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

[kerry]

(12-12-2017 06:02 PM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  

(12-12-2017 03:00 PM)kerry Wrote:  

(12-12-2017 02:37 PM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  

(12-12-2017 01:35 PM)kerry Wrote:  

(12-12-2017 12:27 PM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  [quote='kerry' pid='67883' dateline='1509813168']
I thought the book was excellent. It's weird and not for everybody, but the overall message and its presentation were really impressive, in my opinion.

I read a newspaper interview with Rev. N. W. Miner's daughter, and it included a letter in which he visited the Lincolns in 1862 and was told to go look at Willie's body, and did so. So it seems possible Lincoln himself could have done so.

I also found this - On July 17, 1865, the National Baptist published correspondence from Springfield noting that Willie was embalmed “so handsomely that the President had it twice disinterred to look upon it.”

I attached it - it's from genealogybank.com

Thanks!

You're welcome - I'd forgot I'd posted this until you quoted it -- the most direct reference is the National Baptist One. On April 25, 1865, the Indianapolis Sentinel also reported Lincoln had the body disinterred twice to look up it. Unfortunately I can't figure out where I got the National Baptist reference - the way I wrote it, I probably looked at the actual issue, but now I can't find it.

It seems that the original quote was in the New York World, and the National Baptist copied it.

https://books.google.com/books?id=F6HB7q...t.&f=false

Thanks for finding that! The World always published interesting if often negative things - it's too bad most places don't have it in their archives like they do the Herald and Tribune.

[Eva Elisabeth]

(12-12-2017 11:24 AM)kerry Wrote:  

(12-12-2017 05:12 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(12-11-2017 09:47 PM)kerry Wrote:  I found this on newspapers.com. On 27 March 1862, the Daily Intelligencer reported “Mrs. Edwards, the sister of Mrs. Lincoln, had a narrow escape last week. She visited the Oak Hill Cemetery, in company with some friends, for the purpose of gazing on the lifeless remains of "little 'Willie." While in conversation with Dr. Brown, a few feet from the vault, two Minie musket balls passed within a few inches of her head. They were apparently fired from an encampment over a mile distant.” As embalming was new, it was apparently a thing.

I definitely recommend this book, but it is written in a very odd way that may be hard for some people to connect with. I've yet to meet another person who has read it, despite it getting all this attention and prizes.

(12-12-2017 05:05 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Lincoln here?
http://www.bardomuseum.tn/index.php?lang...&Itemid=59

Kerry, Eva, everyone - has anybody come across solid proof that Lincoln himself visited the tomb twice (as claimed in Twenty Days) to look upon Willie? Many Lincoln books do not carry this story at all, and as far as I can tell, the ones that do (such as Twenty Days) have no footnotes. What is the authentic source for the story?

There's no authentic source that I've found for Lincoln himself. I'm just pointing out that it wasn't considered as weird as it sounds now, as the Lincolns encouraged visitors to go look. It wasn't considered as showing a lack of faith, as Miner did it. Either way, the book is by no means intended to be a historical record; it is very metaphorical, and about larger issues. Half the Lincoln-related quotes are real, half are fabricated, but it is well done. It's about humanity more than Lincoln. He's not in a lot of the book. Lincoln is not aware of any of the spirits, so he's not really in the Bardo (come to think of it, the title is a bit weird), but they are aware of him. Each character basically represents a person held back by something, and explains why, and that chorus of lost souls builds in an interesting way.

What does it mean "he's not really in the Bardo (come to think of it, the title is a bit weird)"? (I don't know any Bardo but the Tunisian museum, so I do fond the title weird.)

I think the Victorian era dealt much differently from ours with dead and deceased, and a lot thereof (like photography with corpses) we find near insane today was considered normal or legitimate back then.

[RJNorton]

(12-13-2017 04:47 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  I think the Victorian era dealt much differently from ours with dead and deceased, and a lot thereof (like photography with corpses) we find near insane today was considered normal or legitimate back then.

I agree, Eva. Photos like this one were much more common back then:

[Susan Higginbotham]

But that's not a postmortem photo, although it is commonly misidentified as one. Posing stands like the one this gentleman is leaning against were used to help living people stay still. Sadly, there is a lot of bad information on the Internet about postmortem photos. Here's some good information:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/vi...hotographs

And people still take photos of the dead today. There are volunteers in hospitals who will take photos of stillborn infants for their parents. My family has a photo of my grandfather in his coffin from 1975.

[L Verge]

(12-13-2017 09:42 AM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  But that's not a postmortem photo, although it is commonly misidentified as one. Posing stands like the one this gentleman is leaning against were used to help living people stay still. Sadly, there is a lot of bad information on the Internet about postmortem photos. Here's some good information:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/vi...hotographs

And people still take photos of the dead today. There are volunteers in hospitals who will take photos of stillborn infants for their parents. My family has a photo of my grandfather in his coffin from 1975.

My husband's grandfather had immigrated to America from Russia in the early-1900s. When he passed away in West Virginia in the late-1970s, he was photographed in his coffin and in the surroundings so that the pictures could be sent to family members still in the old country to show that he had been given a fitting funeral.

[RJNorton]

(12-13-2017 09:42 AM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  But that's not a postmortem photo, although it is commonly misidentified as one.

Thanks, Susan. For many years now I had thought the guy in the photo was dead.

[kerry]

(12-13-2017 04:47 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  

(12-12-2017 11:24 AM)kerry Wrote:  

(12-12-2017 05:12 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(12-11-2017 09:47 PM)kerry Wrote:  I found this on newspapers.com. On 27 March 1862, the Daily Intelligencer reported “Mrs. Edwards, the sister of Mrs. Lincoln, had a narrow escape last week. She visited the Oak Hill Cemetery, in company with some friends, for the purpose of gazing on the lifeless remains of "little 'Willie." While in conversation with Dr. Brown, a few feet from the vault, two Minie musket balls passed within a few inches of her head. They were apparently fired from an encampment over a mile distant.” As embalming was new, it was apparently a thing.

I definitely recommend this book, but it is written in a very odd way that may be hard for some people to connect with. I've yet to meet another person who has read it, despite it getting all this attention and prizes.

(12-12-2017 05:05 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Lincoln here?
http://www.bardomuseum.tn/index.php?lang...&Itemid=59

Kerry, Eva, everyone - has anybody come across solid proof that Lincoln himself visited the tomb twice (as claimed in Twenty Days) to look upon Willie? Many Lincoln books do not carry this story at all, and as far as I can tell, the ones that do (such as Twenty Days) have no footnotes. What is the authentic source for the story?

There's no authentic source that I've found for Lincoln himself. I'm just pointing out that it wasn't considered as weird as it sounds now, as the Lincolns encouraged visitors to go look. It wasn't considered as showing a lack of faith, as Miner did it. Either way, the book is by no means intended to be a historical record; it is very metaphorical, and about larger issues. Half the Lincoln-related quotes are real, half are fabricated, but it is well done. It's about humanity more than Lincoln. He's not in a lot of the book. Lincoln is not aware of any of the spirits, so he's not really in the Bardo (come to think of it, the title is a bit weird), but they are aware of him. Each character basically represents a person held back by something, and explains why, and that chorus of lost souls builds in an interesting way.

What does it mean "he's not really in the Bardo (come to think of it, the title is a bit weird)"? (I don't know any Bardo but the Tunisian museum, so I do fond the title weird.)

I think the Victorian era dealt much differently from ours with dead and deceased, and a lot thereof (like photography with corpses) we find near insane today was considered normal or legitimate back then.

The author was inspired by the concept of the bardo, but really it could be referred to as purgatory. The premise is there is this group of stuck souls who can't move on, and when Lincoln comes to the cemetery, they watch and listen to him and kind of meditate on life and death. He is not aware that they are there, and does not think he is in another world. He's just visiting the cemetery. Lincoln himself is not portrayed in any sort of supernatural way.

[L Verge]

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.

[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.