A Journal of the Plague Year 2022–chapter 262

Way out west…in another lifetime.

Monday, April 25

Hanging around this house like some aging truant has been a dog-eared copy of Wallace Stegner’s once-celebrated novel Angle of Repose. I’m reading it now. A tale of surprising people who reluctantly made their home in the wild American west, the novel won a Pulitzer in 1972—and immediately became the subject of controversy. 

Was the novel mediocre as some charged or, worst of all, middlebrow—unworthy of high honors? Some of its characters are renamed and fictionalized versions of true-life people. Did Stegner’s use of the real person’s actual words—Wikipedia says “the novel is directly based on the letters of Mary Hallock Foote, later published as A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West”—represent plagiarism…or an infringement on History?

Food for thought…maybe. In fact, lots of novels have trod on similar ground. Two that randomly come to mind are Don DeLillo’s 1988 Libra, which unhesitatingly dug around in the life of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald; and Philip Roth’s 2004 The Plot Against America, which offered an alternative past in which aviation hero and Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindberg ran against and defeated President Franklin Roosevelt. Did these novels not commit unpardonable sins—and pander to the kind of people who find actual history books boring?

(Roth attached a “true chronology of major figures” as a postscript to his alternate history lest any reader get carried away into fantasyland. QAnon is far from the only evidence that many citizens of our age are drawn toward Pizzagate delusions.)

However, rather than distorting the past in the manner of many cowboy movies or openly mythologizing it as in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, Stegner’s tale often works as a corrective to wide-eyed, heroic cowboys-vs.-Indians stories. The West, he tells us, was exploited and “developed” by the same sort of people who are today destroying the Amazon rain forest and leaning on workers from the corner Starbucks to sweatshops in Southeast Asia. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but many people would prefer a different version of the Old West.

One of Stegner’s main characters, Oliver Ward, works as a mining engineer in an 1870s California mining camp, where his wife Susan joins him. For a time, his life seems pleasant and productive. Then Susan realizes that he has been concealing from her the true sentiment among the camp’s workers. “The whole place is wormy with fear and hate,” he at last reveals, adding that the manager’s “way of handling that is to fire anybody who opens his mouth or gets the slightest out of line,” including one 14-year veteran discharged for breaking the rule that all purchases must be made at the company store. The man is fired and blacklisted—as are any others who would stand up for him.

Such company-town life was all too common in the U.S.A.—in fact, it IS common in the contemporary United States. You can say or do whatever you like—just not on company time. Just wait until self-described “free-speech absolutist” Elon Musk takes over Twitter. The Trumpist berserkers will have a field day, but truly interesting commentators on such subjects as Russian aggression in Ukraine, or on Musk himself, will find little place for expression.

Dinner: stuffed bell peppers, made in an instant via our new Instant Pot.

Entertainment: Having just watched the fascinating Kurosawa revenge flick The Bad Sleep Well, we will likely see another Japanese flick, Stray Dog.

A Journal of the Plague Year 2022–chapter 261

Words of local wisdom.

Tuesday, April 12

Just over two years ago, I amped up this blog so that it became a journal of daily life and current events under the then-new Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown. 

At that point, then-President Trump was denying the seriousness of the infection, there were a mere 2,100 deaths across the U.S. and 124,000 infected, with one-third of the deaths happening in New York City. 

The Times had begun a special obits section devoted to Covid victims, it was difficult to get face masks and toilet paper, and it would be almost a year before any vaccinations took place.

As of today, 984,000 Americans have died.

And nowadays, many people are tentatively welcoming the return of “normal,” as the daily average number of new cases hovers around 30,000.  And yet…coronavirus cases are ticking back up. One month after lifting an indoor mask mandate, Philadelphia has reinstated it.  In New York City, masks are not required in schools—but they are mandatory on mass transit and in hospitals.

I got my second booster shot—in other words, four total vaccination shots—on Friday (April 8). Unlike the panicky crush of two years back, this was no trouble: I made an online appointment at CVS pharmacy, reported on time, and was injected and on my way within 20 minutes.

I even got us a resupply of toilet paper while there. 

TP, plus two bars of health-giving Ghiradelli “intense dark” sea salt and almond chocolate. And three, free N-95 masks, which, I was surprised to note, seem a bit like the things you see construction workers wearing.

It was warm-ish last Friday, with temps around 60 degrees. Right now, the skies have cleared and it’s 54 degrees in East Hampton.

Dinner fixin’s.

Dinner: garlicky Cuban pork, marinated with orange juice, lime, olive oil, brown sugar, and oregano and cooked in the Instant Pot.

Entertainment: more movies by Hong Kong phenom Wong Kar Wai? In recent days we’ve seen the puzzling Chungking Express, the goofy-violent As Tears Go By, and the magnificent In the Mood for Love. There’s a prequel to the last of these,  Days of Being Wild, so we may watch that—or maybe it’s time to move on to other stuff.

A Journal of the Plague Year 2022–chapter 260

Friday, April 1

Two days ago, there was snow. Last night, pelting rain and frightening, moaning wind. This morning, April Fool’s Day, I was awakened by bright sunshine—but by noon, that’s all gone with clouds covering the sky. Still, the weatherman says it’s a bit warmer, at 51 degrees. It’s supposed to stay in the upper 40s to low 50s for a few days.

The news from Ukraine is still depressing, and the direction the war is taking is unclear. The Russians say they are now focusing on the eastern part of the country—but there are reports of continued conflict near Kyiv. The New Yorker correspondent Masha Gessen says not to believe anything Putin says, while a supposedly believable Russian poll suggests that the Fearless Leader is widely believed in his own country. Putin has seldom been more popular among the Russian people.

We worry about the war and about gerrymandering. The tales of Polish people taking Ukrainian refugees into their homes are inspiring–but could I stand to be so generous? I recently dreamed that I was staying at someone’s house. I was sooo grateful that they’d taken me in. Then I was told that I should be out of the house by 10 a.m.

Otherwise, we’re still focused on food. A new Instant Pot allowed me to make ropa vieja in under an hour and the ordinarily long-cooking wheat berries in around 25 minutes. I plan to make some grain bowls, using the wheat berries, wild rice, quinoa, and a variety of nuts and raw veggies. But tonight, we will have an Amy’s pizza as well.

Entertainment: after binging on Patricia Highsmith (The Cry of the Owl, The Two Faces of January, and more) I have turned to Dorothy B. Hughes’ In a Lonely Place. Sad to say, it’s similar but an inadequate substitute. We’re still viewing a lot of streaming video from The Criterion Channel: Last night, we saw the Alfred Hitchcock silent The Lodger (with Ivor Novello) and David Lean’s 1950 courtroom drama Madeleine. Tonight, perhaps, Marcel Carne’s Hotel du Nord.