A Missive for these Troubling Times
This isn’t a guide because everybody and their dog is writing one but rather a letter of sorts (a missive), to the people who are currently at home, to the people who have to go out in the world to work, and to the people who still don’t know exactly what’s going on right now with regards to the Coronavirus (hereafter referred to as COVID-19).
When I was younger, I used to be somewhat of an isolationist, and this state appropriately corresponded to my thankfully short libertarian phase. Nobody understood me, I didn’t understand anybody else, and most significantly, neither of us cared to remedy that state. But as I grow older, I realized that, to return to the universe of cliché, no man (or woman) is an island and while the world is technically advanced in ways it’s never been before, the nature of humanity hasn’t been fundamentally altered, or so I must believe. There’s a quote by James Baldwin that comes to mind here: “You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. There is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks he is alone.” My biggest secret is that I’m much more of an optimist than I formally propagated myself to be for much of my life. I believe in the goodness of man and the kindness of our neighbors and the existence of love of all kinds and no matter how much I’m faced with evidence to the contrary, I still continue to believe. Perhaps that makes me immature and naïve or perhaps it makes me stronger than all those outraged cynics who masquerade as the most intelligent of realists.
Semi-relatedly, this weekend, I watched the 3rd season of the Spanish teen soap, Elite, on Netflix. The show has been described as Gossip Girl crossed with Pretty Little Liars but in actuality, is better than both of those shows. I’ll refrain from spoiling the entire plot but the general premise of the show is 3 working class students are offered scholarships to a ritzy private school and the show explores their misadventures there, including an involvement in a series of mysterious and interrelated deaths. Unlike so many other shows featuring teenagers, Elite is very good at writing its characters as age appropriate, by which I mean, even if the actors themselves are somewhat older than their 17-18 year old characters, they aren’t written to be older than they are; in othe words, they behave and talk like actual teenagers without sounding like 30-something Brooklyn (or rather, Madrid since the show is Spanish) hipsters who haven’t willingly spoken to someone under the age of 21 for a decade.
But, my point in bringing up Elite is that the show, especially during the final episodes of the third season, beautifully portrayed the underlying unity among the show’s main characters that emerged to transcend individual pettiness and interpersonal conflicts which had dominated plotlines for the previous 20 something episodes. I’m a huge fan of Gossip Girl (as everybody that knows me is well aware of)but my main issue with that show is that everybody, especially Dan and Jenny Humphrey, seem way too easily forgiven. And of all things that are unbelievable about that show (although as someone that went to college with a lot of NYC private school kids, I’d argue that the show depicts that particular group a lot more accurately than they care to admit), the lack of emotional consequences for the Humphreys seem most egregious to me. I mean, Dan shares vicious gossip about Serena and her friends for a full decade and then marries her, which felt unearned to say the least. But conversely, what I really loved about Elite is that while the characters do unforgivable things to each other, the show is good at delineating that while there are some seemingly unforgivable things that ultimately are forgotten in times of grief and sorrow, there are some things that will always endure.
Of late, I’ve been thinking a lot about On Immunity, a 2014 book by Eula Biss about the importance of vaccinating children which makes a lot of sense given the nature of our world right now. And even though the multiple public library systems I’m a member of have several week waiting lists for the book, the entirety of it is available on Google Books so take advantage of it while you can. In any case, the two parts of the book which have stayed with me in the 6 years since I first read it are the dedication, “For other mothers, with gratitude to mine” and the last two sentences in the book: “However, we choose to think of the social body, we are each other’s environment. Immunity is a shared space – a garden we tend together.” I want to say before I end this post with a series of recommendations that it’s a really hard time to be alive and yet, I’m glad to be alive and no matter who you are or where you came from or how you came across this post I hope you reach that place as well.
To Read:
To understand the times that we live in:
Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson: I’ve read this book about the yellow fever pandemic in the early days of the United States probably a dozen times between the ages of 9 and 14 and I can’t recommend it enough
On Immunity by Eula Biss: already discussed but to reiterate, a beautiful and necessary piece of writing now and always
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: to remember what it’s like to be human and why we shouldn’t play God
The Plague by Albert Camus: on destiny and the human condition in time of trouble and what happens when it’s all over (supposedly)
Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger: a study on how things get popular
Rats, Lice, and History by Hans Zinsser: on the history of typhus through the centuries
The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrara: originally written in Spanish, this book is a crime novel set during an epidemic and it’s revolutionary in more ways than one
Dread: How Fear and Fantasy Have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to Avian Flu by Philip Alcabes: I read this for a senior seminar on epidemics during college and it’s illuminating just how eternal disease is
Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa by Joan Jacobs Brumberg: again, I read this during my senior year of college for my class on epidemics and it was sobering to see how illness is ingrained into our society in a million and a half ways.
To escape from the times that we live in:
Classics: Jane Austen (Emma is my #1 girl), Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities is my personal favorite), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment is probably the best book of all time and I don’t say that lightly)
Romance novels: Sarah MacLean, Lisa Kleypas, Tessa Dare, Alisha Rai…. The list goes on and I have more specific recommendations in other places but my main takeaway is, stay away from Jasmine Guillory’s books which are in desperate need of an editor
Anything that’s not the news
To Watch (based on my own preferences):
Elite (as I mentioned before)
The first 2.5 seasons of Gossip Girl
Gilmore Girls
The Winx Club (the entire series is on YouTube here)
Anything historical on Masterpiece (or elsewhere) because we need a distraction from our present now more than ever
To Do:
Read (as mentioned before)
Hug your dogs
Sleep a lot