![]() ![]() The bardo of the title is the transitional state in Buddhism, where the consciousness resides between death and the next life for non-Buddhists, it is a recognizable limbo, full of milling entities who for one reason or another will not take the next step of the journey. ![]() “Lincoln in the Bardo” chooses a similar moment as its arena, unfolding in a Washington, D.C., cemetery in 1862, where a cohort of lost souls alternately apprehend, deny and resist the fact of their deaths. “Escape From Spiderhead,” one of the gems in “Tenth of December,” closed with a young man reckoning with his demise and saying goodbye to the world. How gratifying and unexpected that he has repeated the feat with “Lincoln in the Bardo,” his first novel and a luminous feat of generosity and humanism. George Saunders pulled that trick off with “Tenth of December,” his 2013 book of short stories. To observe him or her consolidate strengths, share with us new reserves of talent and provide the inspiration that can only come from a true artist charting hidden creative territory. It’s a very pleasing thing to watch a writer you have enjoyed for years reach an even higher level of achievement. “We’re taking care of it because we hope, one day, in the future, our land will be returned to us.LINCOLN IN THE BARDO By George Saunders 343 pp. “Boy, this was our land before the war,” his grandfather would reply, pointing to 40 acres running from the cemetery to the water to the jungle, over the road and back almost as far as their eyes could see. “Why are we the only ones cutting the grass here?” Roy would ask. Other mornings, the man and the boy went to the same spot to cut the grass, all the way from the cove’s blue waters to the ruins of an old cemetery. They would cut the logs into quarters to dry, and stack them higher than Roy could even reach. He would thrash a course into the thicket to collect firewood from the slender trees - tangen tangen in CHamoru, the language of the Indigenous inhabitants of Guam, which Roy’s grandmothers and grandfathers were. ![]() Some mornings, his grandfather would take Roy back across the dirt road into the jungle to pick papayas, lemons and coconuts. No one from the Navy ever stopped the old man and the young boy. If the fish weren’t biting at one spot, they packed up and moved to another. When his grandfather caught a fish, he would unhook it and throw it on the ground, and Roy would snatch it up and quickly stuff it, still wriggling, in the bag. The boy noodled with seashells as his grandfather cast. They passed through the military gates, along a dirt road and onto the shore of a little cove, next to one of America’s deepest harbors, where skipjacks flipped out of the aquamarine water. Roy knew better than to question anything he sat quietly in his grandfather’s truck as they rumbled down the big hill from their village, Hågat, to Big Navy, as the U.S. ![]() He would pour some coffee into a bowl of rice, and that would be the boy’s breakfast. On the weekends, when Roy Gamboa was a little boy, his grandfather would wake him before dawn. Produced by Adrienne Hurst and Aaron EspositoĮngineered by Dan Farrell and Steven Szczesniak Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher ![]()
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