NP: Saunders//Lincoln

[John Bailey]

I've heard good things about Lincoln in a roundabout way - namely that
given how tight a writer GS is in short form, subjecting yourself to that
much sustained all-killer-no-filler for a whole novel is quite exhausting.
In a good way, like I say.

On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 4:22 AM, Gary Webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for the share. I loved Lincoln in the Bardo. Especially the
> climax... for whatever reason, civilwarland in bad decline, both the story
> and the book, resonated with me navigating dystopian corporate America,
>  a-and they read really well now... attached is his essay on Donald Trump
> and his rallies, published in July. I've read a few of his interviews,
> after Lincoln in Bardo was released, and I love his thoughts on election,
> etc. He helps put things in perspective.
>
> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/11/george-
> saunders-goes-to-trump-rallies
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Feb 21, 2017, at 11:33 AM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Whitehead's review in NYT is good: https://www.nytimes.com/
> 2017/02/09/books/review/lincoln-in-the-bardo-george-saunders.html?_r=0
>
> GS's accessibility (a lot of this is tonal/emotional accessibility) might
> obscure his depth, precision, and genius. He has an astonishing amount of
> singular talents: for story construction, for language, for vision--this
> latter thing people I think have come to accept on the level of this
> country//this moment, but the new book will, I think, expand this to the
> scope of the world, history, the spirit.
>
> I think he gets discriminated against in the academy and to a lesser
> extent the Serious Fiction Awards scene because he's so human and so
> pleasurable. We don't know what to make of him. Our geniuses are supposed
> to be harder, less funny, more serious/normal/austere (though he doesn't
> really waste a syllable). Another reason: most of his work has come in the
> form of short/medium-length stories (future dissertations will be written
> about his uniquely minimalist/essentialist approach), when we mostly want
> novels to mostly not read.
>
> In terms of ancestry, it's easy to identify some sci-fi and
> dystopian/speculative type stuff. But go deeper. Think also/more of some
> classic literary patron saints of the oppressed but resilient(ly loving)
> spirit, and also (especially?) of the weird mystics. In his DNA I see Gogol
> (every three years Saunders teaches a class called "The Russians" that
> changes the life of everyone who gets the chance to take it), Babel,
> Chekhov, Kafka, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Hemingway, Carver, O'Connor.
> Couple others he'll mention a lot that some of you might not have on your
> radar: Stuart Dybek (fellow south side of Chicago short story writer; cf.
> "Hot Ice"), Barry Hannah.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 10:15 AM, Jade Becker <jbecker13 at georgefox.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the recommendation--I just picked up *Tenth of December*;
>> I've heard a lot of good about Saunders.
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 7:59 AM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Friends, I write to recommend GS's new (first pub'd) novel, *Lincoln in
>>> the Bardo*. I had the privilege of learning from him and getting to
>>> know him while he was working on this, so it's been on my horizon for a
>>> while, and it was as impactful a read as I expected it to be. I believe it
>>> is great. Might not jive with all tastes, or maybe it will. I read it in
>>> one sitting and cried a great deal. I don't know how much of the American
>>> reading public has or even how many of you have much of a taste for the
>>> kind of mysticism or even religious thinking inside Contemporary Literary
>>> Fiction you might extract from, say, a Pynchon. I think some people who
>>> have been paying casual/medium attention to Saunders will be a little
>>> surprised to find it here--which makes me wonder how it'll play with his
>>> fans. But if you like his short stuff, and if you like Pynchon, I think
>>> you'll find plenty of overlap (some obv. stylistic/thematic reasons to
>>> think of *M&D *along the way).
>>>
>>> Curious to hear what any of you lot think about it.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Jade Becker
>> (530) 518-6859
>> George Fox University | Class of 2017
>> Writing Consultant, George Fox University Academic Resource Center
>> *The Crescent*, Editor-in-Chief
>>
>
>
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