In an essay in the March 30 issue of the New Yorker entitled “What Our Contagion Fables Are Really About,” Jill Lepore offers a wide-ranging, squirm-inducing discussion of the “literature of pestilence.” Early in the article she writes:
The literature of contagion is vile. A plague is like a lobotomy. It cuts away the higher realms, the loftiest capacities of humanity, and leaves only the animal. “Farewell to the giant powers of man,” Mary Shelley wrote in “The Last Man,” in 1826, after a disease has ravaged the world. “Farewell to the arts,—to eloquence.” Every story of epidemic is a story of illiteracy, language made powerless, man made brute.
But, then, the existence of books, no matter how grim the tale, is itself a sign, evidence that humanity endures, in the very contagion of reading. Reading may be an infection, the mind of the writer seeping, unstoppable, into the mind of the reader. And yet it is also—in its bidden intimacy, an intimacy in all other ways banned in times of plague—an antidote, proven, unfailing, and exquisite.
In case you can’t access the article via the link above, I’ve placed a pdf of it in the Google folder for this class. I’d be eager to read any comment you might have.
I personally do not like to read these types of books. I prefer, like now, to try to bury my head in the sand. Why? Because they are real possibilities-as we now see. Things I cannot control or fix. During 9-11 I could not watch the news and I turned (as the song says), to I Love Lucy re-runs. Currently, it is re-runs of Friends that brings me comfort. At my age, I have learned there is plenty to be afraid of without forcing myself to read a book that would only create more fear.”Reading is an infection, a burrowing into the brain: books contaminate, metaphorically, and even microbiologically.” If it is going to burrow in my brain, I prefer it to be pleasant.
You’ve identified here, Wendy, one of the key differences between art and entertainment. “Pleasantness” is not a meaningful measurement of art’s value since the purpose of art is to tell the truth and to find beauty in that truth. We seek out entertainment when we want diversion and comfort; we seek out art when we want the truth. We determine for ourselves which of these two provides the most meaningful sustenance.