“Lincoln in the Bardo,” won the Man Booker Prize

[kerry]

(12-13-2017 02:29 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Kerry, have you (or any other members) read this novel? I had a vague idea of "bardo" from a college class fifty years ago on comparative religions, so my first thought was, "How is that related to Lincoln?" I then began to read comments and reviews online. It appears that readers either love it or hate it - or are trapped in their own purgatory trying to figure out what the author is attempting to portray.

Yes, I read it and loved it. That being said, I totally get the love it/hate it dynamic. It's not set up in a normal way - personally, since I've been doing a lot of Civil War reading, I now find it easier to read snippets of nonfiction than fiction. So it wasn't jarring to me. Some people absolutely hate reading something that doesn't "flow" like fiction. It takes a bit to get used to, and I suppose you have to connect to the ideas underlying it - it is primarily about empathy and awareness, and not everyone is into that.

The Atlantic complained about its lack of character development. There is virtually *no* character development, nor is there intended to be any, except Lincoln's feelings around the war evolving. The characters are stand ins for you to kind of connect to people you've known -- it's trying to give you a sense of the gamut of humanity. When I tutor critical reading I often use the song Piano Man as an example - Paul and Davy are not developed characters you are supposed to know all about, they are there to stand in for people who are lonely and stuck, a brief reference that kind of says it all. The characters in the book are like that. The first chapter is also not very good, but it gets a lot better. It's also written rather stream-of-consciousness, basically imitating how people think rather than speak - it jumps around, but I didn't find it hard to follow.

It's hard to explain, but it really has nothing to do with Tibetan Buddhism. That concept is just borrowed - you could substitute the word purgatory. It's more science fiction than religious. It also requires some literary analysis, which is not usually my thing, but in this book the symbolism and points really resonated with me and it wasn't hard to see what he was getting at. Some people may miss all of it. I definitely recommend it, though. I would love to teach a class on it.