These days, stuck at home as most of us are, we gotta keep busy. Currently I am re-reading The Plague by Albert Camus. It seemed timely, for obvious reasons, and I hadn't read it in at least 30 years. In case you are not familiar with the book, it's about a plague epidemic that breaks out in a small French town in Algeria during the 1940s. A horrible disease that had supposedly been eradicated years before, the new outbreak is fatal for everyone it touches.
Rather than my finding the book a depressing read, it's actually making me feel so much better about our little Covid-19 which is much more civilized most of the time, and even in the worst cases when it kills people. The plague as described by Camus is quite messy, not to mention horrific, wherein its victims develop horribly painful sores called "buboes" on their bodies, most especially in the groin area. After just 48 hours these gradually enlarging sores burst open and disgorge blood and pus, and then you die. It's quite gross.
Since the book's plague was a real thing and not just the horrible imaginings of Camus, you've got to be thankful that all we've had to deal with is a fever, a cough, a headache, some chills, and in the worst cases, pneumonia and breathing problems. I'd much rather go out gasping for air than screaming in agony and covered in blood and pus. See, every cloud really does have a silver lining! Besides, the book contains lovely passages despite its heinous subject:
"Amongst the heaps of corpses, the clanging bells of ambulances, the warnings of what goes by the name of Fate, amongst unremitting waves of fear and agonized revolt, the horror that such things could be, always a great voice had been ringing in the ears of these forlorn, panicked people, a voice calling them back to the land of their desire, a homeland. It lay outside the walls of the stifled, strangled town, in the fragrant brushwood of the hills, in the waves of the sea, under free skies, and in the custody of love. And it was to this, their lost home, towards happiness, they longed to return."
Rather than my finding the book a depressing read, it's actually making me feel so much better about our little Covid-19 which is much more civilized most of the time, and even in the worst cases when it kills people. The plague as described by Camus is quite messy, not to mention horrific, wherein its victims develop horribly painful sores called "buboes" on their bodies, most especially in the groin area. After just 48 hours these gradually enlarging sores burst open and disgorge blood and pus, and then you die. It's quite gross.
Since the book's plague was a real thing and not just the horrible imaginings of Camus, you've got to be thankful that all we've had to deal with is a fever, a cough, a headache, some chills, and in the worst cases, pneumonia and breathing problems. I'd much rather go out gasping for air than screaming in agony and covered in blood and pus. See, every cloud really does have a silver lining! Besides, the book contains lovely passages despite its heinous subject:
"Amongst the heaps of corpses, the clanging bells of ambulances, the warnings of what goes by the name of Fate, amongst unremitting waves of fear and agonized revolt, the horror that such things could be, always a great voice had been ringing in the ears of these forlorn, panicked people, a voice calling them back to the land of their desire, a homeland. It lay outside the walls of the stifled, strangled town, in the fragrant brushwood of the hills, in the waves of the sea, under free skies, and in the custody of love. And it was to this, their lost home, towards happiness, they longed to return."
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