Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Rating: 4 Stars

2017 Booker Prize

When I first heard of this book it vaguely struck me as something unsavory, and I felt a stab of indignation on behalf of the 16^th President. Hadn’t the poor man done enough; hadn’t he suffered enough? I calmed down after realizing my brain-fumble – not Lincoln in the Bordello; it was ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’. Duh.

In Tibetan Buddhism, bardo is the intermediate stage between life and death. The author conceived the idea for this novel when he learned that President Lincoln had paid several visits to a crypt in Georgetown, to hold the body of his recently deceased son. The story revolves around the untimely demise of twelve year old Willy Lincoln and the transitional phase of the boy’s bewildered spirit – uncertain as to whether he should stay behind with his father or move on to whatever realm of being awaits him.

The book is a quirky amalgam of actual historical documents, ingenious creative elements, and, word-crafting. While some of his literary experiments seem a little labored, others work very successfully. The writer deals gently with the grieving president in anguish over the loss of his child. The Lincoln we see here is the Lincoln vindicated by history and immortalized in popular culture – a very human man under extraordinary circumstances, shouldering an immense burden to the best of his abilities.

Considering that the subject is both moving and macabre, there is a surprising amount of humor here. The levity comes from the host of wraiths who are malingering in the cemetery, believing that this denial of the obvious shows their strength of character. These shades are a boisterous, bawdy, and, talkative bunch. They have a lot to get off their chest, and they think they have many reasons to hang tough. Three in particular befriend the little Lincoln and try to help him migrate to the next plane of existence because the bardo is a dangerous place for the young ones.

“…to be a child and to love one’s life enough to desire to stay here is, in this place, a terrible sin, worthy of the most severe punishment.”

The reasons for this are never made clear. Actually, the author does not give much detail, depth, or, clarity to the Great Beyond. He shies away from anything approaching actual religion, spirituality, mysticism, or, the occult. That doesn’t affect the book negatively, because oddly enough this story is more about life than death.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Rating: 4 Stars

Pity the Vampire. He’s been sadly diminished in the ranks of mythical monsters. Whereas once he was a demonic menace to be thwarted with holy relics and garlands of garlic; now he’s the love-object of moony-eyed women in frothy fantasies. In movies he’s portrayed by preternaturally pale pretty boys who engage in soulful romances. It’s enough to make any self-respecting vampire gnash his long canines in rage. Meanwhile, serious readers cling to their classics like they were almighty crucifixes, in an attempt to ward off this terrifying surge of inanity. If you want to see evil, shorn of any pretense of glamor, it’s better to turn to the original.

The conjunction of ‘Frankenstein’, ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’, and ‘Dracula’ forms the unholy trinity that laid the foundation for Horror fiction, which truly came into its element in the 20^th. century. Though I have an unabashed preference for classics, Horror is not a genre that I’m enthusiastic about. I certainly did not expect to enjoy ‘Dracula’ to the extent I did.

There are three main strands to the plot. First, we see Jonathan Harker, a newly-minted solicitor on business in Transylvania. He’s been engaged by Count Dracula to act as his agent in the purchase of estates in England. The meticulous-minded but naïve young man soon realizes that he’s a prisoner, not a guest of the sinister count. Leaving him locked up in his castle, Dracula makes his way to England, where Lucy Westenra, a fluffy-brained but sweet-natured young woman pays a high price for her sleep-walking tendencies. Alerted to the menace that threatens London, four gallant young vampire-hunters under the leadership of the steely-willed Professor Van Helsing make it their mission to hunt down the monster.

It’s a commonly known fact that Bram Stoker based his 1897 book, on a Romanian prince – Vlad the Impaler, son of Vlad Dracul – whose cruelty was legendary, and far more shudder-invoking than any work of fiction. Stoker was a journalist, and this reveals itself in the book, as the entire story unfolds in the form of journals, letters, or news articles. Not the most direct form of narration but it’s a testament to Stoker’s story-telling skills that despite this circuitous technique, the story loses not an iota of suspense or narrative tension. Stoker’s oeuvre is a page-turner; and you cannot say that about too many books that are more than a hundred years old.

 The story is told from multiple viewpoints, and each journal entry or letter conveys with a charming ring of realism the character of the person writing – whether it’s in the intimate confidences between two young women, or a memo by a traveller to get the recipes of new dishes for his fiancée. On the whole, the sensibility pervading the book is refreshingly modern. The book’s main characters are each individuated, but they have one thing in common, a touching but quite believable earnestness and nobility of purpose. In his depiction of evil too, Stoker shows nuanced subtlety; as in the deranged behavior of Renfield, an inmate at the lunatic asylum; the victims who become victimizers in their turn; and, the count who is a monster now but was not always so.

The problem with the slew of contemporary publications dealing with the undead as their subject is that, they glorify and romanticize that which should be reviled. For horror to be taken seriously as literature, the work has to be informed with a moral intelligence – an awareness of the existence of good and evil, and allotting each to its rightful place in the scheme of the universe. Lacking that, it’s nothing more than junk food for the brain.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Rating: 3 & 1/2 Stars

Once in a while, the author’s life is just as compelling as their work. Mary Shelley (1797-1851) hardly led a fairy-tale existence, but it certainly sounds like something out of a book. She was born to parents distinguished for their literary achievements. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was an early feminist, who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Her father, William Godwin, was known for his radical political views. Her home was frequented by eminent personalities from every field, including many scientists. Her mother died soon after her birth, and young Mary had a lonely childhood, writing stories to entertain herself. 

Her more or less obscure existence went up in flames when, at the age of sixteen, she eloped with Percy Shelley, one of the principal and most controversial poets of the Romantic Age. Since Shelley happened to be inconveniently married to someone else at that time, this brought down English society’s wrath on their heads. The two fled to Europe, where they enjoyed the company of Percy’s friend, the even more scandalous poet, Lord Byron. One rainy summer in Switzerland, Byron challenged his companions to come up with a horror story. The others of his company failed; Mary Shelley at the age of nineteen was the only one to rise to the occasion. The result was ‘Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus’ (pub. in 1818).

Victor Frankenstein, a promising young man with a scientific bent of mind, becomes obsessed with creating life. He manages to patch it together from body parts procured from cadavers, who are presumably, beyond the stage of offering any protest at the idea. The actual process of how this piecemeal humanoid was animated is left to the imagination. No sooner does Frankenstein succeed in his venture than he is overcome by revulsion at what he’s done, but it’s too late. He’s set in motion a chain of events that spell doom for him and all that he loves.

Frankenstein like the Creature of the story also owes its origins to many influences. In an academic sense, it’s a lit. lover’s delight with its various allusions to classical mythology, scientific interests of its age, theology, philosophy, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and, that very modern topic – bioethics. That it’s a work of the Romantic period of English Literature is evidenced by the detailed descriptions of natural scenery; protagonists motivated by adventure, love and sacrifice; and, a noble, tragic hero.

The other prominent influence is Gothic. Frankenstein is very much a novel in the Gothic mode, and this alas, is what holds it back. There are gaping holes in the logic, the plot stretches the limits of credulity, and emotions are overwrought, to say the least. These characteristics earned it the derision of other writers of the age, like Jane Austen. These very noticeable flaws were perhaps the reason for the Gothic novel to fade out of fashion, leaving the corridors of the imagination wide-open to be haunted by the exponents of Horror.

But perhaps, Frankenstein’s finest contribution is not merely in its reflection of the various literary trends of the age. Rather, it is the exploration of the spirit of scientific endeavor – the questioning of man’s efforts to overcome the limitations set on us by Nature. In our efforts to replicate life, or harness nuclear energy, or in our wreaking irreparable damage on our environment in the name of progress, are we also, like Victor Frankenstein, dancing recklessly close to the precipice of disaster? There is nothing so alluring to the enquiring mind as the pursuit of knowledge…and nothing so perilous to humanity as too little of it.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Rating: 3 Stars

First published in 1885, Stevenson’s novella failed to attract much attention for a month or two, before it suddenly surged to popularity and became a best-seller of its time. Reading it, I was wondering if it really qualified as horror, since it wasn’t, well, very horrific. But technically speaking, it is rated as horror, since it has all the necessary literary elements that are the hallmarks of this genre. 

The story is told from the viewpoint of Mr. Utterson, a lawyer who is a close friend of Dr. Henry Jekyll. The good-hearted Utterson is troubled by Jekyll’s association with the unsavory Edward Hyde. He fears that his friend is somehow being compromised by the latter, but how? Is Hyde Jekyll’s blackmailer, or his illegitimate son? Actually, Utterson’s character doesn’t voice these possibilities, but we can hear him thinking them. The lawyer is filled with even more foreboding for Jekyll’s safety, when the doctor makes out his will in favor of the much younger Hyde. A murder is committed, and deaths ensue before Utterson’s questions are finally resolved. 

‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ is unlikely to raise even the smallest icy prickle in the spine of a veteran fan of Horror fiction. Poor Stevenson, it’s not his fault we need merely turn on the evening news to have our sensibilities inundated with stories that fill us with fear and loathing. Today’s horror writers are compelled to elaborate ever further on gore-soaked and flesh-crawling details to elicit anything more than a tepid response from a desensitized reading public. 

Stevenson, to his credit, is a wonderful story-teller. Though this book was written a couple of years before Jack the Ripper began his spree of  terror, Stevenson brings before our mind’s eye the fogs roiling around the dimly lit streets of nineteenth century London – a place where menace, in the stunted form of Hyde, lurks around every corner, and the suspense rises to a shrill crescendo. This book predates medical diagnoses of psychopathic personality disorder, and holds a unique place in Literature in its study of human nature torn between good and evil. It was a prototype for the many horror/thriller books that followed in its wake.