This past week-end, I read Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. I had read it before, in October of 2014; one of the benefits of keeping a blog is that I have a record (to read my first impressions of the book, see this blog post). During this rereading, I entered into the book much more quickly. It's interesting to read this book in a time of pandemic resurgence. The book takes place both in the future and the past, with new diseases sweeping through the population: a new strain of flu in the future and the bubonic plague in the past.
I was much more interested in the future flu than I was the first time that I read. I was surprised by how much Willis got correct about that. During the first read, I just wanted details about the bubonic plague. This time, I was interested in the correspondences--and in the science.
I've been thinking about the times when my teaching corresponded with outbreaks of plague--in the history and the literature, for the most part. I remember teaching the first half of British literature and explaining how the bubonic plague made the Renaissance possible. I remember asking my students, "Imagine that if half of the people in this class died suddenly, half the people in the U.S. died in a season. What questions would that inspire? How would it affect your belief in government, your belief in God?"
I taught those classes and those questions in the early 1990's. I didn't imagine how I would see them play out in my life time. I would not have been able to imagine the lack of faith that people have in their government right now, the lack of faith in government with perhaps a faith in God that allows people to refuse a proven vaccine. I have occasionally wondered if my students remember those classes as vividly as I do.
I remember teaching Keats which always led me to talk about TB, about Keats' experience of coughing up a part of his lungs each morning, which would remind him that he didn't have all the time in the world to write, that he wasn't likely to make it to midlife, much less old age. How did that impact him? How would it impact any of us?
I remember talking about how hard it is to control the spread of a disease that's transmitted by coughing or even simply breathing. I remember talking about how easy it is to contain a disease like AIDS, which requires such intimate contact, that mingling of fluids.
As I think back to my younger teacher self, I think about how much I knew--yes, indeed, it is hard to control a disease that spreads through the air. I have often thought about AIDS and condoms and people refusing to wear masks--no wonder it was so hard to get people to wear condoms regularly.
I have spent most of my life expecting an apocalypse, but I didn't think it would be a new respiratory disease. I've watched new bird flus come and go, and they've lost their power to terrify. I've worried about diseases like Ebola or some sort of bubonic plague that might kill us quickly. But a disease that's fairly contagious, more so than flu, and virulent for parts of the population but less virulent for others? A virus where some of us barely know we have it while others die a horrible death? That wasn't part of my apocalyptic expectations.
As I read the last part of the Willis book, the part where bubonic plague has taken hold, I recognized the exhaustion, the disbelief that any of this is happening, the return to exhaustion. I have gone through this on a small scale with my mother-in-law in the last 4.5 months of her life. I can't imagine going through it as a whole town dies before one's eyes, with no one left to ring the bells to get the souls to Heaven, as the medieval priest believes is necessary in the Willis book.
I don't think we're headed to that experience with this new variant, but I do think it's going to be a tough winter. Happily, there will be books to get us through, and I had already decided to continue seminary from a distance. Will there be an onground intensive face to face in January? Time will tell.
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