Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders with Sally Phillips

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

This week's book guest is Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders.Sara and Cariad are joined by comedy acting legend Sally Phillips to discuss teaching, graveyards, Civil War and hard-ons.Thank you for reading with us this series. We like reading with you! And we'll be back in September with more Weird reads!Lincoln In The Bardo is available to buy here or on Apple Books here.You can find Sally on Instagram: @sallysmackSara’s debut novel Weirdo is published by Faber & Faber and is available to buy here.Cariad’s book You Are Not Alone is published by Bloomsbury and is available to buy here.Cariad’s children's book The Christmas Wish-tastrophe is available to pre-order now.Follow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclub Recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Sarah Pasco. Hello, I'm Carriad Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we've created the Weirdo's Book Club.

Join us. A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. A place for the person who'd love to be in a real book club, but it doesn't like wine or nibbles. Or being around other people. Is that you? Join us. Check out our Instagram at Sarah and Carriads Weirdo's Book Club for the upcoming books we're going to be discussing. You can read along and share your opinions.

Or just skulk around in your raincoat like the weirdo you are. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week's book guest is Lincoln in the Bardo. By George Saunders. What's it about? Well, set in 1862, it's about President Abraham Lincoln visiting his son's body one night

and the spirits who happen to live there too. What qualifies it for the weirdos book club? Well, it's a load of ghosts from the olden days. In this episode, we discuss. Hard ons. Graveyard. Civil war. teaching, polyphonic, and casting. And joining us this week is Sally Phillips.

Sally is, of course, a comedy legend. You would have recognised her from Alan Partridge, Bridget Jones's diary, Smack the Pony. Smack the pony. All the amazing things she's done. She's a writer, a performer, Veep. She is incredible and we are very excited to have her join us. Trigger warning in this episode, we do talk a lot about death and in particular child loss.

Sally Phillips! We are talking about... Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, which was the winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2017, which was Sally's choice. Yes, I wanted to ask you, Sally, to someone recommend this book to you? How did you find it? You want the truth? Yes. Yeah, the truth.

The truth. The actual truth is you said, what are you reading? And I said, you know, I'm reading this. It's really great. And it was another George Saunders book. So I've come across George Saunders, who's the creative writing tutor at Syracuse University. through his substack. And the book I was reading was The Swimming in a Pond in the Rain,

which is kind of an account of that class where they study the Russian short story and talking about writing, you know, prose techniques and why things work and why they don't work. And it had been recommended to me by a screenwriting consultant. And I was really, really enjoying it. And I thought you would really enjoy it. And then I realized that this was a fiction podcast.

And so then I just picked the... other book by George Saunders that I had heard and heard of and had actually actively avoided when it came out because I thought, same, I had avoided it, I was like, oh, yeah, Abraham Lincoln, pass, civil war, don't know, yeah, yeah, don't fancy it, yeah, that's for the Americans, don't like it, yeah, and so then I texted you this week saying what are we doing? Is it the one you told us to do? I didn't tell you that because of anxiety, Carriad. Yeah.

Well, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I'd been anxious for you because what's the only one I'd heard of? Apparently, most of the others are short stories. Yeah, there's loads of short stories, yeah. That would have been, that would have been nice. That would have been great, yeah. I've read this, though. I've read it.

Since that message. I have read it in the last, yeah, 24 hours. Wow. Oh, no, so I've read it in the last 24 hours. Oh, my God. And it's, I mean, did you like it more the second time? Did you like it? I will either time.

I love it. And again, again, again, I, was reticent. I first heard of this book with Rob Delaney. Oh. He posed about it. Rob Delaney has written a book about losing his son, Henry. And he talked about how beautiful this book was, but it means that I knew it was about child loss. Not that it was about Lincoln.

I liked this book the second I started reading because George Saunders is an incredible writer. Oh, yeah. To the extent that some of the, some of it feels like mind reading. Is that how you felt Sally straight away? You were like, I love it or? At the beginning, I was like, what? What? What? Yes. And I was like, I became really aware. I don't know anything about Abraham Lincoln at all, apart from, you know, vaguely what he looks like. Yeah. And the hat. Hat, beard, tall.

I know that from an episode of the American office when they go on a trip. I think I know that from The Simpsons. Yeah. But very quickly, I was totally sold. And you don't need to know anything about. No, you don't need to. You really don't. You want it to. though. I think that's the thing about this book that it, he's really big in his classes about having

respect for the reader. And early on the moments where I thought, I wish you respected me a little bit less. Disrespect me. Call me a slap. He does this thing with juxtaposition where he puts two near opposites, adjacent

and that creates a space of meaning in between that is for you to decide on. I thought that's as loads of that all the way through on every level like description narrative like what's true and not true about historical there's one bit where they there's like eight different descriptions different historians describe the moon on the night of the party it's fantastic that's very early in the book so we have these third person narratives which is quite usual in a book you might have someone else telling you something but because you have different third person accounts there's 166 characters

in total i read something like that like it's 166 different voice you on the audio. Because they say such different things, and the moon is a primary example, really early in the book, we have no moon, we have this bright yellow moon, we have a low moon, we have a skinny moon, we have a moon that suddenly appears. And in doing so, we have this multitude of truths. And it reminds me of, you know, two things can be true at the same time. So then when that's used later on, differing accounts, as a reader, you absorb both. You know, they are both holding it in and letting it out. It starts with three mainish voices that we meet. And then it kind of alternates sometimes with like genuine quotes from historical records. And some of them, I looked up yesterday. Some of them aren't true. Well, when I first read it, I assumed none of them were true. Oh, I thought they were all true. Well, and then I read he made some of them up.

Yeah. I was like, what do you cheat on? But I was going to ask you both, does it bother you if they're true, I mean, really existing historical accounts or not? I want some of them to be true. It's using absolutely everything to tell the story. So he's even using the form to tell the story. Yes, yeah. That some of this is real and some of it isn't.

Abraham Lincoln is real. Willie's death is real. The cemetery is real. The place he's buried is real. And some of it... The ghost of the Big Willie. Yeah. The Bardot is a sort of a Buddhist transitional space.

Yes. So the idea is that Willie Lincoln, I think all of Lincoln's kids died. Oh, I don't know. Most of them. So he died on the night they were having a big reception in the White House. and then was buried in oak tree cemetery. And they expected him to be buried somewhere else, but he ends up there.

And spirits that are very happy to go straight to the afterlife disappear in the sort of flash of light. This is amazing, isn't it? Matter light, blooming. And they disappear. But people who still have strong attachments to Earth or have something unfulfilled hang around in the bardo, this sort of liminal space. So these first two ghosts that we meet, one of them, sort of had a love affair falling in love with his own wife. It's really, really beautiful.

Married a much, much younger person when he was in his 40s. But that's a funny story. But they fall in love with each other. But he's an old man. He marries this young... 46, come on. But he says, like, he marries this young woman. She's 18, yeah.

And then he agrees that, like, he won't touch her. Yeah, he understands. I know what you're thinking that this old, you know, old man with wooden teeth forces himself. It's the wooden teeth that's so great. And he doesn't, and then eventually she's like, actually, I fall in love with you. She gets super horny and wants him to come and snob her. Which is a funny story.

Yeah, they have their first ever physical stuff, you know, not going too far. A bit of fondling and kissing in bed, and then he dies. And so of course he goes out of the ceiling and goes through his brain, leaving him with a massive hard on for all eternity, which at times seems to be sort of the length of a garden rake. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like, that's the thing with the spirits. There's a woman later on who misses her. daughters so much. She's died during an operation and the orbs of her daughters, especially if they're talking to her asking, you know, like mother, what

what should I do? They get massive and they squash her. I know. And then, and it's, and the other ghost that we meet at the beginning who is gay and takes his own life when he's rejected. And then at last minute, changes his mind and he's the one with all of the noses and hands and he just wants to see life and touch life. He fell in love with the world just as he was losing it. He realized it was this thing of beauty and like having that right at the beginning. And he thinks someone's going to rescue him. He's lying. He's lying. on the floor in the kitchen, think someone's going to come in and save him. And find him. It's really that proper line between comedy and tragedy where things are, it's funny. And when I read that

bit, but he finally describes the spirit as having this massive hard on, you are like, oh, oh. And also, because we have Willie, the child who's died, then hanging around with these guys. So it is, it. So I wrote this moment down just because I thought it was such a good example of the comedy that George Sordes is. doing. So this is about the president. And bear in mind, this is a newly bereaved Lincoln. He had no driver with him but had arrived alone on a small horse, which I was quite surprised at him being president and all, and say his legs are quite long and his horse quite short, so it appeared some sort of man-sized insect had attached itself to that poor, unfortunate nag, who freed of his burden, stood tired and hang dog and panting as if thinking, I will have quite the story to tell the other horses upon my

return, if they are still awake at which time, president requested key to Carol Crip, and accordingly, I handed it over and watched him wander off across the grounds, wishing I'd had courtesy to at least offer him loan of a lamp, which he did not have, but went forth into that sticky and dark like pilgrim going forward into a trackless desert. Tom, it was awful sad. I know. It's really real, isn't it? It's just really, like, I mean, like, comedy and tragedy are, like, absolutely mixed up. It is really interesting reading it after having read his sort of theories

that are after the fact in here, but there was an interesting discussion recently on the substack about whether to be prosaic or poetic, which was better. Yeah. And how to find your actual voice. And one of the quotes I remember is him going, you need to surprise the reader. He's got this thing about if you know where the story's going, go immediately there and move on. And I was sort of interested what you thought about that because it's so surprising this book. Yeah, so surprising.

To its detriment. And he refuses to, I loved it. I loved that surprise. He refuses to, you know, that thing of like one, two, three. You'll always play jazz with it. If you suspect where it's going, it'll always go somewhere slightly different. Every time you think you know what the book is, it moves. Every time I was like, oh, okay, he's just going to collage history.

Okay, it's about spirits. And the spirits do not behave at all as you were expecting into. One of my favorite group is The Bachelors, who are these spirits that were young men and never got married, fly over and just send down hats whenever they are. are doing anything and at one point they are called on and they just go nah and they send hats down and I was like why is no one behaving like I'm which I think also works well for a spirit world it's like yeah it isn't normal people can't be relied on it gives you a it gives you a reality in a way yeah yeah

yeah because I think if it was too pat you know here's someone who's addicted to sex and fun and they were throwing down condoms or I don't know whatever it was it would it would not feel it somehow it being weird makes it feel real. There obviously it isn't. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? It's like, and it's like,

and it's always so surprising. Yeah. I love, what you've said makes me understand it so much more because you're absolutely right. Sally, having that background and courage, as a reader, you don't get time to adjust ever.

No, no, constantly, like I kept thinking, who. At the beginning you meet some ghosts and you don't realize that one of them is going to have this massive fallace and one of them has all of these noses. Like, what you've pictured is wrong.

Yeah. And so now you've got to picture something else. And when we meet the ghosts and they tell their narratives, which they are desperate to do, and because they can have come and spent some time with his son, and he's actually sort of taken him out of his sick box and he's held him and touched. No one can acknowledge that they're dead. Yeah, yeah. How is that word?

Yeah, yeah, because that would, if you say coffee, that's what happens at the end. They all sort of start to admit that they're dead. Yeah. That's it. That it's done. That there's no going back. Because that focus on trying to get back, that single-mindedness is a rest of. them each in that particular moment of attachment or tragedy.

You know, so the moment where, you know, he's wishing he could return because he slit his wrists and he wishes he could return and, Hans, that moment when he's in the hall and she's walking past him into another room, he can smell her, you know. That was so sad, isn't it? When they give their stories as characters, which you think as a reader you're getting oh you're just telling me now great i get a bit more okay you were married and then when he says we say this or we have to keep telling the story because otherwise we don't know why we're here and like it's just this endless monologue because that's the moment that's like and they're bored of

hearing each other's story like of course they are and then one of them's like i've been here nine thousand days hearing stories and i just thought this is a weird thing to say but it reminded me slightly of lord of the rings in that the world was so painted and so visceral that you completely disappear into it and it feels like he's in the way that you have a token you're like you've thought of everything like you've got every logic mapped up here like even when he's moving you around the graveyard and the crypt like you're so aware the geography of the area where people are the logic of what happens and and hugely I think the psychology like when I say it's like mind reading like a ghost that we meet early on she has a husband she doesn't very much like okay we have you know

the author George Sanders a modern man currently alive and so I'm on um this is page 77 and this is Jane Ellis, right? So she's talking about her husband, who, of course, as would have been so common, if not completely uniform, the time is massively misogynist. And she describes him, you know, he was always a complainer, always fancying himself the victim of some conspiracies.

We feel like, okay, we know this man. He would pick some trivial fight and soon be sacked. And she would give him her opinion about why I'd lost his job. And he would pronounce mine, a woman's view of the thing, and that was that, I was dismissed. To hear him bragging about the impression he had made on some minor functionary with a witty remark

and to have been there and heard that remark and noticed the functionary and his wife barely able to refrain from laughing in the face that this pompous little nobody was trying. Then of an evening to have him shoot me that certain look, I knew it well that meant brace yourself, madam. I will soon be upon you, all hips and tongue, little moustache having seemingly reproduced itself

so as to be able to cover every entry point, so to speak. And afterward I will be upon you again. again, fishing for a compliment. This woman is so real to me. This experience is so real to me. This marriage, every single note, he must spend so much time. It's not just painting a world. It's the inner world.

You've made me realise that half of it I was reading as absolute truth. Like when you wrote that, I was like, oh yeah, someone wrote that. To me, it was like, no, you're just talking about Abigail and her marriage. Like, yeah, it's really bad. Yeah. It was like, oh, yeah, Kerry, they're not real. Because some of them are so, he gets inside their heads so much to switch from that many characters. That's what I mean.

And we should say, it's 166, but there are some who are major and then minor characters. So the major ones you meet much more like Abigail Blass and Jane Ellis and elite. Yeah, the women are brilliant. He says, you know, like Flaubert, writing is rewriting. So he says, because when you rewrite, you go back to the thing with a different you, because you are so many different people. So you go back with your grumpy self or your, you know, know, intelligent self or your tired self or your energized self or your in love self

and inhabit those words differently. That's a lovely way. Which I'm talking about the rewriters. But you two must really feel that doing stand-up, I would think. That must be exactly what happens when you have an hour. You're going over it and over it. But also that's why the audience are the editors. This is going to sound really pretentious.

I'm ready for it. Okay. The audience don't know how important they are to again. But essentially, yes, you have a framework and sometimes almost the exact phrasing of how you're going to say something but they set the flavour and the tone by their response on what they need and what they want

and their collective energy and then together you make a thing which isn't like it was yesterday. And sometimes that's hard if yesterday was absolutely astonishingly amazing and you feel like that's the point we need to get to and it's very hard to let go of that and go, but today is this that we're making.

I think it's interesting, isn't it? I'm going to be pretentious now. Polyphonic. I'm ready for it. Yes. The polyphonic sort of nature of this. I mean, it is, I mean, I bet I'm not, I haven't been at university for like over 30 years,

but I bet there's something about, you know, not having single narratives and multiple voices and being a result of, you know, freeing the... Oh, that's interesting. I want to read that. Post-Twitter narrative. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're now used to hearing from, you know, thread and rowmen.

But also that when an event happens, for the last decade, something happens, and we don't just hear about it from BBC News. We hear about it from a collection, a cacophony, and we sort of build that and shape it, but it can still surprise us. And people go straight in and they don't go, dear Sally. Yes, dear sir. We read English Passengers, which came out in 2000, and also won the Booker Prize,

which is a book with lots of characters, and every chapter is a different voice, but it's very much more traditional. even though... Because even the Moonstone, there were really old books that do that. It's leaping around, but it's like,

we're all telling the same story and you're seeing it from lots of different characters' perspectives, which is brilliant. But yeah, this, it feels like what he's doing is like next level of like, it's not just,

now I'm going to tell you what my take on it is. It's like, and I guess because they are spirits, it, like the rules are off the table, aren't they? And I love that as someone who's had to go through

screenwriting development processes taking years. You know, when people who, you know, nice, very smart, very able producers but who don't write tell you that this is

how the structure has to be. So what he's done is he's, I mean, whether it works or not, he's like knocking the walls of the prison down. It has to be like this. Doesn't have to be like this. The story doesn't have to, you don't have any, I mean, there's the whole I don't know, I mean, I imagine

I imagine there's people who wouldn't like the fact that the whole relationship with slavery which Lincoln was against, that enters really very late, like two-thirds of the way through the book, suddenly the people from beyond the fence come in. Most of the people up to them

that actually speak incredibly are white men. And then this fence comes down and a whole load of slaves from the unmarked graves come in. And then one of them is the ending. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's a kind of proposed explanation for Lincoln's...

Yeah, what did you think? think about that? Because I was a bit... I was like, that's bit 2017. I was a bit like, oh, it felt a bit... I really liked the book, and I was... I think obviously you have to... 1862, and you're talking about Lincoln, you're talking about Civil War, there's a place for acknowledging that. But then I wondered, like, when that character...

It sort of felt like he was making that character do quite a lot of work, the one at the end who sort of sits within... Lincoln for a bit and they connect leaves in Lincoln. Yeah. And then I thought it was a bit like, oh, that's why he, you know, did the, whatever it was the, um, declarate, you know, emancipation why Lincoln signed that. I thought, oh, that feels a bit. That to me, tit to over into like, may not tweez, not the right word, but slightly like, I think sometimes I find, especially anything civil war, there is a great need sometimes with work to make everybody good. And actually these people were so deeply complicated, you know,

Jefferson had slaves. Because of the time they lived in and the norm, we can't rewrite it and make anyone perfect. That to me felt slightly making Lincoln like, oh, and you know, he listened to the black spirit inside him. And I guess it doesn't say that. And I also says after this experience, I mean, I was quite surprised by the, because one of the things that happens, you know, the rules of the world are fantastic, aren't they? Yeah. The spirits cannot communicate with the living, but they can go inside them and just try really, really hard. And they can do.

They go inside Lincoln and they understand, like, new states have been created. And they all go in together at one point. Yeah, that was amazing. Yeah. But I love the way it's sort of refused to obey any existing rules. So there's this, you know, that thing, that sort of spiritual, sort of wanting that is very big. in, you know, psilocybin communities and also with contemplative monks,

and maybe in Buddhism, I don't know. And then there is somewhere there's a vision of heaven and hell and he doesn't obey any existing forms which is quite interesting. So they all go inside, they all go inside Lincoln and you expect him to have this amazing revelation. His decision after that is to kill more.

Yeah, yeah. It's to kill what. It's not what you're expecting. Yeah. And so then... He's like, we've got to double down on the Civil War, basically. I can't lose. That's what I'm going to do. Yes, because I've suffered. I'm one with humanity. We're all suffering. That's what living is.

Living is suffering. That's what makes us one. So he had this sort of opposite reaction to that. Yeah, that's true. To what I thought he was going to have. And then he charges off with this slave spirit inside him. And I think because of that, we can't be sure that that's a neat closure. There's a slight... And I don't think he does it, but he's walking towards a slight happy ending.

Almost, I can't let that, I can't let the ending be suffering. I've been giving you this slightly other thing of like, well, it is suffering. I think he's just constantly giving you, not just dualities, like constantly giving you marker points. And the meaning happens in the bit you can't see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's the sick woman in the window looking out at the, like, she's sick. Yeah. Well, she's going to be in there, presumably.

what's she there for? I don't really know she's just there for testimony. I don't... Yeah. So you have to, again, your force, like stop respecting me so much, George Sanders, you're forced to write your own story. And you're forced to work out your own theory of the beyond, aren't you? Because he goes, could be this, could be that, could be the other. Because a bit, I was like, oh, have they all seen this heaven? And they're all hiding from it because it's like, oh, no, only this character seems to be... That's his reality. So again, he's not giving you any answers of like, oh, these spirits know the truth. and that's why they don't want to stay here.

And what happens to, we say to Willie Lincoln, who doesn't have this light matter blooming, he's hanging around because he hears his dad say, don't go. And that is this, that's what's driving the book, really, is this grief of like, of course you stay. And he's waiting for his dad. And he said, no, I've got to stay here, my dad said. And like, oh, the depth of heartbreak he manages to get in

whilst having all these other people running around with massive hardons and eyes and ears. and then keeps coming back to little Willie Lincoln being like, no, no, I'm going to wait here. Even when they all tell him to go against him, I think my parents would want me to stay. And then when he sees him, because I'm sure he's coming back, even when everyone tells him he isn't. I know.

And again, if you think about, if you're trying to say, obviously, we're struggling what the book is about, like essentially, it's one night and it's a bunch of spirits trying to make Abraham Lincoln stay in a graveyard. up. Like that's what they're trying to do. But to have that much storytelling within the one simple thing that's actually happening, it's incredible, isn't it? Because it's just, that's a very simple thing. That should be a short story. But how he's expanded that world out into making Willie Lincoln be rescued. And the other girl, the girl, they didn't help. They keep talking about that little girl. They didn't help. And now that's what's making them learn. They need to make sure Willie

light matter bloomed, whatever that means. I found that heartbreaking. that bit. Really sad. Because the dead aren't gone. The dead that we meet in this book are in the Bardo. Yeah. So it actually is giving us this something I don't believe in, but is really fun, is imagining there is this other place.

So yes, the person who is bereaved has lost them, but they are not gone. Yeah, we know that really is watching. It's a communication between the two, which actually is this like huge salve. this how Lincoln feels when he goes to Willie's sickbox and holds his body for this first time the day after the funeral,

so you know very soon after he's lost him and he keeps repeating how it's been good for him that he's sort of been nourished by now it was right to do this to touch his hair to touch his body to remember it's like oh this isn't about grief this is about love of the dead love is still a very living thing for Lincoln and it's a very living thing for the dead

because the point that they've died nothing's changed for them at all. Like their emotions are still the same. The mother thinking of her three daughters and thinking how's their dad going to be able to look after them? Well, it's that weird liminal space they're in, isn't it? Where nothing's changed, but also nothing's changing. So they can't change anything.

They can't move or they can't speak to the daughters and reassure them. They can't get that girl back. So they can't make anything. But that liminal space is something we so desperately need because if it's just absence, the fact that there is some meaning there is the only way as a human being you can make yourself,

I mean, you create your own narrative about what there is, but there has to be something. Well, yeah, Bardo comes from the Tibetan Book of the Death. Oh, she went on a deep dive. That's where that word comes from. And so Bardo is the state of existence intermediate between two lives on earth, according to Tibetan tradition, and it's also used in Buddhism and Hinduism, after death and before one's next birth,

when one's consciousness is not connected with a physical body, You can get there in meditation spaces as well. Yes. Yeah. It's such an interesting idea to place that on all these people, isn't it? But also in, I think in, you know, this sort of angry time where people are so opinionated and so certain and so angry, like a bit more uncertainty, I think would make us all much more empathetic. It's interesting what you were saying that you thought that it was good for him. That was the bit that touched you that Lincoln's saying it was good for him to hold his son. because the bit that really struck me there was the agony of neither being able to communicate with the other.

It was the agony of that, whereas for you, that was a sort of comfort. Because there wasn't an absence, because the son was getting to watch his dad loving him, and his dad was getting this reminder of this is how, and even the other ghosts are describing how he, like, Willie's putting his head on his dad's shoulder in the way that he must use to, like there was so much. With absence and it's gone and there's no going back, this felt like this odd kind of backtracking where the past is laid over the present. And yes, you can't feel the head on your shoulder, but there was once a head on your shoulder. I mean, it felt very, and I'm saying this is someone who isn't, you know, grieving and hasn't lost a child.

So I wouldn't like push this into their hands. You know what you should read, Lincoln in the bar do. I get it. I've read it. I've read it. But there was something as a reader which meant this author does not want me crying my eyes out now about a day. as 11-year-old, we're going through different emotions. Yeah, it's not about that. It's weirdly not about that. I mean, it's about so many things.

I mean, I really admire the ambition of it. Yeah. To be, you know. Because I wouldn't call it a grief book. I wouldn't call it that at all. I mean, it's so much more love of the dead in it, but it's not grief per se, even though grief is discussed. No, I mean, it's definitely a grieving man, but it's not a grief book.

I don't know who says this or where. You did not give this place a proper chance, but fled it recklessly, leaving behind forever the beautiful things of the world and for what you do not know forgoing eternally sir such things as for example two fresh shorn lambs bleating in a new moan field and it goes on a whole

a patch of wilting heather that talks about light going through a patch of wilting heather gust loosened acorns flag rippling chime inciting breezes so that character he does do it he does it every time he does his memory it's another

those kind of things and It makes you so conscious. You know that thing of like slowing down and actually looking at things? Yeah. It's so amazing to have someone who's dead telling you. Look at all these things that you are not looking at, that you are not smelling, that you are not even noticing. I'm really, really glad I've read it. Yeah.

And I would not have. Really? I read a good thing that George Saunders said that how long this story took. He said many years ago in Washington, D.C., his wife's cousin pointed out, the crypt on a hill and mentioned in 1862 Abraham Lincoln was president and he went to visit that crypt and it was reported in the newspapers that he'd entered the crypt on several occasions to hold the boy's body

which is obviously unusual way to behave and this is George Saunders an image spontaneously leapt into my mind a melding of the Lincoln Memorial and the how did you say that Pieta you know the week I carried that image around for the next 20 odd years too scared to try something that seemed so profound And then finally in 2012, noticing I wasn't getting the younger, not wanting to be the guy whose own gravestone would read,

afraid to embark on scary artistic project he desperately longed to attempt, decided to take a run at it in exploratory fashion, no commitments. My novel, Lincoln and the Bardo, is a result of that attempt. Wow. Like, again, the idea that things take time. It takes time. There is also something for us, though, isn't there? Because we are, you know, we're the women.

in clown shoes. You know, nobody wants... I remember Stuart Lee saying to me years ago, he had been invited on some cultural program on Radio 4, and he'd gone on with some serious thoughts about the thing, and then realised they just wanted him to have a spooky nose and just make jokes about it. He'd really let them down by having an actual opinion.

And it's a bit like that with us in a way. I mean, people want us to turn up to make the jokes about the things. And sometimes we don't feel that way. And so I've ended up deeply, like with films, people only really want me to write romantic comedies. You know, and maybe I want to write something else, like the English patient. Lincoln in the Bardo, the musical. Exactly. And I find myself apologising for myself and go, I better stick in a joke.

And so I think that's why I feel connected to him as well, because he spent years and years and years trying to be Hemingway. He writes brilliantly about it saying trying to be Hemingway, and he wrote this very, boring he used to write these sort of very boring very sort of minimal novels

that nobody cared about and then he had to make peace with what his voice was which was funny yeah and so he's written quite movingly about that

he had to accept there was Hemingway Mountain and there was a shithole that had saunders written on it and he was like well you know it's a shit pile but it has got my name on you so I'll do that

so then this I feel is lovely because from the shit pile has come this and everyone can debate about it and say isn't this isn't that isn't the other but I think by the you know the cracks that let the light in there's so many cracks that let the light in and it is much bigger than the sum of its parts like what it's the ambition where it takes your mind and heart as a reader it leaves you with some deep questions and you you won't forget it I don't think I've never read a bit like it I love that it took George Sanders such a long time because I think so often the story we're told about creativity is, you know,

lightning strikes, 9,000 words an hour, typing away, stopping only for a cigar out of the window. Yeah, Hemingway. But also that it has to go in these different forms. A story is like this, the hero's journey. Yes, exactly. You know. Yeah, a rule book that other people have just imbibed and can reproduce.

And someone's taking 20 years, I feel like, this is like what you said earlier about having you come back to the edit, you're a different person, how much you would absorb of life, of grief, of the history happening now before you even start writing and then another five years making it. I did spend a bit of time thinking just on the way here. I say a bit of time in half an hour. Thinking, would this story have been better told just like a straight novel? Oh, I think it's experimentation that's that makes it.

It's holding it together. It's the gaps because actually the minute, because I had the same. consideration last night, probably 20 minutes. It's quite a long time. It's good to have a think, isn't it? And I was thinking if this had been one third-person narrator or even first-person narrator telling me this story, all of a sudden I felt like this weight of the beats,

the leading up, losing the surprise, being like that, then he went over there and now he was feeling this emotion. All this cacophony of noise in a graveyard that made you feel like, yeah, if there was a liminal bardo space, this is what it would sound like. I wonder what the audiobook's like. So it's 100 people who you listen to anything. It's Nick Offerman, who is one of his best pals. Comedy man from Parks and Rec.

Oh, right. And so as soon as it came out, they bought the film right. And then they also organised the audio. And it is like the cast is insane. So it's got different people playing the different characters. Yeah, but it's like golden comedy royalty. The list is ridiculous. You can't believe all those people are in it.

But obviously they just went, can you record three lines, please. I can't see it working as a film. Can you? Well, is it made? No, they bought the rights as soon as it came out and I had the same thought. I was like, how would you do that unless it was an animation? It's really frustrating sometimes because, like you say, so what do you lose if you make a film? Well, number one, the stylistic approach to telling the story.

And I guess you have to sort of reinvent one. You have to really invent something. So what we're saying is the gaps, the things that aren't painted and aren't told that have to happen in your head. We'll be dictated by a filmmaker. Yeah, exactly. 166 characters as well in 90 minutes to 2 hours is a lot.

There was a lot in Barbé though that did really well there was a lot of Barbie characters. I remember at one point thinking oh my God I can't keep up with all the Barbies I thought that and then Rob Bryden turned up with Big Tom and then I was like great more Barbie

no they were Kenns though they were Kenns they were Kenns yeah I mean it'd be interesting to see obviously they're probably in the process of development I can only imagine how you try and like workshop this script Yeah, and then sell it to an American film-going audience. Yeah.

Like, you like Mission Impossible too. Imagine. Lincoln in the bar, though. They've got to get to the man I'm like blooming. I'm really fascinated by the gaps in things in life that we don't, that we initially think are unimportant that turn out to be actually the substance. That's like an interesting thought that this book has led me to, you know, like, who's that sculptor who does the insight, Rachel Whittry. The inside of hot water bottles. Yeah, yeah.

It's amazing. Inside the bookshelves. Because you go, yeah, of course, that's where the inside of a house, that's where everything important about a house actually happens. And like junk DNA. Who said, you call it junk DNA because you don't know what it was. And now we think it's really important. Don't throw it away, don't throw it away.

There's something else. You know, babies. I met them, yeah. They put everything in their mouth. As adults, we, without putting something in our mouths, know what it would feel like? Oh, yes. Because we did it all

then. And our brain just now knows. I see a rock. I know what it would feel like in my mouth. That's true. I know, isn't that amazing? It's like the inside of a hot water bottle. It's like just this,

the capacity for the brain to know things without acknowledge, you know, it's not conscious all of the time. And actually we're saying about the gaps, the thing that is masterful is how the characters in the book very slowly as they get towards the end

start remembering other stuff. I found that. Oh, filling in. Oh, my God, when they all start remembering, like, oh, hang on a minute. Shit, I was supposed to do this. Yeah. And I was like, oh, they've all become their story. And isn't that what we do in life?

This story. The reason I'm like this is because this happened and this happened. This is my story. This is my story. Yeah, that's the thing I can't let go of from my past. And the way they branch out towards their end bit when you realize, like, oh, I did have a wife and her name is Emily. I was like, oh, my God. And that really is literally, like, fully realization.

Yeah, which is when you hit your light. matter blooming. I really, really trusted with this book that it was exactly what George Saunders wanted to write. Yeah, you definitely feel that. You know, the images that are painted, it felt like a very, very masterful person in control of what they were doing. Yeah, yeah. The way he describes his process is that he sort of lets the story start to tell itself. And I'm, I don't know if you both get this when you write, you get to a point where the thing starts to tell itself. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And often, and I feel like I'm herding cats.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Come back. No, no, no, no, no. No, I need to do this in beat three. Yeah, and they're like, no, we're not doing it. But he's somehow managed it. I mean, obviously he's structured it and spent years working on it and shaving it. And, you know, he has to make everything quite, everything's quite sort of dense, isn't it?

But it still has that feeling that the story is sort of galloped off. Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. I think that's what happens with characters. With my novel that I wrote, it was supposed to be. about a woman who killed her sister and then it became someone's going to kill someone and then by the end it's like

no one has murdered anymore even though I kept telling them to and I think there is and I wonder if it does come from acting as well is that you know we pretend to be other people but if you do it well enough they just start doing

behaving realistically and it's the same with characters you sort of get to know them and then they start telling you what they want to do or what they would do or resisting it going on. I found I get synopsisitis

where the synopsis writes itself and that definitely isn't the film I want to write. No, it won't be. Definitely not. The different story. But that's just like the next word. It's like the word before dictates the word that comes after. Yeah.

That's when it feels almost a bit dangerous and thrilling. He talks about having a positive negative dial. Oh, yeah. When you always thinking about the reader, are they losing interest? Yeah, yeah. He definitely keeps you, he keeps cooking you back in. I did wonder, I mean, is that too much? Yeah.

Like, is this too much? And I was asking myself that question all the way through, which means at the end of it, you come out suspended somehow. I haven't made a judgment. I mean, it was slightly painful in parts. Yeah, definitely. It was so intense.

Yeah. But you don't want it to stop when you get to the end. There was something on page 17. They made me so happy. And it was why I wasn't worried about Willie. And I would actually maybe stop worrying about any of the ghosts. Lincoln has gone into the crypt and held his son. And so we've got Roger Bivens and

Hans Bolman, who was sort of our main two, to be touched so lovingly, so fondly, as if one was still healthy, as if one was still worthy of affection and respect, it was cheering, it gave us hope. We were perhaps not so unlovable as we had come to believe. Yeah. Like, that's enough. That's actually huge. That thing I always say is that just so much love. They have, they had been loved, they were lovable. Yeah. Yeah. And the way everyone's like, oh, there's a, you know, there's a rip in the space-time continuum. And everyone comes to the, you know, everyone comes to the, To see this moment. Two.

Like every action had a reaction, had a reaction consequence, didn't it? Oh, you're so fantastic. I love your brain so much. Yeah, I know. Thank you for coming to talk to us. Thanks for having me. It's so much admiration for both of you. You have many more balls than I would ever have.

Thank you for listening to The Weirdo's Book Club. This was the last episode of the Weirdo's Book Club for the summer. But it's okay. We'll be back in September with some more weird reads. In the meantime, really. We hope you have a beautiful summer, reading lots of books and let us know your recommendations if there's anything you particularly enjoy. Yeah, let's know what you've been reading by the pool.

Let us know we want to hear about it. I'm on the bus. My novel Weirdo and Carriads book, You Are Not Alone, are both out in paperback. You can buy those. They give you a summer read. I have got a Christmas children's book out called The Christmas Wichastrophe. It's a middle grade 812 if you're interested in those details. And you can pre-order it now.

You can find out all about the upcoming books we're going to be discussing in the autumn on our Instagram. Carrie Ad's Weirdo's Book Club. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading.