If George Saunders' humility is as genuine as it appears to be on the "Bookworm" interview with Michael Silverblatt, then I may be truly in love. Not only is he the most badass short-story writer and truly unique and experimental novelist, he's also...so....normal. Well, like a brilliant, understated, matterlightblooming version of a normal person.
So, Lincoln in the Bardo. I remember another badass influence in my life, Elissa Marder, challenging us to think about the signified in the title, Madame Bovary. In Lincoln's case, it isn't THE Lincoln, but THE Lincoln's son, Willie. And the Bardo is a word for purgatory that refuses to let the reader slip into the association-laden term we all know.
Told by ghosts and historians intermittently, the book is bizarre and amazing and worth the read. But the part that brought me to tears was the ode to life that it stages toward the end. In the voice of roger bevins iii, "Though the things of the world were strong with me still. Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-tilted streetlight; a frozen clock, bird-visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; toweling off one's clinging shirt post-June rain.....Tying a shoe; tying a knot on a package; a mouth on yours; a hand on yours; the ending of the day; the beginning of the day; the feeling that there will always be a day ahead" (335). It's all just so...human. So banal and ordinary and full of life.
