RX for “Pandemic Blues” – Plague reading

By Anne H. Oman
Reporter-At-Large
March 27, 2020

With the beaches off-limits, bars and restaurants closed, and friends social-distancing, maybe it’s time to curl up with a good book (properly disinfected, of course). You could, of course, turn to escape literature – and there’s a lot of that going around. Or, you could choose a more relevant read — a book about how other people in other times have survived – or succumbed to – other pandemics.

Here are a few suggestions:

Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider has been called “the seminal novel about the 1918 flu pandemic.” Miranda, a reporter for a Denver paper, and Adam, her soldier fiancé, are dreading the latter’s departure for the front, but have to confront a deadlier enemy. You’ll have to read it to find out which one gets carried off on the pale horse of death. If this short novel has the ring of truth, it’s because Porter herself, while working for The Rocky Mountain News, came down with the flu, which turned her hair white at age 28.

Another relevant – and short – read is Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. Aschenbach, an aging writer, journeys to Venice and checks into a hotel on the Lido, where he spots “a beautiful boy” in the dining room. Obsessed with the youth, he follows him through the city of Venice, which is in the midst of a cholera epidemic, though nobody wants to scare away the foreign tourists. After eating some strawberries bought from a vendor, the writer begins to feel unwell. He collapses on the beach the next day, as he tries to follow his love-object into the water. The same author also wrote about another kind of plague, tuberculosis, in The Magic Mountain, which portrays patients in a sanatorium on a Swiss peak.

Albert Camus set The Plague in Oran, in his native Algeria. It begins ominously, with rats dying in the streets. When the rat victims are gathered up and cremated, the plague spreads to people. The authorities are slow to react, but Camus’ protagonist, Dr. Bernard Rieux, struggles on, existentially.

The Year of Wonders referred to in Geraldine Brooks’ novel of the plague in a rural English village is 1666, when the Black Death of the Middle Ages made a comeback. It is based on an actual village that voluntarily self-quarantined itself. Strangely enough, its heroine, Anna, ends up in Camus’ Oran, where she assists a local physician in tending the sick – but several centuries before Dr. Rieux.

The title character of Sinclair Lewis’ Arrowsmith is a dedicated doctor who becomes disillusioned with medical practice. He finally finds fulfillment as a medical researcher, and, with his wife, Leora, a nurse, brings an antidote to a plague-ravaged tropical island, where Leora dies of the disease. In the dramatic denoument, he renounces institutional medicine and sets up his own laboratory. Offered a Pulitzer Prize for this novel, Lewis spurned it out of pique because the prize had not been awarded for his earlier novel, Main Street. He shared profits from Arrowsmith with Paul De Kruif, author of The Microbe Hunters, a non-fiction account of pioneering medical researchers, such as Louis Pasteur and Walter Reed. De Kruif had helped him with background information for the book.

Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Maria Marquez’ Love in the Time of Cholera is more about love than cholera. Femina loves Florentino, but her father disapproves and she marries a wealthy doctor who is dedicated to eradicating cholera. After many years of a relatively happy marriage, Urbino falls to his death from a mango tree, and Femina and Florentino get together again and board a river boat. At Florentino’s instigation, the captain raises a yellow flag, indicating cholera. As no port will allow the boat to land, the lovers are happily exiled to spend the rest of their lives cruising.

Beyond the Call by Sister Thomas Joseph McGoldrick is a non-fiction tribute to the selfless service of the Sisters of St. Joseph, who lived in a little yellow house on North Fourth Street and tended the sick and made shrouds for the dead during the Yellow Fever epidemic in Fernandina in 1877.

Lewis Libbey is better known for his position as Chief of State to Vice-President Dick Cheney and his role in revealing the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, but he is also the author of a plague novel, The Apprentice. Set in Japan in 1903, it focuses on a group of travelers marooned at a rural inn due to a smallpox epidemic. The book gained only modest acclaim when it was first published in 1996, but after the author’s indictment in 2005, the book was reprinted, and sales picked up. A lesson for struggling authors, perhaps.

. If you have a favorite plague book that isn’t included, feel free to add it in the Comment space below.

Happy reading.

Editor’s Note: Anne H. Oman is Reporter-at-Large for the Fernandina Observer and author of a novella, Mango Rains, which is not about a plague or pandemic.

7 Comments
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Brenda C. Kayne
Brenda C. Kayne (@guest_56974)
4 years ago

Thank you, Anne! Great job!

Brenda C. Kayne
Brenda C. Kayne (@guest_56975)
4 years ago

And support your local book stores!

Helene Friedman
Helene Friedman(@helene320yahoo-com)
4 years ago

Wonderful summaries and important reminder of history and survival. Thanks. Helene in NYC.

Margaret Tassey
Margaret Tassey(@mstasseygmail-com)
4 years ago

Good list. I would like to add Daniel Defoe’s “A Journal of the Plague Year” about the 1665 wave of bubonic plague in London. It is a well researched, fictionalized account written in 1722 as another wave was incoming. It is not sentimental or sensational, more journalistic (old style). My jaw kept dropping as I read it. He talks about the same things we do: the poor quality of the data, how class and wealth changed the ability to protect oneself, the need for isolation, the poor who ate what they earned that day, the efficacy of shutting up houses (lockdown 1665 style). Now, this is very dry stuff, but if you are fascinated by patterns that repeat in human history, it is very interesting reading. Stay safe everybody.

Greg Shurman
Greg Shurman (@guest_56979)
4 years ago

Thanks Anne….stay safe

Judy Raggi Moore
Judy Raggi Moore(@italitin)
3 years ago

As a tribute to my country, Italy, I would suggest: 1. Boccaccio’s Decameron, which describes the Black Death of the 14th century in Florence, 2. Manzoni’s The Betrothed, which is set in plague ridden Italy during the 17th century. As a tribute to the US, where I now live, I would add: Edgar Allen Poe, The Mask of the Red Death. Thanks for the excellent list!

Genece Minshew
Genece Minshew (@guest_56998)
3 years ago

Read The Great Influenza by John Barry. An excellent look at the 1918 Pandemic and a history of medical training in the US.