing as the
movie-obsessed ghosts in the film Truly,
Madly, Deeply; often their stories are more poignant and tragic.
It’s clear that Lincoln
in the Bardo isn’t any kind of historical novel, but it’s much harder to
say what, exactly, we should call it. It’s a fascinating read that I devoured
in just two sittings, but I’m less willing to slap the “experimental” label
onto it. Saunders’ technique is quite similar to that of Edgar Lee Masters in
his 1915 Spoon River Anthology, which
has the added merit (and difficulty) of having been written in verse. It also
bears resemblance in set-up and tone to Kevin Brockmeier’s underappreciated
masterwork The Brief History of the Dead
(2006). Brockmeier built upon Eastern African tribal eschatology in which the
living become Sasha at death—a kind
of holding pattern where one stays until the last person still alive who
remembers you passes away. Only then is one Zanan
(dead).
So perhaps Saunders’ book isn’t quite as unique as some
would have it. It is, however, beautifully written. If, along the way, you wish
also to see it as capturing the collateral damage of war, an elegy, or commentary
on something grander (the Holocaust?), it is testament to Lincoln in the Bardo that it provokes such thoughts. I can only tell
you this: you will know within ten pages whether or not this is your cup of Earl Grey. If you like those
ten pages, you will zip through the rest; if not, leave it on the shelf, as the
next 358 pages are similar. As for its UK naysayers, the Brits need to get over
themselves; this book is far more deserving of the Booker than a lot of
previous winners.
Rob Weir
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