This book may contain language, sexual content, and themes of grief and loss, which may be challenging for some readers. Reader caution advised.
To Live. To Die. To Grieve and Love.
by Clifton Butt
Hello everyone, this is Clifton Butt, an English teacher at Tascosa High School in Amarillo, Texas. I'm here to briefly discuss George Saunders' tremendous 2017 novel Lincoln in the Bardo.
While I had long been a fan of Saunders, I had never read all that much of his writing until I sat in on a seminar class at WT about his work led by Dr. Ryan Brooks. The most striking thing initially about Saunders is just how strange all of his work is, including this novel. The technical term for this is speculative fiction. For Saunders, and other writers of speculative fiction, to capture any truth about reality requires turning reality on its head, so to speak. Do not let this strangeness deter you when reading this book. Saunders purposefully injects this strangeness into his work to force us to consider something about our world and ourselves.
In Lincoln in the Bardo, what the characters must confront revolves around grief and death. Abraham Lincoln has just lost his son Willie. And Willie's soul is trapped in the bardo—a sort of purgatory. Other ghosts are there watching Willie and understand from their own experience how terrible it will be for him to be trapped there. The ghosts watching Willie know that he must go and Lincoln must let him. The ghosts also begin to understand that they also need to move on from this purgatory. But when moving on might mean going to an even more hellish place, that choice isn't as easy as logic would have us believe. And how can a father choose to let a beloved son go? How can someone accept their death and, by extension, the life they led? And even if these are the right choices, what cost will demand to be paid by making them? And, of course, these questions are some we all will have to attempt to answer sooner than later, or at least sooner than we would like.
Another question Lincoln in the Bardo explores is whether those costs can be borne alone by individuals. In all my time on the High Plains, whether in New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, or Texas, one thing has always remained true: people will help in a time of crisis. We seem to pride ourselves on helping each other just as much as we pride ourselves on self-reliance. The older I get the stranger this dynamic has become. In Lincoln in the Bardo, the characters need each other to help carry all that it means to live, die, grieve, and love. Those going it alone suffer most of all.
W.H. Auden said, "We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know." Saunders' work replies that other people are here to help you. So not only must you help others, but you must not deprive others from helping you. However, that sounds awfully close to a banal platitude. To the wrong ear, it might fall flatter than Western Kansas. But it's still true. If you don't believe me, read Lincoln in the Bardo. George Saunders uses 343 pages and more characters than should make sense to make it so. This novel is one of the strangest I have ever read. It is also one of the most true.
Thank you for listening to this BookByte by me, Clifton Butt. I hope you keep your head up and your heart open out there on the High Plains.
