And here he was.
A tiny, crimped fellow in an immense mahogany bed.
I was not too late.
Neither was I too early.
His wife, exhausted by care, slept fully dressed on a love seat near the bed. Her slippers lay on the floor, turned in toward each other as if being worn by some invisible pigeon-toed individual.
But she was not my concern.
My charge’s sleeping clothes were of silk, his initials monogrammed above the heart.
Moving closer, I entered the orb of his thoughts.
Within him abided a formidable stubbornness. A steady flow of satisfaction, even triumph, coursed through him, regarding all he had managed to do, see, cause, and create, especially given his humble origins.
I scanned for doubts regarding things he had done or left undone; things he might have said but had not; mistakes to which he had not yet fully admitted, any of which might keep him from attaining that state of total peace so to be desired at this juncture.
And found nothing, or nearly nothing.
Jill ‘Doll’ Blaine has been sent to earth for the 343rd time to guide a dying person into the afterlife. Jill has been allocated powerful oil tycoon K.J. Boone as her latest client, to comfort and reassure him as death draws close. Holding a vigil by his bedside for as long as the process takes, Jill is met with resistance from Boone, who stubbornly claims to be proud of everything he’d ever done, refusing to accept that any mistakes were made. Her vigil is further interrupted by a stream of spirits who wish to accuse and condemn K.J. in his final moments. A near-farcical attempt at persuasion and de-escalation ensues as Jill, calmly confident in her ability to befriend and mollify the dead, finds her biggest challenge in K.J. Boone’s unrepentant soul.
The story of Vigil by George Saunders is not too far off the subject of his previous and only other novel, the Booker Prize-winning Lincoln in the Bardo. Like its predecessor, Vigil exists within a Buddhist framework, Bardo being a Buddhist term for the transitional period between death and rebirth where the physical world begins to fade as the spiritual world emerges, offering souls an opportunity for insight and spiritual growth.
Saunders himself was raised a Catholic but is now a practicing Buddhist, so its always been interesting to see how those two belief systems interact within his work; guilt and shame battling with kindness and utilitarianism. The majority of Saunders' work are exercises in how to generate empathy or kindness from a variety of unlikely scenarios. I’ve always taken a great deal of influence from his writing and in his best work he shows this incredible ability to write characters in this deeply generous, holistic way (best shown in my favourite short story collection Tenth of December). To me, Saunders does his best work in 30-40 pages, which I think is where my biggest misgiving comes from Vigil.
K.J Boone is unrepentant. The evidence is all there, he’s made deliberate actions that have destroyed the environment, reduced life expectencies of whole populations, destroyed vast swathes of the earth. But he’d do it all again. It doesn’t matter how many avenging spirits or dead colleagues swear and spit at him, he continues to uncaringly justify his actions. It is at times a frustrating read, Jill’s conversations often interrupted by the next congregation of angry spirits bursting in to attend the bedside. An unnamed ‘Frenchman’ in particular becomes a pretty irritating, repetitive interruption.
Tonally, three strong emotions feel in near-constant conflict with each other:
There are ideas in Vigil that made me take a moment of consideration and there are some beautiful, typically Saunders passages in here too, particularly those moments where Jill travels around meeting other lost souls. I just can’t help but think this could have been a more effective short story.