Lincoln in the Bardo
An appreciation for life, through a journey of intense grief.
Why write this way? Why tell the story using conversations between ghosts and made-up quotes from made-up books? Probably the first thought for everyone as they start the book. Perhaps the better question is “why not?”.
The weirdness underscores the inconceivability of death.
Lincoln, from the book, about the lifeless body of his son:
“Look down. At him. At it. What is it? Frankly investigate that question. (Is it him?) It is not. (What is it?) It is that which used to bear him around. The essential thing (that which was borne, that which we loved) is gone. Though this was part of what we loved (we loved the way he, the combination of spark and bearer, looked and walked and skipped and laughed and played the clown), this, this here, is the lesser part of that beloved contraption. Absent that spark, this, this lying here, is merely— (Think it. Go ahead. Allow yourself to think that word.) I would rather not.”
All great books are memorable, not in story, not in sentences, but in essence. The essence that this weird structure leaves is true to the message of the book. Value life, because the after is incomprehensible.
The Bardo fills the gaps.
The central question that the book asks, as you flick through the stories of the ghosts, is why they are stuck in the Bardo. The existence of that question fills in the gaps.
The book is mostly gaps, literally.
The Barons trash their kids in their outbursts. But the reader knows they loved them; why else are they stuck in the Bardo? Here’s Eddie Baron, about the kids:
“F— them! Right? Those f—ing ingrate snakes have no G——ed right to blame us for a f—ing thing until they walk a f—ing mile in our G——ed shoes and neither f—ing one of the little s—heads ever walked even—”
Many thanks to the readers before me.
The book is very put-downable in the first 25 pages as one struggles with the structure. If it weren’t so well regarded, the same fate might have befallen me. The pages started flying eventually.
“That day I learned a person can get used to anything. Soon it all seemed normal to us, and we even joked about it.”
Matterlightblooming Phenomenon.