I’m planning to listen to the Vigil by George Saunders. It is a full cast production.It is similar to Lincoln in the Bardo which was great on audio. Anyone interested in listening along with me? If so we can come with a finish date and discuss here. It is 5.5 hours long.
Hey, @Norma_R, I’d do a side listen with you. I’ve already read it, but I wouldn’t mind giving it another go. I’ve got a few more hours in the book I’m currently listening to, but could probably start it early next week (or later, depending on what works for you regarding timing).
Vigil
Yes I would like to have a conversation with you. I will start it in the next few days. We can see how we are progressing. No rush of course
Great! It’ll be next on my audio list. I’ll PM you when I start it.
I loved Lincoln in the Bardo but was so confused in the beginning that I had to start the audiobook over when I was half way thru! I have read a lot of Saunders & love how he surprises & challenges me. The same with Virgil, I had to restart after an hour or 2 because I did Not know WHAT was going on. The screaming Frenchman unsettled & confused me utterly but of course that’s part of the humor of Saunders and the unsettling of us is nothing new. I caught on more quickly with Virgil and might reread it again soon because like LITB, I know I am missing some bits.
OK, I’m going to employ the spoiler tag here so I won’t ruin anything for anyone.
When I saw Saunders had a new book coming out, I was incredibly excited. Lincoln in the Bardo remains one of my favorite books, long after I reviewed it for BookBrowse, and many, many outlets (Kirkus Reviews, Publisher’s Weekly, et.al.) are giving it starred reviews. So I had really high expectations for it.I received an advanced copy for review… and I hated the book. I actually decided to not review it for BookBrowse - probably the first book in five years that I’ve disliked so much I couldn’t find enough good things to say about it to rate it at least four stars.It was so much more basic than Lincoln in the Bardo. Its message seemed to single minded.
This passage, in my opinion, is the message Saunders was trying to get across:
===========================
Who else could he have been but exactly who he was?
He seemed, if I may say it this way, inevitable.
An inevitable occurrence, upon which, therefore, it would be impossible, even ludicrous, to pass judgment.
He had left his mother’s womb with a particular predisposed mind and started living, and immediately that predisposed mind had run up against various events, and been altered in exactly the way such a mind, buffeted by those exact events, would be altered, and all the while he, Bowman, trapped inside Bowman, had believed he was making choices, but what looked to him like choices had been so severely delimited in advance by the mind, body, and disposition thrust upon him that the whole game amounted to a sort of lavish jailing.
His feelings (of rage, of shame, of being worthless, of needing to lash out preemptively at even the slightest threat) were all real and he must suffer them every day, and why? Because he had been born him. But he had not chosen to be born him. That had just happened to him. And then life had happened to that him, exerting upon it certain deleterious effects, including, but not limited to, the desire to blow up Lloyd, whom he perceived (correctly, by the way, in the relative sense) to be his enemy.
At what precise moment could Paul Bowman have become other-than-Paul-Bowman?
And how? How was the change, the opting out, the departure from the formed-in-the-womb, the choosing to be other than what one was, supposed to occur, precisely? He had been done badly, by fate, from the beginning, having been born with certain disadvantages (limited intelligence, crude features, an almost nonexistent sense of curiosity), and then, as he grew, had acquired a host of concomitant disadvantages, such as: a strange, aggressive manner of speaking, a predisposition to be offended, regrettable taste in clothing, and a tendency to slip too easily into mindless reactive violence.
But what, of all of the above, could have been changed by him?
That is: even his ability to alter/overturn such negative predispositions as existed in him had also been, I saw, predetermined (baked in, as it were). Yes: even that—his ability to improve himself by willing himself to do so—was inherent, fixed, nonnegotiable, had been granted to/forced upon him at birth.
Likewise his ability to alter his ability to alter his abilities.
Likewise his ability to alter his ability to alter his ability to alter his abilities.
And so on, in perpetual series.
From there inside him, I regarded Bowman, his left leg shaking madly beneath the table…
Imagine a fellow in manacles: hungry, thirsty, flea-bitten, tormented by his mind in hideous ways. And you (unmanacled, free, comfortable, sane) walk past.
You cannot free him.
But you might comfort him
.==========================
There were also passages where Jill mourns the things she lost when she died (which does echo Bardo in its insistence that we appreciate what we have in life, but not nearly as eloquently).
First, the main message was reiterated almost verbatim several times, so I was annoyed by the author’s lack of subtlety. Second, I don’t agree with the message. Just because one is born a certain way doesn’t mean one can’t change; I don’t believe that people as flawed as the “inevitable” people shown here couldn’t shape who they became. And I had trouble with KJ Boone who didn’t repent until he was dead. His redemption, coming at the very end of the book as it did, didn’t feel earned.
When Norma asked about an audio read, I did jump at the chance, hoping I’d missed something the first time around or that the audio version would improve my opinion of the book. If anything, I found the audio version annoying. The various narrators were hard to follow - the French accent very thick, Boone’s voice too soft at times. And the “Greek chorus” of the two Mels came across much better in print. One could gloss over the reptition of “said G.” and “said R.” but there was no ignoring it when narrated. That was actually my favorite part of the book when I read it - it was pretty funny - but my least favorite part of the audio experience.
The one thing the audiobook did improve for me was the character of Jill “Doll” Blaine. The narrator really put some emotion into her reading, which improved that part of the book for me.
So - Please feel free to disagree with me - completely, in part, not at all. It absolutely wouldn’t be the first time I hated a book that many people treasure.
I didn’t dislike Vigil. Lincoln in the Bardo was much better. I listened to both via audio. The characters in Vigil were not as engaging.
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Tell me more about your thoughts, @Norma_R! Did you get the same message from it I did, or did I miss a deeper meaning? (It wouldn’t be the first time, LOL).
I know my views above are pretty negative. I didn’t really hate it, but surprisingly (at least to me) the book left me really angry. That doesn’t happen very often, and I’m still struggling to sort out why.
I describe my reaction as disappointed. Several years ago I listened to Lincoln in the Bardo via audio. It was incredible. Perhaps I expected too much from Vigil. Lincoln in the Bardo was one of my early audio listens and made a big impression. Just learned the Metropolitan Opera in New York will perform it next season. The characters in Vigil were not engaging to me.
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Did you see that they’re making a movie of Lincoln in the Bardo? I read this morning that they just cast Tom Hanks as Lincoln.
Virgil was juvenile and heavy handed. It seemed the author could not decide if the book was a farce, a ghost story version updating A Christmas Carol, or It’s a Wonderful Life. Lesson learned ? Or just a chance to show off some crass repartee? The author missed the chance of authentically respecting his characters. The early life of KB oil magnate gave a hint of an eager, smart young man, who tragically refused to respond to the reality of his chosen career. The shift in the science would have made for an excellent book. Instead we get cheap, clownish scenes. Lincoln in the Bardo is one of my desert island books. This one I’d burn to send smoke signals in hope of rescue.