Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (February 2017)
George Saunders's first novel is set the night after the death of President Lincoln's eleven year old son, Willie. Most of the story takes place in the graveyard where the young boy is laid to rest. Saunders weaves together a chorus of voices- including ghosts in the graveyard, the President himself, and quotes from first-hand sources- to tell an unforgettable story about death, grief, and the challenge of going on despite unimaginable loss.
As I mentioned in a March post, I had the opportunity to see Saunders read from this book at an event in mid-February. In keeping with the structure of his novel, he used a variety of assistants to voice different characters (with the man on the marquee opting to voice Lincoln- as Saunders himself put it, 'of course'). I felt this was a thoughtful touch that emphasized an important aspect of the story- with no traditional narrator, readers are forced to pay closer attention as they try to make sense of the story and, in the process, make their best attempt to answer some of the big questions that Lincoln in the Bardo poses.
Once the reading ended, Saunders took questions from the audience. I tend to do the same thing regarding these author 'Q & A' sessions- I come up with lots of potential questions and end up asking none. I axe most of my questions when I realize that the questions are designed to make me look clever, not to learn something from the author that I am genuinely curious about (1).
The closest I came to an acceptable question referred to an obscure line from the early pages of the book (editor's note: see the point above about making myself look clever). In this scene, an irrelevant character makes a joke at a party about 'going to the front', referencing Lincoln's recent remarks about the ongoing Civil War. The quote is met with laughter from the man's companions who immediately recognize the line. An omniscient narrator then remarks about how the scene was an example of the 'collective wit' of a people.
I wanted to ask Saunders if he thought it was more helpful for a collection of people to improve their 'collective wit' or if he thought it was better for an individual in that group to improve his or her own wit (2). A related concept comes up elsewhere- two characters find that making jokes about the frozen expressions on the faces of the dead help them deal with the difficult task of handling corpses- so I suspected the idea was on the author's mind. Put another way, I could have asked- did he think it helpful that people come together to divide the burden of difficult situations? Or would individuals developing their own ability to cope in healthy ways be preferred?
I gave up on the idea when I recognized that I stood little chance of articulating all that into a coherent question (3).
As tends to be the case, though, with unasked questions, this one has lingered in my mind over the many weeks since the reading. I suspect 'collective wit' is easy enough to dismiss as one of those 'sometimes its good, sometimes its not' things- as long as it's in moderation, right? I think that point of view is perfectly reasonable. The cases I describe deal with big, frightening topics like war and death. To find common ground with others and laugh about such topics can be very helpful in dealing with difficult emotions.
But sometimes I worry about the collective wit dragging us too far downward. I noted a number of instances lately in these parts- you know, the liberal, 'elite' terminus of the Acela corridor- where people cleverly noted the irony that certain Trump supporters favoring the reversal of Obamacare might be the first to lose coverage. 'Too stupid to know the harm of their vote,' I often (over)heard among the self-righteous chuckles.
Now, there might be something there. But pointing out that someone is too stupid to understand anything, politics or otherwise, isn't witty or insightful. It's mockery. And assembling a group of others to laugh along and implicitly agree doesn't change that. A bully with a following is still a bully.
A group's collective wit strikes me as harmful when it starts to create divisions by the formation of 'in' and 'out' groups. In the case above, what is perhaps worst of all is how it disavows those who understand the political ramifications of a vote from any responsibility to help educate and inform others. Instead of lamenting the failure of the right information to make it into the hands of voters, the collective instead labels others as 'too stupid' to do the right thing with that information.
Another issue I see with collective wit is when a group's thought process influences an individual's attempt to think freely. People generally enjoy activities done with others more than those done alone- I suspect this fact is mistakenly extended to thinking. The most important ideas in human history have come from individuals, not collectives, and thus the adoption of collective thinking patterns worries me a great deal for the ways it might limit a group member's capacity to think individually.
Lincoln In The Bardo does not set out to make any comments on these themes. And yet, I could not help think about them in the aftermath of the author appearance and my reading of the novel.
Where the collective wit perhaps fails us without question is in matters of life and death. We often turn to shared patterns of thought and behavior when our thinking as individuals fails us, a fact reinforced by how many of the characters in this work approach life and death (4).
But as Saunders's strongest characters show us, ultimately we must return to confront unanswerable questions on our own. The collective may help bring us there but the threshold remains passable by only one person at a time. It highlights the role of the collective wit in today's social landscape; vital to help us carry on in difficult times, harmful when it prevents individuals from seeking answers or meaning in the mysteries that lurk in the spaces around us.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. Hats off to my fellow readers, though...
Fortunately, my fellow audience members always come up with several strong prompts for the author. I enjoyed Saunders's response to a question about how he wrote a novel after a career of short fiction and essays. His basic point was that his approach resembled linking several short stories together. A carpenter who builds a room can build a house by simply connecting a few of these rooms together, I suppose.
2. Live from Beacon Hill...
Actually, what I wanted to ask him is if he thought a show like Saturday Night Live or a clever commentator like John Oliver was helping or preventing progress toward vague but oft-referenced ideas like equality and acceptance. Being a bit of a satirist himself, I'm sure Saunders would have offered an interesting perspective or two.
3. Hats off to the author, as well...
I think if I were truly on the fence, I would have tried asking a question. I credit Saunders here- he gave a great performance at this reading and I'm sure at least one person found him inviting enough to give their question a go.
His well-regarded sense of humor- especially if you prefer dick jokes- contributed to this feeling. When introducing his reader for the part of Hans Vollman- a character an LA Times review describes as having 'an undeflatable erection'- Saunders joked about the process of finding a person with the right physical attributes for the role ('oh, the auditions!'). And at the start of the Q&A session, he remarked along the lines of 'usually, the first person to ask a question is also the audience member with the greatest sexual prowess'.
There was a moment during the Q&A that I found particularly interesting (or perhaps just read too much into). An audience member asked about 'The Twelfth of December', mistakenly referring to his short story collection Tenth of December. Saunders did not bother to correct the man and, as far as I could see, everyone in the audience followed his lead. This was a great show of a) empathy, notable for the contagious effect Saunders had on his audience, or b) pragmatism, in that answering the question quickly would keep things moving for better-informed readers (or maybe it was a show of c) apathy, from an author and audience not paying nearly as close attention as I was).
4. There are not so many versions of the afterlife...
It has always interested me that, when it comes to questions of the afterlife, despite all the differences worldwide in culture, religion, and lifestyle, it seems that people reach similar conclusions in terms of how they imagine life after death.
