I was easily 2/3 through this novel, debating whether to carry on, composing a "WTF" review in my head, when it all suddenly clicked. I had reached what Saunders himself has called, in one of his essays on fiction-writing, the novel's Apparent Narrative Rationale -- "what the writer and the reader have tacitly agreed the book is 'about.'" What this clever and maddening book is "about" is, in my opinion, beautiful and moving, and worth every word.
Cult short-story writer and documenter of the weird, George Saunders, takes as the starting point for his first novel a kernel of historically documented fact -- following the death of his 11-year-old son Willie, a grief-stricken Abraham Lincoln paid a number of clandestine visits to the cemetery where his child had been interred, possibly even removing Willie's embalmed body from its mausoleum shelf for one last look, one last embrace.
Saunders takes this bizarre (if understandable for any parent imagining themselves into the depths of Lincoln's heartbreak and despair) behavior and turns it into something rich and strange by imagining an alternative explanation for Lincoln's morbid obsession: Willie's soul has been trapped in the "bardo," the Buddhist approximation of Purgatory, where the dead must wait until they have confronted the sins of their lifetimes and they can move on to their next incarnation. Willie's soul is in particular danger because, as an innocent child, he has no sins. He is trapped in the bardo by his love for his father, and his memories of the life they had together. Only his father can save him, by letting him go, by freeing him to move on.
Willie is not alone in the Bardo, and (although he doesn't know it, and is only vaguely aware of the danger his son is in) Lincoln has allies among the dead, souls who are touched by the devotion of the new arrival, and determined he shouldn't be stuck, as they are. The cemetery is a teeming necropolis, and Saunders' bardo is a bit like the Disneyland Haunted House ride, with lost souls singing little stream of consciousness songs to themselves about the dark secrets that have brought them here, and their deep denial of their deceased status, as they cling to the pretenses of the lives they left behind.
The chapters set in the cemetery alternate with chapters that establish the context: chapters about Lincoln as a man, and as a President, about his mentally fragile wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, about the conduct of the war, and about Lincoln's successes and failures as Commander-in-Chief, as the body count rises. These chapters consist entirely of quotes from contemporary sources -- admiring, critical, self-serving, maddeningly contradictory. Lincoln's eyes are blue, they are grey, they are brown with gold flecks -- each one from someone who claims to have been intimate with the President, staring into those mesmerizing eyes many, many times. In other words, trust no one. (Particularly, don't trust the Writer. I wonder how many of those quotes are the work of the purest imagination of one Mr. G. Saunders ... ?)
The cacophony can be maddening -- the dead tell their stories, the sources tell their stories, Lincoln grieves. As I said, WTF? But then, there comes a moment when you realize what Saunders has been working toward. And it all become a very moving and rewarding read about how Lincoln was freed from his own "bardo." And what turned a maddening and contradictory man into the one who righted our great National Wrong, and became one of our greatest Presidents.
Cult short-story writer and documenter of the weird, George Saunders, takes as the starting point for his first novel a kernel of historically documented fact -- following the death of his 11-year-old son Willie, a grief-stricken Abraham Lincoln paid a number of clandestine visits to the cemetery where his child had been interred, possibly even removing Willie's embalmed body from its mausoleum shelf for one last look, one last embrace.
Saunders takes this bizarre (if understandable for any parent imagining themselves into the depths of Lincoln's heartbreak and despair) behavior and turns it into something rich and strange by imagining an alternative explanation for Lincoln's morbid obsession: Willie's soul has been trapped in the "bardo," the Buddhist approximation of Purgatory, where the dead must wait until they have confronted the sins of their lifetimes and they can move on to their next incarnation. Willie's soul is in particular danger because, as an innocent child, he has no sins. He is trapped in the bardo by his love for his father, and his memories of the life they had together. Only his father can save him, by letting him go, by freeing him to move on.
Willie is not alone in the Bardo, and (although he doesn't know it, and is only vaguely aware of the danger his son is in) Lincoln has allies among the dead, souls who are touched by the devotion of the new arrival, and determined he shouldn't be stuck, as they are. The cemetery is a teeming necropolis, and Saunders' bardo is a bit like the Disneyland Haunted House ride, with lost souls singing little stream of consciousness songs to themselves about the dark secrets that have brought them here, and their deep denial of their deceased status, as they cling to the pretenses of the lives they left behind.
The chapters set in the cemetery alternate with chapters that establish the context: chapters about Lincoln as a man, and as a President, about his mentally fragile wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, about the conduct of the war, and about Lincoln's successes and failures as Commander-in-Chief, as the body count rises. These chapters consist entirely of quotes from contemporary sources -- admiring, critical, self-serving, maddeningly contradictory. Lincoln's eyes are blue, they are grey, they are brown with gold flecks -- each one from someone who claims to have been intimate with the President, staring into those mesmerizing eyes many, many times. In other words, trust no one. (Particularly, don't trust the Writer. I wonder how many of those quotes are the work of the purest imagination of one Mr. G. Saunders ... ?)
The cacophony can be maddening -- the dead tell their stories, the sources tell their stories, Lincoln grieves. As I said, WTF? But then, there comes a moment when you realize what Saunders has been working toward. And it all become a very moving and rewarding read about how Lincoln was freed from his own "bardo." And what turned a maddening and contradictory man into the one who righted our great National Wrong, and became one of our greatest Presidents.
