George Saunders Man Booker Prize-winning LINCOLN in the BARDO in Conversation with Radhika Jones

George Saunders (b Amer 1958) is one of our most distinguished writers of short stories.  TENTH of DECEMBER won the Story Prize ('13) and the inaugural Folio Prize ('14).  LINCOLN in the BARDO, Sanders first novel received the Man Booker Prize ('17).   A writing prof. at Syracuse Univ. for 2 decades, Saunders revealed he only started his writing career at age 30 working 7 years on his first collection before being published.  It's hard to conceive of this inventive & surprisingly  optimistic writer (despite his macabre memes) to have been a late bloomer.  Saunders sense of humor & compassion was evident in his conversation with Radhika Jones, Editor-in-Chief  at Vanity Fair.  Before the two sat for a  comfortable tete-a-tete at Symphony Space there was a performance reading from his novel which included himself along with Emmy winner Jane Kaczmarek who gave Saunders a warm hug and actors Emmy winner Denis O'Hare & Russel Jones (Sea Oak).  This reading was very poignant.  They enacted the various voices in the book of compelling spirits whose lives and after-lives are beautifully crafted into this brilliant & stirring novel.  Saunders read historic footnotes from his novel which anchors the story during & around the Civil War.  The other actors haunting readings were from the entities encrypted in the same cemetery where Pres. Lincoln's son has just been buried.  Saunders said he first heard of Lincoln having returned to his son's grave several times after his burial to mourn for his beloved son.   Saunders expounded on the dissimilarities between purgatory, a state of being tiered between life & the afterlife.  Bardo, Saunders explained has more of a Buddhist philosophy of participating & registering one's transitory phase between life & the perception of thereafter.  Jones wisely pointed out his novel deals which deals with the grief of a parent for their  child was overflowing with compassion.  "Grief, is what love gives off when life is truncated," replied Saunders.  The novel revolved around Pres. Lincoln but his voice was mostly absent.  Saunders said he "ventriloquized the voices of his characters and Lincoln's voice {he} found boring and switched to the other characters" who are anchored in time & space with Lincoln's son contemplating  their life & death and the many earthly wonders too precious to forego.  Saunders' novel is a masterpiece.  It captures the anguish of Pres. Lincoln aware of the thousands of lives & families who will suffer the anguish of loss from the battlefields he is responsible for commanding to necessitate the saving of our Union.  This literary event was extremely moving & entertaining.  Mr. Saunders recommends reading the great Russian writers: Chekov, Dostoevsky and American author Toni Morrison.   Mr. Saunders' Man Booker Prize-winning novel deserves a Nobel Prize in Lit.