The coro-n-avirus, fair to say, isn’t good for the econ-o-my: not for the economies of indi-vid-ual nations, and not for the world econ-o-my as a whole. But that’s not to say that every indus-try has tak-en a hit. This is hard-ly the worst time in his-to-ry to pro-duce and sell toi-let paper, for instance, nor to fur-nish the pack-ages of neces-si-ties demand-ed by “prep-pers” who fore-see the end of soci-ety as we know it. One prob-a-bly would-n’t wish to take the place of the mak-ers of Coro-na beer right now, but despite the now-unfor-tu-nate brand name, their sales, too, have stayed strong. And for pub-lish-ers around the world who have been con-sid-er-ing a reprint of Albert Camus’ La Peste, now is most assured-ly the time.
The Plague, as it’s titled in Eng-lish, “fol-lows the inhab-i-tants of Oran, an Alger-ian town that is sealed off by quar-an-tine as it is rav-aged by bubon-ic plague,” writes The Guardian’s Ali-son Flood. “Pen-guin is rush-ing through a reprint of its Eng-lish trans-la-tion to meet demand,” but last week stock had already sold out on Ama-zon.
“The pub-lish-er added that sales in the last week of Feb-ru-ary were up by 150% on the same peri-od in 2019.” The nov-el has also become a best-seller in Italy — a coun-try espe-cial-ly hard hit by the virus — and sales “have also risen sharply in France, accord-ing to the French books sta-tis-tics web-site Edi-s-tat,” to the tune of “around 300% on the pre-vi-ous year.” I live in South Korea, one of the coun-tries most severe-ly hit by the coro-n-avirus, and recent-ly wrote an essay about read-ing The Plague here in the Los Ange-les Review of Books.
Though Camus tells a sto-ry set in real city and about a spe-cif-ic dis-ease, his lit-er-ary ren-der-ing of a com-mu-ni-ty iso-lat-ed and under invis-i-ble siege has the uni-ver-sal qual-i-ty of myth. Each main char-ac-ter — the tire-less doc-tor Rieux, the sui-ci-dal-turned-gre-gar-i-ous Cot-tard, the human-ist out-sider Tar-rou — exem-pli-fies a dif-fer-ent arc of indi-vid-ual reac-tion to the cri-sis. Even in Seoul I noticed cer-tain par-al-lels: Camus’ descrip-tion of the “com-mer-cial char-ac-ter of the town” and the work habits of its peo-ple, of the sud-den runs on par-tic-u-lar items thought to have pre-ven-ta-tive prop-er-ties (pep-per-mint lozenges, in the nov-el), of the fierce pub-lic attacks on the gov-ern-ment when-ev-er the strug-gle turns espe-cial-ly har-row-ing. Read-ers the world over will feel a grim sense of recog-ni-tion at the Oran author-i-ties’ unwill-ing-ness to call the plague a plague, due to “the usu-al taboo, of course; the pub-lic mustn’t be alarmed, that wouldn’t do at all.”
Camus wrote The Plague in 1947, five years after his best-known work The Stranger and just three years after the real Oran’s most recent out-break of the bubon-ic plague. (You can get a primer on Camus’ life, work, and reluc-tant-ly exis-ten-tial-ist phi-los-o-phy in the ani-mat-ed School of Life video above.) Like The Stranger, and like all great works of art, The Plague per-mits more than one inter-pre-ta-tion: J.M. Coet-zee sug-gests one read-ing of the nov-el “as being about what the French called ‘the brown plague’ of the Ger-man occu-pa-tion, and more gen-er-al-ly as about the ease with which a com-mu-ni-ty can be infect-ed by a bacil-lus-like ide-ol-o-gy.” But each era has its own read-ing of The Plague — in the year 2003, for instance, crit-ic Mari-na Warn-er offered it up as a “study in ter-ror-ism” — and of all its read-ers and re-read-ers in this his-tor-i-cal moment, how many could resist an entire-ly more lit-er-al inter-pre-ta-tion?
Relat-ed Con-tent:
The His-to-ry of the Plague: Every Major Epi-dem-ic in an Ani-mat-ed Map
Free Cours-es on the Coro-n-avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg-ing Pan-dem-ic
The Absurd Phi-los-o-phy of Albert Camus Pre-sent-ed in a Short Ani-mat-ed Film by Alain De Bot-ton
See Albert Camus’ His-toric Lec-ture, “The Human Cri-sis,” Per-formed by Actor Vig-go Mortensen
Based in Seoul, Col-in Mar-shall writes and broad-casts on cities, lan-guage, and cul-ture. His projects include the book The State-less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen-tu-ry Los Ange-les and the video series The City in Cin-e-ma. Fol-low him on Twit-ter at @colinmarshall or on Face-book.
By an unusu-al “coincidence“I found Albert Camus’ The Plague and Stephen King’s The Stand both at the Good-will store sev-er-al months before there was
any men-tion of the coro-n-avirus in the news. I’m still read-ing Albert Camus The Plague, for the sec-ond time, which I think is far more philo-soph-i-cal than Stephen King who I think is more of a thriller sto-ry writer. But both books cer-tain-ly col-or my per-cep-tion of what is hap-pen-ing now.
“En folke-fiende” (An Ene-my of the Peo-ple ) is an 1882 play by Hen-rik Ibsen. Ibsen wrote it in response to the out-cry against his pre-vi-ous play, GHOSTS, which chal-lenged the hypocrisy of 19th-cen-tu-ry moral-i-ty. The words “scan-dalous, degen-er-ate,” and “immoral” were hurled at both Ghosts and its author because it open-ly dis-cussed adul-tery and syphilis. There-fore, An Ene-my of the Peo-ple tells the sto-ry of a man who dares to speak an Incon-ve-nient Truth–and is pun-ished for it.
Dr. Stock-mann was naive about Pub-lic Health Sci-ences as well as human hypocrisy in think-ing oth-ers would hon-or him for dis-cov-er-ing that the baths are poi-so-nous. He fails to real-ize that this find-ing is one which will cause tremen-dous finan-cial expense and extend-ed incon-ve-nience for every-one. I can-not but think of the many Pub-lic Health pro-fes-sion-als who are try-ing to prac-tice their sci-ence, yet find them-selves tram-pled by the media, the pub-lic, and those who can-not tol-er-ate it when some-one speaks the Truth to the Pow-er-ful.