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| A Plague of Dragons, by Justin Gerard |
Like a lot of people, my reading list is determined by various factors. Mood, certainly. Passing fancies? Absolutely. Even current events can be the nudge that suddenly pushes a title to the top of my reading list. Hence, Albert Camus' The Plague. Yeah, yeah: this was the book to read during the past months of pestilence in America, so I wasn't doing anything unique. Be that as it may, having now read it, I am much wiser for the experience as Camus description of an unremarkable town gripped by plague served to bring understanding to events I witnessed during America's trial by virus.
Hmm. "...Past months of pestilence in America." Those are words I never thought I would have cause to write. What a remarkable thing to experience in the high-tech 21st Century world. As we lounged in the comfort we conjured from our domination of the material world, we thought we were masters of all we surveyed. Pride goeth before the fall, as the old adage warns, and indeed our pride as wizards of the biological world would in the early months of 2020 take a mighty blow. An old enemy - mankind's oldest enemy, in fact - would reveal itself as being still fit for battle and ready to take advantage of the modern world's complacency. Plague had returned, much to the astonishment of its soon-to-be victims.
Coincidentally, the propensity of mankind to be taken unawares by plague is precisely what Albert Camus observed in the opening moments of his novel, The Plague:
"Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of reoccurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from out of a blue sky.
Why are people always so surprised by its return?
