Ha ha, you watched Spiderhead!

[ooomalley]

@tomchick

George Saunders is a heartbreakingly good writer.

I’d never heard of him before, but I picked up Lincoln in the Bardo from my father and had this to say about it in the book thread:

@ooomalley

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders is undoubtedly the “best” book of the bunch (Booker Prize winner! I didn’t know they gave that to Americans). Reading about it after the fact, everyone seems to have been blown away by how “experimental” it was, but honestly, it wasn’t that weird. It was written kind of like a play, with multiple voices going back and forth, and some of the chapters were the author’s characters, and some of the chapters were excerpts from historical sources laid out as if they were lines in a play. (I think the historical sources were real, in that I recognized some of the books (e.g. A Team of Rivals ), but they could have been fictional, too.) Once I paused to work out what was going on (after the first ten pages), it didn’t feel like I was reading an experimental novel, just a good one.

It really made me reflect on life and death, and what regrets we’re carrying with us or leaving behind. It was a tough read–not because of literary obscurity or anything like that, but because there’s a lot of sadness, as it’s focused around the death of a child. Still, I found it hopeful in the end.

I strongly recommend it, especially to anyone who’s big-L Literature Curious, but maybe has been intimidated by (or lacking patience for) the other favorites of the literati. You don’t need an English degree or anything (though I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff I missed), and it’s not too hard to make sense of (on a basic level, at least). I really thought it would be overly pretentious (especially as the author bio lists him as one of Time’s 100 most influential people, ugh), but it absolutely wasn’t. It was just good.

So I’ll put CivilWarLand in Bad Decline next on my list, for sure.