Critical Assessment
“Saunders’s novel is at its most potent and compelling when it is focused on Lincoln: a grave, deeply compassionate figure, burdened by both personal grief and the weight of the war, and captured here in the full depth of his humanity. In fact, it is Saunders’s beautifully realized portrait of Lincoln — caught at this hinge moment in time, in his own personal bardo, as it were — that powers this book over its more static sections and attests to the author’s own fruitful transition from the short story to the long-distance form of the novel.
Michiko Tatukani, Review: ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ Shows a President Haunted by Grief, The New York Times, February 6, 2017.
First Excerpt
“XVIII.
In “Tad Lincoln’s Father,” by Julia Taft Bayne.He was the sort of child people imagine their children will be, before they have children.
Randall, op. cit.His self-possession—aplomb, as the French call it—was extraordinary.
Willis, op. cit.His mind was active, inquisitive, and conscientious; his disposition was amiable and affectionate; his impulses were kind and generous; and his words and manners were gentle and attractive.
In “Funeral Oration for Willie Lincoln,” by Phineas D. Gurley, in “Illinois State Journal.”He never failed to seek me out in the crowd, shake hands, and make some pleasant remark; and this in a boy of ten years of age, was, to say the least, endearing to a stranger.
Willis, op. cit.Willie had a gray and very baggy suit of clothes, and his style was altogether different from that of the curled darlings of the fashionable mothers.
In “The Truth About Mrs. Lincoln,” by Laura Searing (writing as Howard Glyndon).I was one day passing the White House, when he was outside with a play-fellow on the sidewalk. Mr. Seward drove in, with Prince Napoleon and two of his suite in the carriage; and, in a mock-heroic way—terms of intimacy evidently existing between the boy and the Secretary—the official gentleman took off his hat, and the Napoleon did the same, all making the young Prince President a ceremonial salute. Not a bit staggered with the homage, Willie drew himself up to his full height, took off his little cap with graceful self-possession, and bowed down formally to the ground, like a little ambassador.
Willis, op. cit.
There was a glow of intelligence and feeling on his face which made him particularly interesting and caused strangers to speak of him as a fine little fellow.
Searing, op. cit.
It is easy to see how a child, thus endowed, would, in the course of eleven years, entwine himself round the hearts of those who knew him best.
Gurley, op. cit.
S
econd Excerpt
“His mind was freshly inclined toward sorrow, toward the fact that the world was full of sorrow, that everyone labored under some burden of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever way one took in this world, one must try to remember that all were suffering (none content; all wronged, neglected, overlooked, misunderstood), and therefore one must do what one could to lighten the load of those with whom one came into contact; that his current state of sorrow was not uniquely his, not at all, but, rather, its like had been felt, would yet be felt, by scores of others, in all times, in every time, and must not be prolonged or exaggerated, because, in this state, he could be of no help to anyone and, given that his position in the world situated him to be either of great help or great harm, it would not do to stay low, if he could help it.”