In Time of Plague & Pestilence

For Fun:

The First Lines of 10 Classic Novels,
Rewritten for Social Distancing

Famous Lines of Poetry
Revised for the Age of Coronavirus

To Watch:

The Exterminating Angel (1962, by Luis Bunuel)

The Plague (1992, with William Hurt, Raul Julia, Robert Duvall)
Based on the 1947 novel by Albert Camus
Compared to COVID - 19

In 1947, Camus reflected on Nazism and authoritarianism,
using the plague as a metaphor of misery and suffering.
His observations remain true:

"The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer's soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness."

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Additional Classics

Death in Venice (1912) & Magic Mountain (1924)
both by Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955)

The Decameron (1492)
by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 1375)

A Journal of the Plague Year: 1665 (1722)
by Daniel Defoe (1660 - 1731)

Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939)
by Katherine Anne Porter (1890 – 1980)

Fever 1793 (2000)
by Laurie Halse Anderson


Recent Discoveries

The Fatal Eggs (1925)
by Mikhail Bulgakov (1891 - 1940)

The Fatal Eggs and Other Soviet Satire
Translated by Mirra Ginsburg


Non - Fiction

The Great Influenza:
The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
by John M. Barry


On the Quotidian Kit

from
A Litany in Time of Plague
alternately entitled:
In Time of Pestilence, 1593
by
Thomas Nashe (1567 - 1601)

Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkles will devour;
Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair;
Dust hath closed Helen's eye.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

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Our favorite local book store Von’s!

Thanks to my friend Nancy for sharing this
charming photo from her miniature light - up village.

Advising Alma

Many thanks to my friend Pam for sharing this fun pic of the
perfect hoodie to wear while working on your book blog! If your
Superpowers are Reading & Writing, you could use one of these!

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The title of this month's post ~ Advising Alma ~ is in honor of the fact that I just finished reading A Gentleman in Moscow, in which all of the words in all of the chapter titles begin with "A": An Anglican Ashore; Advent; An Actress, an Apparition, an Apiary; Arachne's Art; Absinthe; America; Achilles Agonistes; And Anon; and so forth.

As the author asserts:

What’s with All the A-Words in the Chapter Titles?
As you’ve probably noted, all of the book’s chapters are titled with words beginning in A. Why is that so? To be perfectly honest, I don’t have a good answer. Early in the drafting of the novel, I had the instinct that I should follow the rule, and I trusted that instinct. One reader has suggested that it was my own version of playing “Zut”; another has suggested it was a tribute to the first letters in the names Alexander and Amor; a third has suggested it was because the book is about new beginnings. All of these answers strike me as excellent!
~Amor Towles

So, back to advising Alma, my sweet friend
& helpful translator when I visited Medellin ~ Colombia,
who wrote to me a few months ago:

A: I wanted to ask you if you’ve read anything from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie?

K: I read Americanah and would say that it's good, not great. However, I know it was wildly popular. Maybe I'm in a small minority who didn't find it appealing; but, to me, it did not seem novelistic; so many characters were introduced but never developed, which I always find disappointing. I suppose I should read more by her but I probably won't. Life is so short, one has to pick and choose.

A: So I've been reading Americanah for about two weeks now. If I had read it in a different time of my life, I might not have liked it as much; but currently I've related in some way to her story as an immigrant in the U.S.

Earlier this year I wanted to read all of Jane Austen's books, and got all the way to Mansfield Park, but struggled a lot with the female characters.

K: Yes, I can see that.

A: So I was looking to read something with a strong female, and hopefully immigrant, character; and that's when I found Americanah.

K: I'll try to think of some more for you!

A: Please do! I'm about to finish it and am looking for my next book for the train rides.

K: Oh fun! Where are you headed?

A: Well, on my daily commutes.

K: I see what you mean! I thought maybe you were taking Amtrak coast to coast!

A: I wish!! Just to NYC!

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K: Alma, not to disrespect Jane Austen, but you might have a little more fun with these two novels that I have greatly enjoyed in the last year or so -- both written by women:

1. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry ~ by Gabrielle Zevin
A.J. is man, who owns a bookstore, but he shares the lead with
Amelia, a traveling book agent, and his surprising daughter, Maya.
So, plenty of strong women to keep you inspired on your commute!
No spoilers here, here, or here!

2. The Truth According to Us ~ by Annie Barrows
Lots of amazing women and a lot of interesting U.S. history.

"Jottie's mind flicked over her own heedless childhood, recalling the protection and authority she hadn't even known she enjoyed. How light and lordly she'd been, how free, how certain that her happiness was the product of her own virtues and powers. How wrong she'd been. How foolish. And how very, very lucky.

"If only Willa could have what I had, Jottie mourned. If only she could be so certain and proud. It was an illusion every child should have. And Willa was losing it, right before her eyes" (83).

"So the story wasn't over. No story was ever really over" (155).

"Let the history commence . . . " (217).

A: Thank you! I started The Truth According to Us and am loving it!
I’m so curious about what’s going to happen!

. . . a few weeks later . . .
A: I was thinking about you today, as I finished The Truth According to Us. What I thought was super funny, was that at the end of the edition that I have, there's an interview with the author where they ask her what she thinks the book is about, and she doesn't mention what I think it's about! Haha!

K: So happy to hear you liked it and curious to hear more about your favorite aspects!

*******************
K: I might have already mentioned this book awhile back; if so please forgive duplication. It's a memoir rather than a novel, but one of the best immigration narratives EVER:

Stealing Buddha's Dinner ~ by Bich Nguyen

And of course I want you to read
The History of Love ~ by Nicole Krauss
because it's about a girl named Alma!

"MY NAME IS ALMA SINGER: When I was born my
mother named me after every girl in a book my
father gave her called The History of Love" (35).

"As soon as you finish this one, you will immediately want to begin reading it again! It's that good -- and that mysterious! A teen - aged girl named Alma Singer narrates her personal, literary quest to understand her name and her family history. Reading about reading; writing about writing."

Additional Suggestions: Does Nanny Have a Line?

Tolstoy Imagined You

Leo Tolstoy in His Study, 1891
by Ilya Repin, 1844 - 1930

"Tolstoy thought well of you
– he believed that his own notions
about life here on earth would be
discernible to you, and would move you.

"Tolstoy imagined you generously,
you rose to the occasion."
~ George Saunders ~

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"Books are the way that we communicate with the dead.
The way that we learn lessons
from those who are no longer with us . . ."
~ Neil Gaiman ~

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Nikita:“The thought that he might, and very probably would die that night occurred to him, but did not seem particularly unpleasant or dreadful. It did not seem particularly unpleasant, because his whole life had been not a continual holiday, but on the contrary an unceasing round of toil of which he was beginning to feel weary. And it did not seem particularly dreadful . . .

Vasili: “'I'm coming!' he cried joyfully, and that cry awoke him, but woke him up not at all the same person he had been when he fell asleep. He tried to get up but could not, tried to move his arm and could not, to move his leg and also could not, to turn his head and could not. He was surprised but not at all disturbed by this. He understood that this was death, and was not at all disturbed by that either.”

~ Leo Tolstoy ~
"Master and Man"

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George Saunders:
from What writers really do when they write

4
What does an artist do, mostly? She tweaks that which she’s already done. There are those moments when we sit before a blank page, but mostly we’re adjusting that which is already there. The writer revises, the painter touches up, the director edits, the musician overdubs. I write, “Jane came into the room and sat down on the blue couch,” read that, wince, cross out “came into the room” and “down” and “blue” (Why does she have to come into the room? Can someone sit UP on a couch? Why do we care if it’s blue?) and the sentence becomes “Jane sat on the couch – ” and suddenly, it’s better (Hemingwayesque, even!), although … why is it meaningful for Jane to sit on a couch? Do we really need that? And soon we have arrived, simply, at “Jane”, which at least doesn’t suck, and has the virtue of brevity.

But why did I make those changes? On what basis?

On the basis that, if it’s better this new way for me, over here, now, it will be better for you, later, over there, when you read it. When I pull on this rope here, you lurch forward over there.

This is a hopeful notion, because it implies that our minds are built on common architecture – that whatever is present in me might also be present in you. “I” might be a 19th-century Russian count, “you” a part-time Walmart clerk in 2017, in Boise, Idaho, but when you start crying at the end of my (Tolstoy’s) story “Master and Man,” you have proved that we have something in common, communicable across language and miles and time, and despite the fact that one of us is dead.

Another reason you’re crying: you’ve just realised that Tolstoy thought well of you – he believed that his own notions about life here on earth would be discernible to you, and would move you.

Tolstoy imagined you generously, you rose to the occasion. [emphasis added]

We often think that the empathetic function in fiction is accomplished via the writer’s relation to his characters, but it’s also accomplished via the writer’s relation to his reader. You make a rarefied place (rarefied in language, in form; perfected in many inarticulable beauties – the way two scenes abut; a certain formal device that self-escalates; the perfect place at which a chapter cuts off); and then welcome the reader in. She can’t believe that you believe in her that much; that you are so confident that the subtle nuances of the place will speak to her; she is flattered. And they do speak to her. This mode of revision, then, is ultimately about imagining that your reader is as humane, bright, witty, experienced and well intentioned as you, and that, to communicate intimately with her, you have to maintain the state, through revision, of generously imagining her. You revise your reader up, in your imagination, with every pass. You keep saying to yourself: “No, she’s smarter than that. Don’t dishonour her with that lazy prose or that easy notion.”

And in revising your reader up, you revise yourself up too.

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I'm guessing that when George Saunders envisions the authors of the past "thinking well of us and imagining us generously," he means the same thing as Marilynne Robinson when she says that the best teachers and poets help us "to assume our humanity."

I have long had a certain shelf of books, not organized by alphabet or genre but grouped together by a sense of specialness that I could never define very accurately until I encountered the words of Robinson and Saunders. Now I can see that the unifying element of these titles is the way in which each has helped me over the years "to assume my humanity." Thanks to Saunders for the profound realization that, in one way or another, across time and distance, these authors "have imagined me generously and I have risen to the occasion."

Here is a partial list,
with some obvious overlap to previous lists & posts,
such as the Must Reads & the Not Too Lates & Does Nanny...?:
It seems only fair to begin with
Home and Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Coming of Age
The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man - in - the - Moon Marigolds, Paul Zindel

Loose Change, Sara Davidson
How to Save Your Own Life, Erica Jong
Memoirs of an Ex - Prom Queen, Alix Kates Schulman

Last summer (2019) I re-read Davidson, Jong, and Schumann for old time's sake. Wow, did that ever bring back the 1970s! Most interesting, it came to my attention that two passages that I have been ascribing to Erica Jong for the past 40 years actually come straight from Alix Kates Schulman:

"My life looked like a repeating decimal." (122)

Frank: "I'm due at the library now, but I'll be back later. Please excuse me."
Sasha: ". . . he embarrassed me so. Due at the library! -- like an important book." (183)

Cute But Deep
Love, Loss, And What I Wore [and all the rest], Ilene ~ Beckerman
The Tao of Pooh & The Tee of Piglet, Benjamin Hoff
Talk to the Hand, Lynne Truss

Later Coming of Age
It's Called A Breakup Because It's Broken
& He's Just Not That Into You, Greg Behrendt & Liz Tuccillo
Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, Ariel Levy
The Fat Girl's Guide to Life, Wendy Shanker
Girl With Glasses, Marissa Walsh

Fiction & Memoir
84 Charing Cross Road & Q's Legacy, Helene Hanff
The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
A Walk to the Hills of the Dreamtime, James Vance Marshall
Edwin Mullhouse, Steven Millhauser

Peace or Light?
The Master & Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
The Gospel According to the Son, Norman Mailer
The Greatest Salesman in the World, Og Mandino
God: A Biography, Jack Miles
Another Roadside Attraction & Still Life With Woodpecker, Tom Robbins
Our Lady of the Lost and Found, Diane Schoemperlen
Candide, Voltaire
from Expecting Adam
by Martha Beck
"I did, at long last, realize that it didn't really matter
what anyone else's opinion of my decision might be.
What mattered was that I had made a choice that felt as though,
in the end, it would bring me to the place I needed to go."

Life or Death Matter

#131
We never know we go,—when we are going
We jest and shut the door;
Fate following behind us bolts it,
And we accost no more.
Emily Dickinson

Thanks to my friend Mumbi for sending this photo
from the Ewing and Muriel Kauffman ~ Memorial Gardens
and for recommending a few of the titles below.
Without intending to follow a theme of any sort, I concluded this year's reading list with four narratives, all on the topic of terminal illness and impending death. Each of these authors was given an untimely diagnosis, which they all dealt with by determining to share their stories with others while they still had the time and health to do so. We are the richer for their determination to impart what mattered most to them when time was running short.

When Breath Becomes Air
by Paul Kalanithi (1977 - 2015)
with an "Epilogue" by his wife Lucy Kalanithi

"Lost in a featureless wasteland of my own mortality . . . I began reading . . . anything by anyone who had ever written about mortality. I was searching for a vocabulary with which to make sense of death, to find a way to begin defining myself and inching forward again. . . .

"And so it was literature that brought me back to life during this time. The monolithic uncertainty of my future was deadening; everywhere I turned the shadow of death obscured the meaning of any action. I remember the moment when my overwhelming unease yielded, when that seemingly impassable sea of uncertainty parted. I woke up in pain [and recalled] . . . Samuel Beckett's seven words, words I had learned long ago as an undergraduate . . . 'I can't go on. I'll go on'" (149).

Somebody I Used to Know
by Wendy Mitchell (b. 1956)

"When I sat down with Gemma and Sarah to discuss my wishes, laying on the homemade afternoon tea to sweeten the mood, I was surprised to hear how different their thoughts were about what I might want. But I was able to tell them. Imagine the sadness and emotional distress this would have caused if we hadn't talked. Imagine the upset and disagreement if we hadn't talked. Imagine the distance it may have put between them if we hadn't talked. Imagine the sadness I would have caused in my death that I couldn't put right, if we hadn't talked.

"Guilt is hard to live with, but it exists to help us put things right while we still have the chance" (173).

The Last Lecture
by Randy Pausch (1960 - 2008)

"Many cancer patients say their illness gives them a new and deeper appreciation for life. Some even say they are grateful for their disease. I have no such gratitude for my cancer, although I'm certainly grateful for having advance notice of my death. In addition to allowing me to prepare my family for the future, that time gave me the chance to go to Carnegie Mellon and give my last lecture. In a sense, it allowed me to 'leave the field under my own power.'"

" . . . There's something else. As a high-tech guy, I never fully understood the artists and actors I've known and taught over the years. They would sometimes talk about the things inside them that 'needed to come out.' I thought that sounded self-indulgent. I should have been more empathetic. My hour on the stage had taught me something. (At least I was still learning!) I did have things inside me that desperately needed to come out. I didn't give the lecture just because I wanted to. I gave the lecture because I had to" (204 - 05).

Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening: How I Learned
the Unexpected Joy of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart
by Carol Wall (1951 - 2014)
in memory of Giles Owita (d. 2008)
with an "Epilogue" by Carol's husband Dick Wall

"'Look under the tarps and choose a specimen you like' . . . Underneath, I found a sight whose quiet beauty took my breath away. In the shelter of the covered chairs and benches were a host of tiny seedlings, clearly thriving. They'd all been rescued ... I saw how all this while, beneath the unattractive surface, the gears of life had been turning, nature ticking beautifully along like the mesmerizing works of an expensive watch.

"Dr. Giles Owita's backyard rescue project had flourished despite illness and cold winds. Finding this felt like a Christmas morning discovery . . ." (239 - 40).

Giles & Carol Discuss Their Illnesses:
Giles: "Yes, we are doomed to constant vigilance."

Carol: "We have our own club. The downside is that it's a club no one wants to join. The upside is that we can talk about anything we want to, and no one can accuse us of being morbid. And it's oddly liberating. No one chides us about our weight or our triglycerides. There's no one to impress, and nothing else to be lost." (268)

Some Closing Thought from Dick Wall
"Something is going to get all of us. We will all die. Healing involves our response to this certainty -- our understanding of our place in the universe and our purpose in this life. Mister Owita resonates with so many people because Giles and Carol teach us that we are not defined by our afflictions -- we are to bear them with grace and dignity. We are to understand that 'the ground in winter, which looks awful . . . holds a thousand lovely secrets.' Giles and Carol teach us that, even in what seems like the hell of a final illness, 'every day brings something good'" (304).

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Previous Posts on the Same Topic
Two - Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage
by Madeleine L'Engle (1918 - 2007)
in memory of Hugh Hale Franklin (1916 – 1986)

"Right now we must wait. The urologist is pleased . . . with Hugh's recovery, repeats that he is cautiously optimistic. But we do not know whether or not the sharks are still waiting to attack.

"They are" (212).

"Is he dying? Today? I don't know. Modern medicine has made it less and less easy for us to predict the imminence of death. . . . Hugh is the victim of modern medicine . . .

"But what was the alternative? This treatment . . . has cured people. The older methods, such as radiation, were successful only in postponing death, not in killing this kind of cancer. Had he not been given the platinum, what kind of death would he have suffered? I don't know the answer to these questions. but because we have new ways of treating disease, we use them. . . . If we had to make all the choices agan, what would we choose?" (217 - 18)

Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction
by David Kuo (1968 – 2013)

Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death
Transformed My Life
by Eugene O'Kelly (1952 - 2005)


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Also recommended:

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
by Atul Gawande

How We Die: Reflections of Life's Final Chapter
by Sherwin B. Nuland

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Some favorite songs to go along with the above books.
I hope these links continue to work ~ videos & lyrics ~
definitely worth a watch, a listen, and a read:

Live Like You Were Dying
Tim McGraw

I Hope You Dance
Lee Ann Womack

How to Save a Life
The Fray

I Wanna See You Be Brave
Sara Bareilles

I Hope You Have the Time of Your Life
Green Day

We Are Young
Fun with Janelle Monae

I Just Want to Feel This Moment
Pitbull with Christina Aquilera

Photograph
Ed Sheeran

Books That Affect Us Like a Disaster

Reader in an Armchair
at Franz Kafka Square 1 ~ Prague, Czech Republic
in front of World of Kafka Exhibition

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
~ Franz Kafka ~

Thanks to my friend Igor Steinman for sharing this
impressive no - longer - banned - books monument,
on the The Bebelplatz in Berlin, along with several
other memorials to the shameful burning of books.

Detail of Girl Reading ~ San Francisco
(I think by George Lundeen)

Recommended Reading: Karel Čapek

Literature Only!

Some Excellent Advice from the Airline

An Excellent Book to Read While Traveling!

Bryson is always so knowledgeable that it's hard to pick the most informative anecdote and so hilarious that it's impossible to pick the funniest. The Road to Little Dribbling is no exception.

That being said, this passage is a favorite, not necessarily for wisdom or humor, but more for it's poetic loveliness. If there's one thing Bryson can do, it is to wax lyrical in praise of Britain, land that he loves:

"This is the most extraordinary thing about Britain. It wants to be a garden. Flowers bloom in the unlikeliest places -- on railway sidings and waste grounds where there is nothing beneath them but rubble and grit. You even see clumps of flowery life growing on the sides of abandoned warehouses and old viaducts. If all the humans in the UK vanished tomorrow, Britain would still be in flower. This is in complete contrast to American, where nature is wild and raw. You need flamethrowers to keep the weeds in check where I come from [Iowa]. Here is is just miles of accidental loveliness. It is really quite splendid." (72)
from
The Road to Little Dribbling:
Adventures of an American in Britain

Too Sad to Read?

Photo from Ideal Bookshelf ~ Jane Mount
A few months ago, Ben and I participated in a facebook forum on the issue of 10th graders being required to read The Kite Runner. The discussion was initiated by a parent who was concerned because her daughter was "crying and dry heaving because of it last night."

Ben's Response:

(1) From internet lore:
Q: Why are 15 year olds so angry?
A: Because humanity has an ugly side and around 15 is when you start to learn that.

(2) If she had waited until age 18 to read that scene would she have not found it emotionally wrecking? Why or why not? (If I were to read it again this morning to catch up real fast on this facebook conversation would I have (still) found it emotionally wrecking? Spoiler alert: yes)

(3) I think whether she's ready to read and think about that scene depends a lot on what guidance she'll have processing it. If her parents, her teachers, and her peers can help her channel her feelings of devastation into making her more empathetic and more able to imagine others complexly (as John Green likes to say) then she should read the book -- or I suppose should have read the book, it's innocence lost now. If there is no support and she turns bitter and angry, then that's a bad outcome. Statements like "15 is too young to read that book" strike me as lacking a bit too much in nuance.

(4) Paging Kitti Carriker, interested to hear her thoughts on this.

Thanks to Ben for paging me!
I appreciate that!

I was reminded first
of a previous blog post
and a favorite quotation:

"Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. . . . When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. . . . There is no act more wretched than stealing" (The Kite Runner, 17 - 18). ~ Khaled Hosseini

A reader's response to the quotation
took me somewhat by surprise:

Being forced to read the kite runner as a freshman in high school stole my kids innocence. How ironic.

To which I followed up:

Do you think reading Kite Runner should be postponed until college? Because of the sexual assault? I don't think Ben & Sam ever had it as assigned reading in highschool or college, though since that time, Ben has read it on his own (not sure about Sam). I have also read A Thousand Splendid Suns -- so much sorrow but also hope.

Further notes from my conversation with Ben about the
earliest books that broke our hearts and left us weeping:

Short Stories by Flannery O'Connor
"A Good Man is Hard to Find"
"Good Country People"
"The Life You Save May Be Your Own"

Short Stories by Ernest Hemingway
"God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen"
"In Another Country"

Louanne Ferris
I'm Done Crying: The Making of A Nurse

Lillian Roth
I'll Cry Tomorrow

Maya Angelou
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Anthony Burgess
A Clockwork Orange

Truman Capote
In Cold Blood

William Golding
Lord of the Flies

Thomas Hardy
The Mayor of Casterbridge

Ken Keasey
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird

Boris Pasternak
Doctor Zhivago

Robert Newton Peck
A Day No Pigs Would Die

Ayn Rand
We the Living

And at an even earlier age:
The Steadfast Tin Soldier
The Little Prince
Harry Potter IV: Goblet of Fire

1. Ben -- others that I overlooked?

2. Additional heart - breaking, eye - opening books.

3. Advice from George Bernard Shaw:
"You have learned something.
That always feels at first
as if you have lost something."