Mad Mischief

The author sent me a copy of her novel to read and review:

I have a menza menza opinion on Susan St. John’s first novel. I assumed that a novel set in East Africa (Kenya & Tanzania) would have a lot of excitement...it didn’t. Throw in a safari with all the wild animals roaming freely...there has to be some sort of mishap, right? No, there were no incidents, no attacks, no narrow escapes involving the wild animals. That disappointed me. Then I said to myself, but this novel is so well written, so I kept going for all of its 437 pages. And I’m glad I did. Gadzooks, I loved the descriptive writing except when it occasionally got overdone. What do I mean about overdone? Well on pages 93 through 95, the author describes a man and woman in a Toyota Land Cruiser that approaches and passes (going the other way) the vehicle of our female protagonist, Sarah. How can you write three pages describing their immaculate clothing, or the man’s jewelry, “A loose-fitting gold-link chain encircles his neck, sparkling above a chest full of dark, curly hair visible through his half-unbuttoned shirt.” And guess what? That’s three pages describing a couple that you will not see or hear from in this story again. There are other things that somewhat annoyed me; such as Sarah didn’t seem to realize that she was bipolar until a doctor near the end told her so. Then she totally accepted that and took his advice. And the ending? Let’s not talk about that. So what did I Like? A lot actually. I loved the way the author kept the main characters to a handful. Other than the above mentioned exaggerated pages 93-95, Susan’s descriptive writing was refreshing...as was her prose. I can see that she has storytelling abilities, she just needs to add some pizzazz...get the reader excited! Surely a lion could have attacked one of the minor characters. Somebody could have been rescued from a quicksand pit! One of the rhinos (that the safari goers saw) could have charged the truck...something was needed. Susan’s novel reminded me a little of Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen's 1937 book (later adapted into a movie) Out of Africa, also set in Kenya. Is that a compliment to the author? I guess it depends on whether you liked or disliked Blixen’s book. Enough already, what was the story about?

Sarah and her husband Peter hire Max Einfield to be their guide on a safari to East Africa. Sarah and Peter are not close anymore and Sarah hopes that this trip will revive their marriage. But it seems that all Peter is interested in is his new camera equipment. Max, who has a PhD in Zoology, is also the pilot of the safari plane and a known big game spotter. Sarah wants to record their trip’s experiences in her journal. But Max and Peter spend the whole trip harassing her to stop the journal. I never understood why Max, in particular, also berates Sarah about walking barefooted (a safety issue) the entire book. I could never figure out why these two men were so mean to her. By the way, the reader finds out that Sarah is bipolar, but I didn’t notice her having any severe mood swings. She only complained about a strange bronchitis or pneumonia cough throughout the novel. The threesome are later joined on the safari by Thad and Julia and the safari event’s owner, William. Later you will meet “world renowned” wildlife photographer, Brandon Howard. He flits in and out of the story, as does William, making it a Cormac McCarthy friendly five main characters novel. The following are some lines from Susan’s novel that illustrate her ability to write descriptive prose: Sarah describing Thad, "Sarah judges that Thad is above six feet tall and probably weighs in over two hundred pounds. His head juts forward so as to hear every word. His ears look like a pair of catchers' mitts, making the sentences of others into baseballs each glove reaches out to catch. He has the appearance of a yuppie poster child for the forty-something success story that he is.”, the sun setting, “The sun goes down as if being swallowed by the sky.” and to avoid scurvy, “Max picks up a slice of lemon covering the cut fruit and sucks it hard, using his tongue to wipe the acid from his teeth. He picks up a second piece and repeats the ritual with the sourness reflected only slightly in his expression.” Nice clean (not overstated) subtle descriptive lines.

I think that it is sad that Ernest Hemingway and his lost generation of writers decided that descriptive writing was passe. What possessed these writers to change the rules. Anyway, I for one, still enjoy reading the out of style way...descriptive.  

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: I mentioned Ernest Hemingway’s group of American and British expatriates. The whole group went to Spain in 1925 to see the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain and watch the bull fights (and drink heavily). The trip’s result was Hemingway’s first novel published in 1926 - The Sun Also Rises.

As far as the movie I mentioned, Out of Africa starred Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. It garnered seven Academy Awards and three Golden Globes. But my favorite African movie (also set in East Africa) is the 1951 adventure film The African Queen starring Humphrey Bogart (he won the Academy Award for Best Actor) as the drunken riverboat captain and Katherine Hepburn as Sister Rose. I also liked the 1964 movie Zulu, which featured the epic battle between the British Army and the Zulus in 1879. Finally, I also enjoyed the 1995 adaptation of Michael Crichton’s 1980 sci/fi adventure novel Congo.    

LINCOLN in the BARDO

George Saunders’ avant-garde novel gives me plenty of fodder to chew on...so to speak. Since Abe Lincoln is in it, one would say the genre is historical fiction. But I saw a new genre the other day that some people are putting this novel in...magical realism. Where did that come from? And I thought weird fiction was a far out genre. Silly me. This novel is experimental and also ergodic at the same time (in this case, many pages with limited writing). It has endless narrators with their names in lowercase under every line they say, such as, “As the man continued to gently rock his child.” (under that line, the reverend everly thomas), “While his child, simultaneously, stood quietly leaning against him.” (under that line, hans vollman) and “Then the gentleman began to speak.” (under that line, roger bevins iii). Do you see what I’m saying? This same model of identifying the narrator is also used when a line is borrowed from a book or article; such as, “The doctor assured Lincoln that Willie would recover.” (under that line, In ‘The President’s Hippocrates,” by Deborah Chase, M.D., account of Joshua Freewell). Did you notice that when a book is mentioned, it has the proper capitalization? Finally, there is heavy use of “op. cit.”, which means, “in the work already cited.” Of course that adverb is likewise under a line of text. Anyway, I thought I would mention these technical things before you plunge headlong into Saunders’ novel. By the way, I’m not complaining...I liked the inventiveness of the author.

Although the story is strange, it is quite simple. Basically, eleven year old Willie Lincoln is dying from a horrible cold and fever upstairs while Abe and Mary Todd are entertaining downstairs at a State Dinner in the White House. “They dined on tender pheasant, fat partridge, venison steaks, and Virginia hams; they battened upon canvasback ducks and fresh turkeys, and thousands of tidewater oysters shucked an hour since and iced, slurped raw, scalloped in butter and crackermeal, or stewed in milk.” “Yet there was no joy in the evening for the mechanically smiling hostess and her husband. They kept climbing the stairs to see how Willie was, and he was not doing well at all.” The next day...Willie dies. Mary Todd is too distraught to go to the burial. Judge Carroll loans Lincoln a space in his family’s crypt at a Georgetown cemetery, so Abe can temporarily bury his son (Willie will be buried at a later date in Illinois). Unknown to anybody is that the cemetery is populated by many ghosts that are in a bardo state. Bardo is a Tibetan term for existing between death and rebirth. Most of the cemetery’s population didn’t even know they were dead. Some people have gone to the final judgement; one scurried back after he saw what his punishment was going to be (was it the reverend everly thomas?). How did he do that? They socialize during the night and go to their sick-beds (they don’t say coffin, because they believe they are sick, not dead) at dawn. When Lincoln arrives to bury Willie in the borrowed white crypt, the whole cemetery citizenry is abuzz. What’s in store for Willie after the Lincoln burial party leave? And how do the ghosts handle Lincoln coming back in the evening to hold and coddle his dead son for the last time? Is Willie now a ghost?
  
The story behind the novel is interesting. According to Wikipedia, “The novel was inspired by a story Saunder’s wife’s cousin told him about how Lincoln visited his son Willie’s crypt at Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown on several occasions to hold the body, a story that seems to be verified by contemporary newspaper accounts.” And according to The Guardian (a British newspaper), George Saunders said the following in 2017, “Without giving anything away, let me say this: I made a bunch of ghosts. They were sort of cynical; they were stuck in this realm, called the bardo (from the Tibetan notion of a sort of transitional purgatory between rebirths), stuck because they’d been unhappy or unsatisfied in life. The greatest part of their penance is that they feel utterly inessential-incapable of influencing the living.” The only ghost that understands their plight is Reverend Everly Thomas (the Judgement Day escapee from paragraph two). His friends, Mr. Bevins and Mr. Vollman don’t have a clue on what’s going on. The reverend says, “Many times I have been tempted to blurt out the truth to Mr. Bevins and Mr. Vollman: A terrible judgement awaits you, I long to say. Staying here, you merely delay. You are dead, and shall never regain that previous place. At daybreak, when you must return to your bodies, have you not noticed their disgusting states? Do you really believe those hideous wrecks capable of bearing you anywhere again? And what is more (I would say, if permitted): you shall not be allowed to linger here forever. None of us shall. We are in rebellion against the will of our Lord, and in time must be broken, and go.” Grab your own copy and enjoy this very strange novel.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: The Lincolns had very little luck with the health of their children. Three of their four sons didn’t make it to adulthood. Edward Baker Lincoln died at the age of four in 1850 from tuberculosis; as you know, Willie Lincoln died at the age of eleven in 1862 from fever; Thomas Tad Lincoln almost got to adulthood but succumbed to heart failure at the age of eighteen in 1871.

Robert Todd Lincoln (8/1/1843 to 7/26/1926) lived to the ripe age of 82. Robert served briefly for Gen. Grant in the closing days of the Civil War. Robert’s grandson, Robert “Bud” Todd Lincoln Beckwith (died in 1985) was the last person known to have direct Lincoln lineage.