What more apt reading material for these days of plague, I mean lockdown, than Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, penned in 1772--a fictional account of one man's experiences in the year 1665, in which the bubonic plague struck the city of London. In fact, there are many choices for plague books, and so I decided the reading of these would be a fitting hobby as long as I'm stuck in my little room.
Defoe is not a great writer, and this novel, like Robinson Crusoe, is uneven, a bit clunky, sometimes engaging, sometimes merely tedious. But it is interesting for a comparison of plague times as well as the human response, which, perhaps surprisingly, was in that time rather similar to what we are seeing in our own time, with social distancing, for instance, and with slow, incompetent, and even secretive response from the authorities.
Defoe is not a great writer, and this novel, like Robinson Crusoe, is uneven, a bit clunky, sometimes engaging, sometimes merely tedious. But it is interesting for a comparison of plague times as well as the human response, which, perhaps surprisingly, was in that time rather similar to what we are seeing in our own time, with social distancing, for instance, and with slow, incompetent, and even secretive response from the authorities.
No comments:
Post a Comment