We know we are destructive creatures, but to this I now add ridiculous and delusional. It’s how we go on, isn’t it, in the face of our inevitable end. It makes it possible for us as readers to enter a graveyard and cavort with the dead and pity them their unfinished business. This is the scene set by George Saunders in his novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. We are easily drawn into his tale of these malformed spirits, who despite all they witness, cling to the lives which have long-since left them. This is a netherworld where coffins become ’sick-boxes’ and the life they once lived is known as the ‘previous place.’
I’ve done a bit of reading (Wikipedia, I’m afraid) and it seems that a ‘bardo’ is a halfway place between death and rebirth, but in Saunders’s novel, the spirits have made this bardo for themselves by hovering in the vicinity of their dead bodies. The extent to which they deny their true states is often comical, but only superficially so, because beneath the smile is the grim fear that we may not have done all we could with the life we had. So, it’s funny, but it’s also confronting in those moments before we pop to the surface again in a bubble of denial. And we could stay there indefinitely, except for the presence of the American civil war president, Abraham Lincoln, who comes repeatedly to the crypt in the cemetery to mourn the loss of his son, Willy (Apparently, these visits really did happen). The extent of Lincoln’s grief reminds us of the reality surrounding death and we can’t quite pretend it is distant from us. Does this make this a depressing book? I don’t know. Not really. Perhaps. No, not at all. If one can be reminded of one’s mortality, as well as be wildly entertained, Saunders has managed it? Well done, I say.
For it is well done. Not only is the subject matter, well…difficult, the style is unusual. Saunders tells his tale in a series of short connected narratives. It goes like this:
“It affected one deeply.
the reverend everly thomas
You wanted to f—ing dance.
betsy baron
But you also wanted to f—ing cry.
eddie baron
While dancing.
betsy baron”
The above narrators are among the spirits, but Saunders also borrows from primary and secondary sources from the life of Abraham Lincoln.
“They dined on tender pheasant, fat partridge, venison steaks, and Virginia hams; they battened upon canvasback ducks and fresh turkeys, and thousands of tidewater oysters shucked an hour since and iced, slurped raw, scalloped in butter and crackermeal, or stewed in milk.
Epstein, op.cit.
These, and other tasty morsels, were spread about in such profusion that the joint attack of the thousand or more guests failed to deplete the array.
Kimmel, op.cit.
Yet there was no joy in the evening for the mechanically smiling hostess and her husband. They kept climbing the stairs to see how Willie was, and he was not doing well at all.
Kunhardt and Kunhardt, op.cit.”
If I can give any advice in the reading of this book which is written entirely in snippets like the ones above, it would be to relax into it. Before long you will be carried along. Soon, you will be recognising the narrators, particularly Hans Vollman, who gets about naked with an enormous erection because he died before consummating his marriage and Roger Bevins III, a young homosexual man who slashes his wrists after being spurned by his lover and regrets it immediately:
“I am waiting to be discovered (having come to rest on the floor, head against the stove, upended chair nearby, sliver of an orange peel against my cheek), so that I may be revived, and rise, and clean up the awful mess I have made (Mother will not be pleased).”
I told you it is funny, but I dare you not to be challenged by how unfinished we are and how we yearn for tomorrow in place of today. And also how willing we are to pretend we have it all in front of us, when things fall into place, the way we imagine they will. Ah, yes…there’s plenty of time.
What is there left to say except this is now one of my favourite novels. I go about selling its concept to anyone with ears to listen and eyes to read because I want people to know, before it too late and I revert to my unconscious self. HA!