Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders

[Lyn]

It's time to open our discussion of Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders. This novel won the Man Booker prize for 2017, and was a first novel for Saunders, well known for his essays and short stories. The "bardo," is a place where souls who have not yet accepted their death reside. A multitude of eccentric ghosts in the bardo are heard from, some reflecting the divided country of the time. A primary focus is Lincoln's grieving visits to his dead son Willie, which presumably keep Willie in the bardo instead of moving on.

Here are a few reviews I found interesting:
https://www.newstatesman.com/fiction-...

One excerpt: "So my solution was, first of all, to say, the book’s not about Lincoln, actually; the book is about the love, maybe, for his son. Then you can make sure Lincoln doesn’t get in there too much. I realized verisimilitude was not the goal. To do the real Lincoln: nobody knows who that was, that’s not the point. So then I just thought, “Well, I’m free to infuse him with my own phenomenon,” and so mostly the research was reading enough of his speeches that I could internalize not only the rhythm, but the logic: he was a very syllogistic thinker. At the moment of truth, the reader is not really wanting factuality or verisimilitude. I think they want your intuitive swirl, you know?"

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/bo...

This NY Times review compares Lincoln in the Bardo to the American community in the Spoon River anthologies, and also contemplates a potential theme of Lincoln's personal sorrow at his son's death making him more attune to the sorrow of many in the nation at the time. I agree with this reviewer in that I appreciated how Lincoln's deep grief and humanity were portrayed (also appreciating, however, that it may or may not be prudent to use creative license to imagine the intimate thoughts of Lincoln in his time of grief).

This review is titled "The Sentimental Sadist: Ghosts and schmaltz haunt George Saunders’s first novel." https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...

My main feeling as a reader was that I would not have given it the Man Booker prize, though I did enjoy this book, and it was imaginative and different than anything else I'd ever read. Saunders has shown his mastery in short stories, essays, and reporting, but Lincoln in the Bardo doesn't rise to that level for me.

[Carol]

I agree with you Lyn. I don’t think it quite made the Mann booker grade. It was interesting, but I was expecting more. On another note it reminded me of ”Waiting For Gertrude”. It too takes place in a cemetery, but it was funny.

I applaud Sanders imagination , the rhythm of the book took a few chapters to understand, so that annoyed me. When I understood what the book was about I was hooked.

[Barbara]

Thank you, Lynn, for nominating this book. I don't think I would have read it if it hadn't been on the Reading List. I've read a few of Saunders' short stories and could see his ability but they didn't really reach me in any deep place. I could always feel his intellectual remove from the subject. But, in this novel, I felt that he was taking huge risks and one of them was in expressing deep emotion and grief. It was most evident from Lincoln's perspective (my favorite parts) but in some other characters as well.

The sadness was balanced by Saunders' humor. Usually, that contributes to my remove from his writing. However, here it contributed to relief from the grief.

Like others, I had a hard time getting into the rhythm of what he was doing initially but, after the first few chapters, it flowed. I also have great respect for his attempt to try such a unique approach.

[Ann D]

I was a fan of Saunders book of short stories, Tenth of December. The novel was very different. I didn’t like it as well, although I am definitely glad that I read it.

I think the juries for the big literary prizes often favor books which are very different in structure and content. This one certainly fit the bill.

I enjoyed most of the imaginative leaps and changes in tone. The evocation of Lincoln’s terrible grief for his son was wonderfully done. Some parts – especially those involving Mr and Mrs. Barron (bad parents of the year, who couldn’t figure out why their children never came to visit)- made me laugh out loud.

However, it was also bizarre and even grotesque in parts. I am thinking in particular about “Mr. Vollman bearing his tremendous member in his hands, so as not to trip himself on it” and the formerly handsome Mr. Bevin saddled with multiple eyes, nose, ears, and hands in this bardo state.

I was definitely slow on the uptake. I didn’t realize for some time that the inhabitants of the cemetery couldn’t even bring themselves to acknowledge that they were dead, although the sick-box and sick-cart were definitely hints that something was awry.

And what about those tempting spirits trying to lure them into leaving the bardo? Were they trying to take them to hell? Was the best that these trapped spirits could hope for was to explode into nothingness? The minister Mr. Everly Thomas had been through Final Judgment and was going to be condemned to eternal suffering. Yet he had no idea why. It seemed that only children like Willie could avoid that fate if they gave up the ghost in time.

Not a very comforting book, is it? But it sure was interesting. Thanks for nominating this as a group read, Lyn.

[Sherry, Doyenne]

I thought this was brilliant. But it didn't seem like a novel to me, more like an epic poem. What an imagination Saunders has.

[Gina]

I listened to it on audiotape. That made it more difficult for me. I have the book now and can see how the chapters are organized - it makes more sense. I was not really captivated by the novel, however. It felt gimmicky and I was surprised it won the Man Booker.

[Ken]

I found it educational, in its way. I know quite a bit about Lincoln, but did not know the pony story about Willie in the rain, getting sick, the debate over whether or not to go ahead with the White House party while he was ill.

That was saddest of all. The thought of the boy listening to laughter and merriment downstairs while he was burning up. No wonder the guilt did Lincoln in. And he was the favorite, as opposed to the better-known Tad, quite the personality, they say.

I enjoyed the "play-like" format Saunders used. All that white space made the book an easy romp. I admit that some of the ghosts got on my nerves a bit. Over the top. Fussbudgets. Vanity Fair in the Graveyard, of all things.

I don't think Purgatory is mentioned anywhere (is it?), but this surely seems like that place. Me, I'd take nothing after death to an existence like these hobgoblins'.

[Carol]

I looked Bardo up , apparently it is a Tibetan term.

bar·do
ˈbärdō/Submit
noun
(in Tibetan Buddhism) a state of existence between death and rebirth, varying in length according to a person's conduct in life and manner of, or age at, death.


So I guess you could equate it loosely to Purgatory. I don’t know much about Purgatory though.

[Jimmy]

I'm a huge fan of Charlie Rose, so here are some interviews with George Saunders:

The first one has other guests as well:

https://charlierose.com/videos/31176

Here with Seth Myers as guest host:

https://charlierose.com/videos/29963

Here from 2013 with a list of other appearances:

https://charlierose.com/videos/17129

[Sherry, Doyenne]

Jimmy wrote: "I'm a huge fan of Charlie Rose, so here are some interviews with George Saunders:

The first one has other guests as well:

https://charlierose.com/videos/31176

Here with Seth Myers as guest hos..."

Thanks Jimmy. I watched the interview with Rose, and I will definitely come back and watch the others later.

[Mary Anne]

I liked this book. I liked the setup of alternating the ghost chapters with the historical information about Lincoln and the environment at the time. As a practice, I don't read the book flap until after I've read the book. In this case, I wish I had, as I think I would have better understood the Saunders' approach. It took me a while to catch on.

[Patricia]

I had the audio version of this book and also thought the author brilliant. The way he wove the sacred and the profane throughout. I laughed out loud a number of times and also felt the grief of losing a beloved child. When I finished the read, I felt that at some point I’d want to read it again. It was so beautiful.

[Ken]

It was passing strange to read about a father exhuming the corpse of his son and holding it in his arms. I felt competing emotions--great respect and pity for the incredible grief shown in that episode, and a bit of revulsion and pity that he would obsess on a body instead of a spirit, a corpse instead of a memory. The boy was gone. The body was not him. The scene, taken from real life, apparently (who knew?), speaks things both wonderful and questionable about Lincoln.

[Jimmy]

It was a different time. These are gruesome photos. They show how parents at that time took pictures with their dead children all dressed up. I remember American History Magazine once did an article with many photos from that time period.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-36...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic...

[Ann D]

How interesting, Jimmy!

Nowadays we take so many pictures that these seem just macabre. But, as these articles explain, these were usually the only pictures a family had of the lost child. I can understand their desire not to forget,

[Jane]

I did not particularly care for this book. I was confused on the very first page, so I cheated and read the inside flap of the book. So I knew right away that everyone was dead. I found many passages to be repetitive.

I did think that the Reverend was probably not ready to enter heaven, and that's why he had such a horrible vision of what was awaiting him in the afterlife. When he was finally ready, after assisting others, he probably swiftly entered heaven.

At the beginning, you don't know how long these people have been hanging around, so I appreciated it when one of the characters went through all of the presidents that had been in office while he was in his "sick box".

[Ken]

And the thought of being conscious while in a "sick box" is enough to give any registered claustrophobe (ahem) the heebie-jeebies.

[James]

My first book of 2017 was The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or the After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, the translation of the Bardo Thodol, and I remember thinking when I read it that it would make an interesting novel or film, so I was intrigued by the title of this book. Although I enjoyed the book, which I thought was very imaginative, I was somewhat disappointed that it was not more like the actual idea of the Bardo.

While Saunders' novel has some features of the Bardo as the Buddhists understand it, it differs in many ways; it's more a Christianized version, with the idea of Heaven and Hell and a judgement by Christ, and of punishments in Purgatory, (combined with the vulgar notion of the "churchyard ghost"), where in the The Tibetan Book of the Dead the individual is free to choose his own fate -- Nirvana or some form of reincarnation -- but is influenced by hallucinatory visions reflecting the karma of his past life. In this novel, the choice seems to be only to remain in the "Bardo" (actually the cemetery) for an extended period of time or go on, presumably to a judgement. In the Buddhist view, the person doesn't remain in the Bardo for more than a month or two, but has to make the choice. The Bardo is actually more of a temporary state of existence than a physical place.

Ann mentions the "tempting spirits"; in The Tibetan Book of the Dead the visions are described, which try to convince the spirits of the dead to choose nirvana or to reincarnate at various levels; the spirits mostly are afraid of the visions, and the longer they resist the worse their reincarnations are.

I also liked the way the book is organized with the narrative of the real events told in quotations; it is amazing the way they fit together, assuming they are all real -- I know some of the books are because I've read them, but I wondered if some might not be made up, the way Eco mixes real and imaginary books in The Name of the Rose.

[Mary Anne]

James, I wondered that too. In the interview linked above with Seth Meyers, Saunders talks about reading many books on Lincoln, so perhaps the historical quotes really taken from nonfiction works. But then there's no listing of titles, so maybe not. I suppose that once you've decided to write a fiction about Lincoln, you're free to get creative.

[PattyMacDotComma]

"Remarkable and fascinating! . . . Frankly, I expected to be disappointed."

PattyMacDotComma, review of Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders on Goodreads.

5★ Link to review
[This is a totally tongue-in-cheek parody of the reference style used to such great effect throughout the book. :)]

[PattyMacDotComma]

I have read that the references are a mix of real and made-up. I think Saunders is imagining the bardo to be something like limbo, where unbaptised souls were said to remain. And the way we use the phrase today, "to be in limbo", usually means a state of indecision, preferably one that is only temporary.

I thought it was interesting that Willie was one of the first to realise, and I think the first to speak about the fact that they weren't sick, they were dead. When some character said he was still lying on the floor somewhere and wondering why nobody had come and help him up, it seemed obvious to me what had happened, but that he hadn't got the message yet.

BUT, I had heard enough advance publicity to know to notice those things. I'm not sure what I would have thought had I pulled a cover-less volume from the library shelf or a second-hand bookshop and started reading.

I admired the way Saunders attempted to give both the father and son some solace to the extent that they accepted the finality of the situation.

The mix of heart-rending grief and humour was outrageous and wonderful!

[Ann D]

Thanks for an excellent review Patty.

I particularly liked your citing these thoughts attributed to Lincoln at the end of the book. They really do convey the nature of grief when we lose someone very dear to us.

“I was in error when I saw him as fixed and stable and thought I would have him forever. He was never fixed, nor stable, but always just a passing, temporary energy-burst. I had reason to know this. Had he not looked this way at birth, that way at four, another way at seven, been made entirely anew at nine? He had never stayed the same, even instant to instant. He came out of nothingness, took form, was loved, was always bound to return to nothingness. Only I did not think it would be so soon. Or that he would precede us. Two passing temporarinesses developed feelings for one another. Two puffs of smoke became mutually fond. I mistook him for a solidity, and now must pay.”

[Ann D]

James, I appreciated your comments on the Tibetan concept of "bardo." I was totally unfamiliar with this.

Some here have mentioned that state of the cemetery ghosts was analogous to being in purgatory. Having spent much time praying for the "poor souls in purgatory" as a child, I would like to point out that it was always a place of suffering, but your presence there meant that you were guaranteed an eventual passage to heaven - once you had suffered enough to make up for your sins, and/or others had helped pray your way out.

The future for the inhabitants of this particular bardo, did not seem promising for any of its adult "inhabitants". Hell seemed a definite possibility, a place from which there is no possibility of eventual escape. Perhaps the most they could hope for was an acceptance of their death and return to nothingness (but then I don't think that is exactly nirvana, is it?

I guess the author leaves the future of the ghosts open to different interpretations and that is a good thing.

I didn't expect to like this book either, Patty, but it took the reader on a wild, imaginative ride and I did think it was very good,