What To Read During the Pandemic
Literature for the Pandemic
To paraphrase a line from one of the Sharknado movies, to think all this time we thought the world would end by zombies!
Including The Book of Revelation by St. John, there have been untold numbers of literature works on dystopian themes. Some involve aliens, asteroid collisions, environmental disasters (both hot and cold), World War III, killer vegetation, reptilian monsters and sharks. Right up there though is the calamity that is listed as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Pestilence is a theme with all manner of allegorical meaning, religious and otherwise.
In the midst of the turmoil caused by the current Covid-19 pandemic, here are a few titles which in some way involve the theme of disastrous illness:
Boccaccio’s Decameron
The 14th century Black Plague is the impetus for the Florentines to “self-quarantine” (rhyme not intended) at an isolated villa where they spin 100 tales to distract them from the terror.(I only recall it as a precursor to the great Canterbury Tales by the immortally healthy Chaucer.)
"The Masque of Red Death" by Edgar Allen Poe
This tale is set at a masquerade ball held in a castle built as a fortress against the red plague, fortunately fictitious.
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (1912)
This emotionally moving novella is a tale of obsession. Again a plague --this time cholera – has beset a city, again, alas in Italy. Arguably, the story has quite a few parallels with the crisis the world is facing in Spring 2020 initial denial, misinformation, expulsion of tourists, health care and sanitation workers scrambling, similar to the news bites we’re seeing today.
The soul of the story itself is the psychological suffering of the protagonist, Aschenbach, but the plague is the impetus for driving the plot.
I recommend the book highly, as well as most works by Thomas Mann (though -- full disclosure–- I only read English translations.)
And if you have an opportunity to see the 1971 movie version by Luchino Visconti and starring Dirk Bogarde, please do. Its cathartic effect will enrich one’s view of humanity.
And finally, The Plague by Albert Camus
This is set in a French Algerian city during the 1940s. Apparently there was a cholera outbreak there in that decade, but not nearly as virulent as the novel depicts. The plague is an allegory of the human condition, and the book is considered a classic in Existentialism. Passé in the 21st century? The term is still employed, perhaps too much, in the phrase “existential threat.”
If you can think of any other pandemic works, please list ‘em on this thread.
(Then wash your hands.)
