I mean, I shouldn’t be surprised, because I started writing about 1918 in 1998*, and read Alfred Crosby, whose amazing book Epidemic and Peace, 1918 (later reworked as America’s Forgotten Pandemic) documented the hole in collective memory that 1918 had fallen into. 1/x
*when I went to the Norwegian Arctic with a research crew (headed by Canada's recently former Minister of Science) hoping to dig up victims' bodies from the permafrost.
They were not successful.
Yes, this was a long time ago. 2/x
They were not successful.
Yes, this was a long time ago. 2/x
Anyway, Crosby: His extraordinary insight was to realize that, unlike almost every other epidemic visited on humankind, for 1918 — one of the worst ever — there was no public or cultural memorial.
No Journal of the Plague Year, no Magic Mountain, no Angels in America. 4/x
No Journal of the Plague Year, no Magic Mountain, no Angels in America. 4/x
There were, at the time, two slender fictionalizations — William Maxwell's They Came Like Swallows, and Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider — which were not explicit, but laid the inexpressible trauma of 1918 between the lines.
This is fascinating, but also troubling. The 1918 flu was so devastating that its society could not figure out how to verbalize it, and submerged it instead.
We are now in the worst epidemic since 1918.
With no historical model, how can we learn how to make sense of now?
We are now in the worst epidemic since 1918.
With no historical model, how can we learn how to make sense of now?
