Why Vigil’s bizarre “Climate Change Christmas Carol” is dividing readers

Yet he is painfully aware that this is “an impossible way to live,” a “foolish compassion” that abolishes personal responsibility and enables people to continue their immoral actions unhindered. Sometimes people need to “kick their ass” in order to change. Such criticisms are voiced (mostly) by the French inventor, and the “triangulation” between him, Boone, and Gilles drives much of the plot.

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Neither point of view triumphed in Saunders’ mind or on the page. His goal was to represent the two competing philosophies as accurately and convincingly as possible, and “to let them get through there.” His approach reminds me of John Keats’s definition of “negative capacity,” which is the capacity “to exist in a state of uncertainty, ambiguity, and doubt, without any prompt pursuit of truth and reason.” Keats argued that this distinguished the greatest writers such as Shakespeare.

Saunders agrees that this is “the essence of what art can do for us.” He adds: “We usually don’t have time for this nonsense. But when I read major works, I just remember how often I judge too soon. The world is so much bigger than I can comprehend, and yet I always act as if I understand it 100%.” “For me, it’s a bit of a sacred thing, just for a few hours a day, to say, ‘Oh, my actual everyday self is a little flawed.’” Writing in this way, he says, was a step outside his comfort zone. “Most of my other work doesn’t fall into a place of ambiguity.”

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Like Lincoln in Bardo, Vigil was influenced by Saunders’s Buddhist doctrine, including the belief in our need to transcend the ego and renounce earthly desires. This provides some of the most poignant passages in the final novel, as Jill temporarily descends from her “high” state and grapples with unfinished business in her physical life.