I confess, I’m in love with George Saunders, of course I’ve never met him. But at least he’s alive. (I’ve got a friend who’s hopelessly in love with Bruce Chatwin and doesn’t seem to mind him being dead. )
But I ask you, who wouldn’t be in love with the man who wrote Lincoln in the Bardo, a book with a 166 voices – mostly its cast of ghosts – that blends history and fiction at will, in a dynamic, fragmented narrative which surely makes us believe anything is possible for the writer if only we can find the form?
For Saunders the universe of the book has it own rules and we have to be willing to follow them wherever they take us. We must ‘be willing to be as in the dark about what happens next as your reader would be at that time.’ And I am willing…
Who wouldn’t be in love with the man whose greatest regret in his life are his ‘ failures of kindness,’?
I also have to confess I’ve done no writing at all today but instead had Bucks Fizz and lunch with my son, for Mother’s Day in this lovely cafe in Durham – Flat White. Maybe one day it will be Buck’s Fizz and lunch in Flat White with George…
