"Lincoln in the Bardo" is not at all a story about Abraham Lincoln and not about French Bordeaux, to which the author suddenly sent him. It's hard to call it history. The novel tells about the son of the sixteenth president of the United States, eleven-year-old Willie Lincoln, whose soul is stuck between life and death in a borderline state, which in the Tibetan book of the dead is called Bordeaux. In fact, Saunders focuses on what is going on in this Washington bardo of the mid-nineteenth century, who gets there and what he thinks there.
Abraham Lincoln's third son died of typhoid fever in the midst of the Civil War. Despite the fact that at the time of the sharp deterioration of his well-being, a reception was arranged in the White House, which was then often recalled to the presidential family, the death of the child seriously hit both Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd: always focused and active, Lincoln turned into a sullen, absent-minded and inconsolable old man, and Willy's mother's mental health was worried in earnest.
It was possible to concoct some kind of psychological novel about inconsolable parents who are not even allowed to mourn their own child, but Saunders is not interested in this, although, of course, he does not miss the opportunity to demonstrate presidential grief and how others perceived it. And it is interesting for him to immerse himself in what this turning point for the history of the United States was really like, what kind of people lived in it and how ready they were for the changes that were taking place.
Structurally, "Lincoln in the Bardo" consists of several types of artistic statement construction: the first type refers to what is happening in Washington, in the world of the living, the second - to the very bardo where Willie is. The text relating to the world of the living is "made up" of quotations borrowed from historical books and written sources of those years, as well as pseudo-sources that George Saunders invented himself.
The world of the dead, which is still unable to break away from its earthly life, is a cacophony of monologues and dialogues, random remarks and barely perceptible utterances coming from somewhere. As you can see, Saunders is a terrible formalist, and as for how his novel should look like, how it will be formed and what it should consist of, he was seriously bothered.
Another question: well, what did it do? Postmodernism has ruled the ball for almost seventy years and during this time a lot of mosaic texts have been created, including those that were a polyphony of other people's replicas, if you don't want to go far - Sorokin's "Queue", and you want - one of the chapters of Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel; quotations have also been repeatedly mounted in the author's text, here is the most striking example, the "Name of the Rose" familiar to most. So to say that Saunders is an innovator, surprised, showed that this is how it is possible, no, maximum - just reminded.
But what a thing, this unusual form perfectly suits a much simpler content: through the destruction of the usual structure and the creation of a new one, the author was able to make a strong coupling between the nineteenth century, in which his characters live, and the twenty-first century, where his readers are. What is history for us, how can we touch it?
Except with the help of some artifacts and sources, but what are these sources, by whom are they written, how objective are they, what purpose did their author pursue when he created them, and can we trust them in the end? Can you imagine if by the distant future only the works of Anatoly Fomenko will survive from all the books on history, one thought is scary.
Saunders, in preparation for writing the novel, did a lot of work, read a lot of books, went through the archives, thoroughly studied everything related to Abraham Lincoln and his family, in the end it did not result in a set of facts that fall on the reader from every page, but reflected on how the writer formed the text inside the chapters of his novel. In general, it's better to see once than hear a hundred times, so keep my favorite.
Little Willie, the president's son, at some point becomes the embodiment of all the sons and children who fell on the fields of the Civil War at that time. The world of the bardo, inhabited by child murderers and pedophiles, and a nice good pastor, and a mother eager to return to her daughters, and blacks and Jews, in general, who is not there, turns into a cast of America, a rattling mixture, a cauldron in which the poor Irish who came for a new life, and exiled convicts, and African slaves, and virtuous Puritans are destined to melt.
They conduct an endless and meaningless dialogue, in which one almost does not hear the other, but somehow manages to complement his words. To be honest, the abundance of characters melts the brain at some point, especially since in cases where their monologue takes up the entire chapter, you will only recognize its author at the end. The only bright spot was the comrades with the surname Baron, who discussed various obscenities and at the same time did not skimp in expressions - you will recognize them right away.
Asterisks, by the way, are not a whim of a translator or a Russian publisher, in the Russian text they are even in rude, but quite censored words, so I sympathize with those who read the text in the original, solid "f ** *".
I'm not particularly good at perceiving information by ear, and fiction in audio format is just a nightmare for me, but it's "Lincoln in the Bardo" that I want to listen to, so that each character gets his own voice, so that the letters on a piece of paper or in my case on the screen turn into a real polyphony, with interruptions, a set of different intonations, giggles, burps, because I couldn't recreate it all in my head.
I know that in the USA the audiobook was recorded with a large number of readers, since there are more than 150 characters in it, and such stars as Julianne Moore, Susan Sarandon, Lena Dunham and Ben Stiller took part in the voiceover, of course, this does not shine for us, so we can only spread our hands.
Some semantic components of "Lincoln in the Bardo" seemed to me somewhat strained, for example, the suddenly emerging theme of slavery, which the author deduces with the help of several replicas of a black man describing how he lived (and in his opinion even not bad) on the owner's farm. Slavery itself and its formal abolition, of course, are associated with the name of Lincoln, but the fact that it surfaced somehow suddenly, without any plot eyeliner, is somehow strange.
In general, it is much more interesting than following the plot, which in this case is given out in a couple of strokes and could, if desired, fit into 1-2 sentences, follow how this novel works in general and what it is, poke around in its "clockwork". This is clearly not an option for a relaxed evening or a book to take time, in this case a new reader's experience is interesting, not a plot.
414.390 SRY