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Lifestyle 14 TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 2020
Books
Roger Lowenstein
THE WASHINGTON POST - In his
novel The Plague, published in
1947, Albert Camus did not extend
his imagined pestilence to the en-
tire globe, like the coronavirus that
is threatening the planet now.
Camus had just lived through
the worldwide terror of the Third
Reich and Japanese aggression.
In The Plague, he con‡ined his
scourge to Oran, a "treeless," "soul-
less" port city "ringed with luminous
hills," in his native Algeria.
Yet the book deeply evokes the
adaptations imposed on us today.
Camus focussed less on the ambu-
lances and body counts in stricken
Oran than on how the plague af-
fected the citizenry, who, like us,
had to realign priorities, schedules,
in some cases relationships and
modes of living.
Like us, they had no intimation
of disaster. Throughout history,
plague had been as frequent as
war, the book's narrator observes
- yet each outbreak takes people
“equally by surprise”. Yet it is not so
much the shock of the plague, but
its innocent-seeming, almost in-
nocuous beginnings, that clamp a
dreadful foreboding on the novel's
opening pages.
The hero, Bernard Rieux, a
young doctor with dark, steady
eyes, is exiting a routine surgery on
an April morning when he feels un-
derfoot an unpleasant softness: a
dead rat.
The rats emerge in force; soon
they are piled in garbage cans
and carted off in batches, not be-
fore emitting “a gout of blood" ac-
companied by “shrill little death-
cries”. The mysterious human fever
immediately follows.
Doctors hesitate to give it a
name, though Rieux recognises the
disease as plague from the swollen
ganglia forming at the neck and
limbs of its victims.
The local prefect, and the chair
of the local medical association, are
concerned with avoiding alarm -
even, as one terms it, “false alarm”.
Oran has no supply of plague
serum. The newspapers publish
only brief, discreet notices.
Meanwhile, use of disinfectant
is required, people living with vic-
tims are to be quarantined, schools
are refashioned to house the over-
‡low of stricken patients from
hospital wards.
Yet normal life goes on, save
that the death toll rises from sev-
eral a day to more than 10, more
than 20.
When it doubles to 40, the
fateful telegram arrives, "Pro-
claim a state of plague stop close
the town."
It is at this point that the novel
really begins, and it is the moment,
to varying degrees, that Americans
and people in scores of other af-
‡licted countries are living in now.
In Camus’ ‘The Plague’,
lessons about fear, quarantine
and the human spirit
Camus likened it to a state
of “exile”, a familiar theme to
the writer, for whom metropoli-
tan France, where he spent his
adult life, was never more than an
adoptive home.
In The Plague, exile is partly
geographic, describing the pain-
ful isolation from those outside
the city gates - but it refers, more
powerfully, to exile in time.
The plague separates people
from their former lives. Despite
their fervent longings to go back,
the past is suddenly alien - a de-
tached memory.
As the cranes on the wharves
go silent and the death toll
mounts, seemingly in time with
the oppressive heat, people be-
come ‡ixed on “the ground at
their feet”. The narrator - whose
identify is long kept secret - stoi-
cally observes, "Each of us had
to be content to live only for the
day." Camus was preoccupied
with the absurd - with Sisyphus
condemned, like mankind, to
pushing a stone up a hillside.
In The Plague he found a lens
for projecting life at once sus-
pended and more vivid.
Though Oran had become
but a vast "railway waiting-room,"
with all the boredom and indif-
ference the metaphor implies,
people were, at least, living in
the present.
The urgency of volunteer-
ing in sanitary squads replaces
the yearning for a vaccine or the
outside world.
The present replaces the
future. A mysterious observer
trapped in Oran, to whose diary
the narrator gains access, posits
that only this - being "fully aware"
of time - guarantees that it won't
be wasted.
As with the virus today, the
citizens crave a return to normal-
cy yet are visited by doubt that
they could - or should - again be
the same. There is a hint of self-
condemnation.
Today one reads of supposed
contributory evils - globalism, po-
litical failings, world capitalism.
Even Camus' ‡inally revealed
narrator seems to invoke a judg-
ment, after the plague has lifted:
The ‡ight against “terror”, as he
now styles it, is "assuredly" ongo-
ing. The plague bacillus, as if it
were some uncleansable stain on
the human character, “never dies
or disappears for good”.
Yet the satisfying surprise for
me, rereading The Plague a half-
century after my ‡irst encounter
with it, is that Camus, who died
at 46 in an automobile accident,
fashioned from this morbid al-
legory a theme of human good-
ness. It is a redemptive book, one
that wills the reader to believe,
even in a time of despair.
This is true for Rieux, and for
some of the lesser townsfolk, who
overcome their sel‡ish desires and
lend a hand, only to discover that
if happiness is shameful by one-
self, fear is more bearable when
it is shared. To this, the veiled
narrator has chosen to bear wit-
ness. His mission, he ultimately
declares, is to state what we learn
in a time of pestilence, "There
are more things to admire in men
than to despise."
Bethanne Patrick
THE WASHINGTON POST - We're
living through strange times, and
if the latest stay-at-home directives
don't convince you of that, how
about this: People are reading more
than usual. They're buying more
books than usual.
Even if you can't browse your
favourite local bookstore, consider
supporting them by shopping on-
line for gift certi‡icates while you
purchase a few of these titles in
digital form.
AFTERLIFE: A NOVEL,
BY JULIA ALVAREZ
A new short, lyric novel from the
author of How the Garcia Girls Lost
Their Accents and In the Time of the
Butter lies ? Yes, please, and thank
you. Alvarez has her protagonist
Antonia (who resembles her cre-
ator in age, background and tem-
perament) face several dilemmas
at once, including widowhood, a
mentally ill sister and an unexpect-
ed, pregnant houseguest. You can
read it in one afternoon.
THE POETS &WRITERS COMPLETE
GUIDE TO BEING A WRITER,
BY MARY GANNON AND
KEVIN LARIMER
Maybe this is the moment to ‡i-
nally write that novel you've always
wanted to publish.
In that case, Gannon and Lar-
imer, both of whom work full time
in the writing and publishing in-
dustries, impart what a sustainable
writing career entails: networks
and skills, not necessarily a swank
study. The fact that this is such a
lively, informative read means you
can trust their expertise.
A HUNDRED SUNS: A NOVEL ,
BY KARIN TANABE
If you're looking for a transporting
historical novel, Tanabe's smart
thriller set in 1933 Indochina ‡its
the bill. When an American wom-
an arrives in Saigon, she knows
her French husband, heir to the
Michelin rubber fortune, plays an
important role in the colonial capi-
tal. However, she has no idea how
corrupt colonial lives can be and
discovers she may be a pawn in a
friend's hands.
WHAT IS THE GRASS:
WALT WHITMAN IN MY LIFE,
BY MARK DOTY
Many readers understand how a
powerful literary voice can change
your life. Not many readers can ar-
ticulate why the way this National
Book Award-winning poet does in
his new hybrid memoir about Walt
Whitman's in‡luence on Doty's life
and work. Through close readings
of Whitman's poetry, the author
delves into his subject's obsessions
and epiphanies.
THE ADDRESS BOOK: WHAT
STREET ADDRESSES REVEAL
ABOUT IDENTITY, RACE,
WEALTH, AND POWER,
BY DEIRDRE MASK
We can't deny it: From Park Avenue
to Nob Hill to Peachtree, every city
has its “wealthy neighbourhood”,
every enclave its “best street”. The
opposite is also true - “the wrong
side of the tracks”, “the slums”.
Mask, a Harvard-educated attorney,
takes what might seem like a slim
idea - street addresses - and turns
it into a radical treatise on class
divisions in a nation that too often
insists none exist.
THIS IS BIG: HOW THE FOUNDER
OF WEIGHT WATCHERS
CHANGED THE WORLD AND ME,
BY MARISA MELTZER
Jean Nidetch may be one of the
most famous people you've never
heard of, and that's because the
founder of Weight Watchers didn't
want to be identi‡ied with her
groundbreaking programme, fear-
ing she would be branded as fat.
Meltzer looks at her own pursuit of
weight loss and uses it to illuminate
our culture's focus on thinness.
STRANGE SITUATION: A
MOTHER'S JOURNEY INTO
THE SCIENCE OF ATTACHMENT,
BY BETHANY SALTMAN
When the author gave birth to her
daughter, she loved her but didn't
bond with her, leading her to won-
der: Why does love between parent
and child exist? Can it be lessened?
Strengthened? In a beautiful but
also research-driven book, one
woman learns that neither she nor
her ability to love is broken. Instead,
our assumptions about maternal
love need to change.
TAKE ME APART: A NOVEL,
BY SARA SLIGAR
When a famed photographer dies,
leaving behind a vast archive of
images, letters and diaries, her
son, Theo, hires Kate Aitken to sift
through the materials. Kate be-
comes obsessed with the photog-
rapher, even while her attraction to
Theo grows.
Books to read in April