Desperate times call for literary measures
In an post-apocalyptic world, would you be reaching for toilet paper — or Shakespeare?
In the great covid-19 pandemic of 2020, the bare, embattled toilet paper aisles of Australian stores have answered that question definitively. (The pages of Shakespeare are hopefully not going to become necessary quite yet for anyone in this emergency…)
But back 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 —and six years on, its garnered renewed interest once more. Some articles claim 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.
Why would we DO it to ourselves—gorge on post-apocalyptic nightmares while the very threat of one unfolds around us?!
The answer, simple or complex as you want to make it, surely also explains why people slow down to gawk when passing horrific car accidents. Or why we have a 24 hour news cycle, always breaking something terrible, pulling us to click click click click click on the hour, every hour. It’s why you just can’t keep that tongue away from your aching tooth: it hurts, I want to feel it.
I blame the insatiable human imagination. Bad news sells. It just does. Disaster transfixes us! And fiction which explores something of what we’re currently going through, captures us.
Post-apocalyptic fiction evokes our mortality and affirms our humanity, while reminding us—perhaps importantly—that we are living in the here and now; that we’re. here. now.
I confess I have quite a taste for the dystopian/post-apocalyptic genre. Here’s my all time favourites…
• 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 can’t finish here, however, without imploring you to spare a thought for our publishers…
With all this morbid imagination-seizing covid-19 drama going on around us right now—just imagine how many dystopian/post-apocalyptic manuscripts they’ll have coming through submissions piles in about 12-18 months time!
☺️ Averil
Survivalist essentials in 2020