peter zuehlke

Lincoln in the Bardo review this book keeps us in purgatory for a couple of days with Abe Lincoln’s son Rather than purgatory the author uses the word bardo, a place in Tibetan Buddhist mythology where spirits go to await rebirth. Here it seems a lot more like purgatory with judgement, punishment; then going into the light of Heaven. Oh well, purgatory is so bourgeois, and this author is way too cool for that. Style and affectation overpower substance. During the early days of the Civil War Abraham Lincoln’s young son rides in the rain, gets sick and dies. He enters a dark realm where your life is weighed and bad people get tortured, and good adults and good children move on or get tortured. Abe has trouble letting go of his son, and visits him in the crypt for a couple of days and because they can’t break the bond, his son is in danger of not being able to leave and so comes close, really close, to being tortured for eternity. Fun stuff. The story is told by three dead residents of bardo; a reverend, a gay kid and a printer. The author writes in an unusual experimental style with the story related by the three spirit chorus, mostly telling the life and death experiences of a host of minor characters. Sometimes first person sometimes third. Sometimes in dialect, mostly not. Some with a lot of swear words which the author is not comfortable spelling out. The book is filled with numerous citations, some real and some made up greatly reduce the amount of story on each page. This is the bulk of the book actually. How does it turn out? Well, it’s Abraham Lincoln’s adorable dead son, take a guess. You want more profound, watch re-runs of “Ghost Whisperer”. A lot of critics apparently like this sophomoric stuff, though props to the Atlantic’s review, it’s spot on. If you like this type of material, check out the play “Steambath”.