Saunders in the Bardo
An essay on why hipsters and critics are the worst
Dear M,
George Saunders' 10th of December was called "one of the best books of the year" by The Telegraph, NPR, Kirkus Reviews, and many others. Beside this it was named one of the best books of the decade by The New York Times and Time Magazine. If this sounds impressive to you, it is — especially since the book is a real dog, and easily the worst I've ever opened.
I say "opened” because I shut it before finishing the first story. How could I rate a book without finishing it, you ask? It's simple: I couldn't make heads or tails out of it. Take this excerpt from Saunders' first chapter, titled Victory Lap. Note that this is a copy-and-paste job, and what you’re reading is exactly how I found it.
Three days shy of her fifteenth birthday, Alison Pope paused at the top of the stairs. Say the staircase was marble. Say she descended and all heads turned. Where was {special one}? Approaching now, bowing slightly, he exclaimed, How can so much grace be contained in one small package?
Oops. Had he said small package? And just stood there? Broad princelike face totally bland of expression? Poor thing! Sorry, no way, down he went, he was definitely not {special one}. What about this guy, behind Mr. Small Package, standing near the home entertainment center? With a thick neck of farmer integrity yet tender ample lips, who, placing one hand on the small of her back, whispered, Dreadfully sorry you had to endure that bit about the small package just now. Let us go stand on the moon. Or, uh, in the moon. In the moonlight.
Had he said, Let us go stand on the moon? If so, she would have to be like, {eyebrows up}. And if no wry acknowledgment was forthcoming, be like, Uh, I am not exactly dressed for standing on the moon, which, as I understand it, is super-cold?
Thus I propose that whatever the reviewers said about his being original, originality is like salvation: the way is hard and narrow, and there are few who find it. For most people, there are only a few ways to blow people's minds with the qualities God gave you and a million to make them want to blow their brains out. And most "trailblazers” lack the talent for the former. That's why high fashion sucks. We already did beautiful and nobody has a lifespan long enough to do all the ugly.
There are even worse passages, such as this one I found only two paragraphs later.
Egads! One found oneself still standing at the top of the stairs. Do the thing where, facing upstairs, hand on railing, you hop down the stairs one at a time, which was getting a lot harder lately, due to, someone’s feet were getting longer every day, seemed like. Pas de chat, pas de chat. Changement, changement. Hop over thin metal thingie separating hallway tile from living-room rug. Curtsy to self in entryway mirror. Come on, Mom, get here. We do not wish to be castrigated by Ms. Callow again in the wings. Although actually she loved Ms. C. So strict!
They say the line between genius and insanity is thin — but nobody ever said there was a thin line between being a genius and being retarded.
But J, you might ask — how did you come across this book, and why did you buy it? I bought it like I suppose anyone else did: pure, unadulterated, misplaced faith in the human race, and especially in the section of it my college friends used to accurately call "art f-gs."
The general American populace is, of course, mainly populated with fat miserable alcoholics, godless wankers, and Ted Bundy enthusiasts. Thus you can at least count on them to deliver you a good rating on a hot blonde, a lager, or maybe a good murder mystery. With the professional snob your chances of getting a solid recommendation on a good burger are totally nixed; and what you find yourself dining on is a single veal cutlet drizzled in durian sauce and sprinkled with responsibly sourced Gambian rock flakes. And it'll be 500 bucks, because if the plebs can afford it, let me assure you, in the realm of food and clothing the real snobs don't want it.
Likewise, a music snob won't give you AC/DC. He'll hand you Joy Division, which will give you no joy and cause a rift between the two of you. He won't give you Aqua's Aquarium — a masterpiece of horny 90's Euro-dance. He'll hand you the no-good German experimental synth band Kraftwerk. He’s always looking to show off something obscure. His taste, like the fashion snob and the food snob, isn’t calculated to spread enjoyment. It’s calculated to spread an education — about how much cooler he is than you.
Thus you find yourself in a conundrum. The less time somebody spends in a field of art, the lower we value their recommendation. But if they spend too much time in it, their recommendations end up far worse than the newbie's. Like a porn addict who's played the field too long, she doesn't judge by what made you fall in love the first time. The possibility of whatever she felt back then is long gone, along with her distaste for chlamydia. She's into the weird stuff now — twinks or handcuffs or midgets or butt stuff: things the young lovers not only don't think about or want to think about, but which outright horrify them. There is a development of taste that makes a person disgusting. The bushmen are less uncivilized than the over-cultured.
But I've digressed. What I’m trying to say here is that 10th of December is butt stuff. It certainly came out of one. And this leads me to wonder if Saunders’ other big hit, Lincoln in the Bardo, is also a big turd. I simply can't take the risk, especially since I now know The New York Times can't be trusted.
So I've taken another route which will be familiar, at least to any Republican who can't trust the New York Times either. I’ve gone to somebody I can trust more — a couple of laymen in the trenches — and in this case it’s two complete strangers writing reviews for zero bucks on Amazon. What I got is the following synopsis.
In short, Lincoln got himself into another Bardo. "Oh d-d-d-dear," He says. "Help! I've gotten myself into another B-b-b-bardo!" But there's nobody around and he begins to get desperate. "HELP! I'll have to c-c-c-call my m-m-mother I think.”
So he straightens his top hat and his coattails and dials away. The scene cuts away to his mother (picture Kathy Bates), who's wearing a big floral muu-muu and smoking at the kitchen table. The phone rings and she picks it up. "Yes. Hello? Lincoln? Is that you? What?!" She slams the phone down and it hangs up. "Horace! Lincoln's caught in the Bardo again!"
"God DAMMIT!” Horace yells. "That boy is nothing but grief to us!”
"Didn't I tell you to get rid of that Bardo?" she yells back.
"That's beside the point" he says as he grabs his keys and struggles to button his too-tight pants. "The real question is, why is he still living with us after failing his presidential campaign?”
It's then you realize the book isn't about Abraham Lincoln. It's about Lincoln Chaffee, failed presidential candidate for the Democratic Party in 2016. You're never told what a Bardo is, or why Lincoln is trapped in it. The rest of the book is about his father driving all the way there and cursing his existence. It will include several soliloquies on God, sex, death, diversity, David Bowie's horrible album Diamond Dogs, a dish probably spelled “profiterol,” Basquiat's stupid paintings, and a music genre called no-wave — which is real, I assure you, and so experimental that it involves zero tunes.*
Yours,
-J
P.S. I made a mistake.
My lack of endurance at this point is a joke. All I had to do with his book was finish the first story. Then I’d go on to better stories — something that made sense, at least, and packed an emotional punch. In short what I’m saying here is that Saunders is in fact a good writer (at least so far as I can tell) and that I’m a horrible reader. He may also be horrible later. He may re-convince me he's the worst. All I'm saying is that he's not as bad as I thought.
Still the essay is going to be left up: not because it’s right, but because it’s funny. And because, at the end of it, I can add that I'm a clown. I don't mind my screwups so much if I can show I changed my path later. Real clowns take off their makeup at the end of the show. Fools don't have any makeup to take off. They just stay the same.
This being said, whoever decided to put that first story at the front of the book should be fired.
*None of this synopsis is true.