Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo

You probably know a few things about George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo already: it’s the historical account of Lincoln cradling his son’s body in the graveyard, half told from the perspective of its ghosts. There’s a lot of beautiful stuff in this book. But it leans on two really ambitious concepts: first, to dramatize the inner lives of the dead through some kind of metaphysical action in the graveyard; and second, to tell everything through a chorus. In the end, I appreciate what he’s trying to do, but its a vastly ambitious set of concepts that, for me, underwhelm on execution.

On the mechanics of ghostworld: The action of the book hinged a great deal on the mechanics of ghostworld — which ghost is being eaten alive by roots and why, or is stuck in a burning train car that can only be blown up by a matterlightbloom phenomenon, or remembers or forgets aspects of themselves, or psychically projects themselves with a four foot dick — even whether one can influence Lincoln by stepping into his body and thinking loud thoughts. A lot of this was intended to be about projecting the psychological state of the characters out into the environment — and that’s great in concept. The most meaningful fantasy/speculative elements are about projecting psychic/social conflicts out into the environment, where it can play out on another level for us — making the immaterial in our world more material — offering us a different kind of insight into it.

But for me, the mechanics of ghostworld felt less insightful into character than simply there to serve other aspects of the story — the other ghosts need something to do, and Lincoln’s boy needs to be delayed, so let’s make them fight a root monster. The four foot dick thing sounds funny, and we need some humor here. The ghosts need to want to interact with Lincoln for this to be a story, let’s make them step into his body to try and influence his thoughts. The most insightful moments into the characters were just the characters telling you who they were, which was great. The mechanics of ghostworld and all the little action sequences they went through in between didn’t really shed any more light on them for me, which is to say, I saw them as devices while they were happening, and wasn’t that invested in them.

On the chorus effect: Creating a chorus of the living from history books and a chorus of the dead from all his ghosts, Saunders tries to offer us a big subjectivist philosophical statement about how we experience our world, and finally ourselves. Our world is composed of a thousand perspectives — they conflict, they make noise, they self-contradict with the fashion, yet this is all we have to assemble truth out of — and the most impoverished among us are the ones who are stuck clinging to one slender frame of perspective — their minds winnowing, becoming simpler and simpler, losing all other focus but one that keeps them riveted to their sick boxes, waiting to get better so they can return to fix that one stupid insignificant thing back in their lives.

It’s a really strong concept — and the historical voices worked marvelously, having strong disagreements, tones, and a surprising literary quality. But the execution of the ghost-chorus didn’t thrill me. In Saunders’ ghost-chorus, the lines of text often felt like a third person narrative that had just been cut up, some pronouns adjusted, to fit into the mouths of all his ghosts and subscribe to the given form. It’s a very modernist, Joycean kind of ambition, this polyphonic subjectivist thing. There’s a high bar. And when I read most of it, there’s too much text that isn’t really expanded by coming from the mouths of many rather than the mouth of the author. The perspectives of Vollman, Bevins, Thomas, etc. occasionally conflict or offer their own nuance that deepens what’s going on, but too often they just seem to be handing off a script between them to keep up the form. It doesn’t self-justify.