I’ve often wondered how people repeopled in the past after surviving a catastrophic event like the Spanish Influenza or the end of a World War, a shattering earthquake, a volcanic eruption, or a tsunami. I don’t believe it’s simple survival. I think life has a fundamental need and ability, if given a chance, of bouncing back to being productive and good (and yes, this perception is based on the human judgment of what is productive and good.)
After researching the WWII American liberation of Japanese
prisoners of war in Manila, the Philippines for my short story, “Strangler
Fig,” two situational aspects have stayed with me: 1) the established reality
for everyone in the camp, guards and prisoners alike immediately switched the moment
the American tanks rolled through the front gate. Civilian prisoners went to
sleep captive and woke up free again. Guards instantly changed roles and became
prisoners. Everyone’s day-to-day reality literally flipped 180 degrees within
minutes; and 2) even in the most horrible, heart-rendering, and godawful
moments, human responses fundamentally remained human – for better or worse.
As crime fiction writers, how can we incorporate this twisty
type of perceptive change into our stories? Are these twists a writerly tool to
be used?
The research I adored most was uncovering the oh-so-human
touches. For instance, when the American Army nurses were liberated from the
internment camp, guess what they asked for first. These career women had been
starved, deprived, brutalized, and imprisoned for three long war years. What
did they want most? Coffee? Cigarettes? Scotch? Wine? Not on your life. When
the Red Cross arrived, these nurses ripped what hospital sheets they had left
to make stylish turbans and asked for lipstick because they knew that the war
correspondents and Life photographers were on their way, and they wanted
to look their best. These were professional Army nurses. They had a reputation
to maintain.
So here we are in June, battered and bruised by our own
plague year experience. As we head deeper in 2021 with reactivated in-person
meetings and crime fiction conferences like Killer Nashville and Bouchercon
NOLA, I’m amazed to find myself suddenly dropped back into the buzzy
pre-conference mix of panel and moderator selections, program ad copy designs,
short story anthology selections, and new panel author introductions as if
nothing had happened. Life is rolling merrily along. This idea would have
seemed inconceivable to me six months ago as I worked from my kitchen in yoga
pants.
In January, I was terrified to go to the grocery store
without a mask and hand sanitizer. Today, for lunch, I attended an open-air
market and festival.
Did everything including my perception change simply because
I got a shot?
And what does a significant flip in perception mean for us
as writers? Will we use COVID-19 isolation in new stories, or ignore it by
developing timelines that bypass the pandemic and leave it out? Will readers even
be interested in reading a story that involves so much terrible self-isolation?
The quarantine held all of us in its global death grip. Have we had enough? Will the
COVID-19 experience turn out to be like the 9/11 World Trade Center terror, a
hit to our collective consciousness that gets hinted at but never fully
explored? Or, after a year or two or three, will the 2020 pandemic fade into
history like the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor, honored and remembered by a
dwindling few?
And yet, it is the writers who string the words together to
make the stories we all remember, bringing to life the people, the history, and
the emotions all humans share. Homer with Paris and Helen, Hector and Achilles
at Troy. The poetry of Sappho and of Rumi. Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra,
and Henry V. All of the great and the meek and the nameless in one long
continuous line, kept alive and vibrant in that sacred space where all are
“freshly remembered.” And all are revealed again the minute someone pulls a
book off a dusty shelf, cracks it open and reads.
The pandemic will always be with us. I don't plan to write about it, but on occasion, my characters will pull a fabric face mask out of a drawer.
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful and thoughtful blog. Pandemic survival did create an analogy of sorts between the WWII nurses and the pandemic. Once vaccinated, social media feeds were filled with expressions of two-tiered first actions. First we looked forward to hugging our non-pod family and friends. Second was visiting the hair salons. We were all getting ready for our close-ups.
ReplyDeleteAs I read this I am revisiting the question of where the pandemic belongs in my fiction. Now that the worst seems to be passing, I can visualize using the events in short stories, but not in longer fiction, except, as Margaret notes above, in passing.
Good morning, Margaret and Kait
ReplyDeleteFacemasks are now iconic. Future archaeologists will hit that layer in the landfills and now which year it was. I haven't written a story set in 2020 yet but pulling a mask out of desk drawer is a detail that will immediately resonate with readers especially if they're not sure of the story's timing. I'm not sure about writing a pandemic isolation novel - would it be similar to a locked room mystery using suspense and horror elements?
Those alive remember where they were when they heard about the Pearl Harbor attack; they remember Kennedy’s assassination; they remember what they were doing as the planes hit the World Trade Center towers. I lived through much of the polio epidemic, but I have very little personal memory of life before and after the Salk and Sabin vaccines—or the controversies over faulty manufacture of some of the doses resulting in inducing polio. My grandparents never talked about the 1918 flu pandemic.
ReplyDeleteOne of my WIPs takes place chronologically when characters should be locked down -- I am ignoring everything having to do with the pandemic for that novel and the next one.
Good morning, Jim -
ReplyDeleteIs your WIP part of a pre-existing series? I've been wondering how COVID-19 and timing might impact a series since readers have been keeping up with the characters and timeline. Will they expect to see a pandemic impact? I'm curious to see how this plays out.
Such interesting questions (like you, I am interested in how Jim's decision plays out).
ReplyDeleteI put my series characters in a pandemic-specific short story called "Lockdown Blues" which I wrote almost exactly a year ago. It's a locked-room mystery in reverse (the solving of the crime takes place entirely in one room, even though the crime happens outside those walls). I just read it again for the first time -- the hopefulness at the end is a bit heartbreaking. Neither my characters nor I expected the death toll to be 600,000.
I wrote it mainly to process my own feelings. But it felt like a necessary stepping stone for my characters to take if I was to continue writing them, necessary for me as a writer to have that in their backstory. Because I think it's still too soon for readers to want to spend book-time in a pandemic. I know I wouldn't.
Hi Tina - good morning.
ReplyDeleteProcessing the pandemic through a series character short story - what a great idea. It's like leap frogging over 2020. I know its early days yet, but any ideas on how you'll incorporate COVID-19 into your backstory?
You do pose interesting questions, Martha. I think it depends on the type of story. I see people wanting to indulge and forget all about Covid-19. Here on Hatteras Island, the tourists are playing out their isolation and fear by doing the exact opposite. It's party central. So, if a writer is in the entertainment market--they won't write about Covid-19 unless it is a memory. But if a writer is in the noir market, I can see a twisty dark story emerging as a result. In the literary market, I can see a new Grapes of Wrath emerging, which will win a Pulitzer and/or become an epic film watched for decades by film students.
ReplyDeleteHi Elaine - good morning!
ReplyDeleteYou make great points. For some reason, when I consider a dark, twisty noir-ish COVID-19 story, I wondering how Patricia Highsmith or Shirley Jackson would have worked it. On another note, how will the pandemic be reflected in movies going forward? In songs? During the Black Death, there were all of these images of Death stalking the living. Will it be seen in our paintings, too?
Martha, "repeopling" is my favorite new word!
ReplyDeleteAll through the pandemic, I couldn't halp but think of Poe's story, the Masque of the Red Death, and I just flashed to it again when Elaine wrote of the party on the Outer Banks. Someone will write THE covid story, but it won't be me. I write cozy mysteries, and, although murder does visit my peaceful corner of the world, the pandemic will not.
Hi Shari - I'm happily repeopling as fast as I can. I think you're right about wondering who will write the COVID-19 story. I wonder if it will come from an international source (versus domestic) to present the larger world-wide impact and perspective? God bless whoever picks that up.
ReplyDeleteMartha and Shari, I wonder who's going to write that story too--like you said, bless 'em. But it won't be me.
ReplyDeleteOnce of the themes I work with in my series is how past trauma never really leaves you; it rewrites your circuits, in some cases, your very DNA. Faulkner had it right -- the past is never past. Like us, our characters will carry the pandemic forward in how they process current events. Mine already live with PTSD in some form or fashion, and the pandemic will become another layer of that. Whether the unnecessary panic when they're in a room of unmasked strangers or the continuing mistrust of their fellow citizens or the anger from hundreds of thousands of deaths that didn't have to happen, there are some many ways to bear this burden, no matter what current murder they'll be investigating.
Very interesting post, Martha. My father was in the Philippines when the Japanese invaded and experienced the Bataan Death March. He was transported to Japan, where he worked as slave labor in the steel mills there until freed at the end of WWII. So he experienced exactly what you talk about. He never spoke of his experiences, and neither did he ever say anything denigrating about the Japanese--at least he didn't to his family. I would like to think someone in Japan had been kind to him. He died at 48 as a result of his treatment, which left him with a bad heart.
ReplyDeleteHi Tina - you make a great point. We're all affected by the pandemic post-COVID-19, and it would affect our characters in subtle ways even if the topic isn't directly presented in the story, like the fallout from violence or a murder. This has been a great discussion. I'll need to do some re-thinking on my stories going forward to address this.
ReplyDeleteAnd Grace, my grandfather was with the 3rd Marines in the Pacific arena. Pop was the reason I did the research and wrote the Strangler Fig story. I wanted his experience to be remembered although, like your father, he never spoke of his war experience. I think he wanted to protect us from it and after doing the research, I know why.