Ever since the COVID pandemic hit in 2020, I’ve been eager to read novels that explore what COVID was, and continues to be like. At the time, writers joked incessantly about how Shakespeare wrote King Lear during an episode of plague in Renaissance England. How would we all use our time? Would we be writing masterpieces? Would the COVID pandemic generate a new, thrilling era of artistic production? Would everyone be writing a pandemic novel?
Seems like: no. Understandably, most people did not write incredible novels in 2020 and 2021, when they were busy homeschooling their kids, or trying not to go crazy while living in isolation, or barely surviving while working on the front lines. Less understandably, to my mind, as soon as the COVID vaccine hit, creative interest in the experience of living through a pandemic evaporated.
Read Full Article »