Desperate times call for literary measures
In an post-apocalyptic world, would you be reaching for toilet paper—or Shakespeare?
During the great COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, the bare, embattled toilet paper aisles of Australian supermarkets have answered that question definitively. (Hopefully in this TP emergency no one has had to resort to desecrating the pages of Shakespeare quite yet…)
Survivalist essentials, in 2020
In 2014, Emily St. John Mandel’s brilliant science fiction/literary novel, Station Eleven, imagined a post-apocalyptic world in which the 20-year survivors of a deadly respiratory pandemic—dubbed the ‘Georgia Flu’—do indeed cling to William Shakespeare’s works! Mere survival, for this travelling troupe of actors and musicians, is not enough: art must live on too.
Station Eleven was the winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2015, and received high praise at publication. Six years on, it has garnered renewed interest and following. Apparently, both Station Eleven and the film Contagion, starring Matt Damon and Jude Law, are topping must-read, must-watch lists in the midst of this global coronavirus crisis.
But why DO we gorge on fictional post-apocalyptic nightmares while the very threat of one unfolds inexorably around us?
The reason’s surely complex, but it would probably help explain why people slow to gawk when passing horrific car accidents too. And why we have a 24 hour news cycle, always breaking something terrible, pulling in click-click-click-click-clicks, every hour. It’s also why you just can’t keep that tongue away from your aching tooth. Something like: it hurts; I need to feel it.
Bad news sells. It does. Disaster transfixes us. And fiction exploring something of what we’re going through, what we’re feeling and fearing; it seizes us. Post-apocalyptic fiction evokes our mortality, yet affirms our humanity, all while reminding us—importantly—that we are living in the here and now.
We’re. Here. Now.
I confess I love reading dystopian/post-apocalyptic books. Here’s some of my all time favourites from this genre…
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
The Stand, by Stephen King
World War Z, by Max Brooks
Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
The Passage, by Justin Cronin
Wool, by Hugh Howey
I am Legend, by Richard Matheson
Perhaps if we’re all holed up for a few weeks under social isolation, some of these might even make it to your reading pile. I know I’ve been busy hoarding books ready for possible self-quarantine in my home library. (Just kidding. I always hoard books like bookstores are closing down.)
Finally, spare a thought for publishers. With all this morbidly enthralling COVID-19 drama going on around us right now—imagine how many dystopian/post-apocalyptic manuscripts they’ll have coming through submissions piles in about, oh, say —12-18 months time. Hehehe!
Take care of yourselves, and each other,
xx Averil