A 432-page dystopia
would not be my preferred reading at any time let alone in these dire
days. But that is what members of the book club chose at their last
(online) meeting, for discussion next time. Owing to the 9-hour
difference between Stockholm and the location where I am stranded, I
had no say in the matter. But the next meeting is due to take place
two hours later, to accommodate me.
Thus I have been
struggling to get through at least a substantial part of the work,
reading reluctantly in fits and starts and escaping for relief after
each chapter to anything from Sherlock Homes (I hadn't read all the
tales) and The Three Musketeers (I hadn't read that either) to books
on photography, publishing and making soup, (all downloaded free of
charge from you-know-where.) Almost to my own surprise, the one that
has intrigued me most, as it would seem to contradict my distaste for
the dismal, is Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year 1665.
Those were very
different times when it comes to medical knowledge and resources. And
there was no means of rapidly transporting people from one country
and continent to another, taking the disease with them. Yet there are
some remarkable similarities with the present situation. Despite all
the advances of the past three-to-four centuries, knowledge of the
current affliction and how to cure or prevent it is woefully weak.
Then as now, there were the unscrupulous, quick to take advantage of
our ignorance and fears, nowadays with a surge in cyber fraud, at
that time by going around offering to sell wonder potions that were
either useless or dangerous.
Then, although
transport may have been very different in 1665, the first two cases
Defoe mentions were Frenchmen in London. Moreover, many of the
wealthier citizens left the city for the countryside, thus spreading
the disease to rural areas that might have remained free of it. And
while surrounding boroughs recorded alarming increases in the number
of fatalities, the City of London suffered much less owing to
draconian measures announced by the Lord Mayor, something of an
equivalent to the lock-down of our day but very much harsher, with
imprisonment for anyone who did not comply.
To some extent the
measures were counter-productive as nobody was allowed to enter or
leave a house where someone had contracted the disease. Such a house
was watched night and day. It meant that others in the household who
might have escaped the illness were condemned to stay where they were
most likely to get it and according to Defoe, many died as a result.
Not pleasant reading,
yet I turn to it in preference to Atwood's fictional Gilead, which I
have now finally decided to abandon.
https://stanleybloom.weebly.com
