Lincoln in the Bardo

George Saunders, left, and Donald S. Lopez Jr. discuss Saunders' novel Lincoln in the Bardo on Tuesday evening at the Tang Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs. It was the first of three evening events linked to an exhibit of Tibetan Buddhist art. (The Tang web site says it closes at 5 p.m., but that's apparently not so this week, and you can view the art in the evening.)
Lopez is a Michigan professor specializing in Buddhism whose works include a "biography" of The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
I haven't read Saunders' novel, but it is about Abraham Lincoln and his 11-year-old son Willie, in the aftermath of the latter's death on Feb. 20, 1862, probably from typhoid. Bardo refers to a Buddhist belief about the state of deceased souls who have not yet been assigned a new role such as reincarnation.
On today's date, April 16, 1862, Lincoln signed a law abolishing slavery in Washington, DC, and compensating the slaveholders. This was months before the Emancipation Proclamation and years before the 13th Amendment. Lincoln, though a lifelong opponent of slavery, would not yet have described himself as an abolitionist, but this was his first substantive step in that direction. His reluctance stemmed at first from anxiety to avoid civil war, and then from the need to appease Unionist supporters of slavery in key border states such as Kentucky and Missouri.

Saunders was able to interact with Lopez and the audience via video, so I was able to argue with him briefly about current Catholic doctrine, which I maintained envisages a less static afterlife than he had claimed. Still, the book sounds interesting and I may read it. We Civil War-era historical novelists gotta stick together. The other Tang events are also interesting, and free. I may go back Wednesday for Laurie Anderson.