I have been reading The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
But the book PLODS. Why so long? Why is it taking me so long to finish the damn thing? I can’t quite put my finger on it. There’s too much extraneous stuff included. I’m 200 pages in, and we’re still only in September 1918. The epidemic hasn’t even peaked yet. I’m actually IMPATIENT by that. I think: “Come on, let’s get to the death. Let’s get to the mass graves. Come on now. Wrap it up, wrap it up.”
I’m now at the point where literally my response to the whole book is: “Yeah. Okay. I GOT it. Millions dead. Whatever. I GOT IT. So????”
But I’ll be damned if I’m gonna put it down now. I’ve already invested so much time in the damn thing.
I’m also reading Annie Proulx’s 2 collections of Wyoming short stories now as well. I need to counter the boring stupid epidemic (millions dead. Whatever) with some fantastic prose, and great stories.
1918 influenza epidemic. What a big yawn.
My dad’s father died in the epidemic. He was a dirt-poor farmer in Kansas and struggled to keep food on the table for his wife and son. When the epidemic hit, he was dead in a few days. His widow (my Grandma Florence) couldn’t keep the farm going so she sold it for a few dollars and moved in with her parents. She took in sewing and laundry for the next twenty years and did all the household chores for her elderly parents and growing son, until she got hired by Boeing as a riveter during World War II.
Dad was only 2 when his dad died, so there weren’t many stories about “before” the epidemic – just the “after.” The epidemic, the drought, the Great Depression – seemed to me that my father’s entire growing up was sepia-toned, like Diane Arbus photographs from the same era, or like “Paper Moon” without the comic relief of a Trixie Delight.
Stevie – Wow. So so hard to comprehend, it really is. And bless you for the Trixie Delight reference. “This little girl’s gotta go winkie-tinkie …” and her little long-suffering black maid? That girl was hysterical.
But back to the epidemic.
The book sucks – which is kind of a bummer. I know exaclty which chapters I would cut out of it – to make it a better read. The actual medical stuff – and the scientists – is FAScinating.
I guess I’ll read your reports on it rather than try to stumble through it myself :)
Seems like a book about the after-effects of the epidemic might be pretty fascinating, too – the lives changed, the futures circumscribed, etc.
LOVE Trixie and her maid, so funny! God, I miss Madeline Kahn.
Stevie …have u seen Judy Berlin? Its Madeline’s last film…its lovely..she’s lovely…i loved her.
For some reason, I thought her awesome performance in Nixon was her last film – I didn’t realize there was more!
I have never seen Judy Berlin – now remind me: is that Barbara Barrie? Am I nuts?
Hi Mitchell! No, I haven’t seen Judy Berlin! Gotta go and rent it. There’s no such thing as enough Madeline, is there?
I felt the same way reading Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose, most difficult NON-FICTION book I’ve ever read (then again, I never got through Ulysses and The Sound and the Fury, so take my opinion with a grain of salt):
“Steve, buddy, look I’m into the Corps of Discovery as much as you are but footnotes and appendices are your friend! You don’t need to put ALL your research into the body of the text…”
(Sidenote: my dad a HUGE history buff, never got though the book. It’s written in such a way that you can’t scan through the sections of detail that you don’t care about.)
Great point, JFH – yeah, this author puts all of his research into the main text. So we have two pages alone on how the secretarial staff worked with the doctors at Johns Hopkins – I’m not kidding – 2 pages … Uhm … why? BRING ON THE DEATH! No, just kidding – I don’t mean to make light of the epidemic. But it seemed that the writer didn’t hone in on his story – and kept getting distracted by tangential details. I’m finding it very tough going.
You should instead read Flu : The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic, by Gina Kolata. That’s the exciting one.
I think Barry was just so fascinated by his subject matter that he shotgunned everything he had. It really needed to be 3 or 4 books.
Sheila, have you read Katherine Anne Porter’s “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”?
Laura – I haven’t – but he quotes it a lot – and now I feel i MUST read it! Good?
triticale – wow! Thank you!!! The topic really does interest me – I want to read a GOOD book about it – thanks for the tip!
Yeah.
But I went over to Amazon to make sure I spelled her name right, and here I found this:
“Pale Horse, Pale Rider is one of the finest American novels of all time. Long before nonfiction books about dying and coming back to life became popular, Katherine Anne Porter wrote this brilliant story about life and death during the influenza epidemic near the end of World War I. Unlike any other book I have read on this subject, she successfully captures the perspective of the beauty of death eclipsing the beauty of life. The book further develops this theme to explain how our perspective shifts back towards favoring life, as the memory of death retreats.
Like all great novels, this one transcends its obvious theme into a broader one — the meaning of the inevitable death that ends each of our lives . . . and what life means in this context. One of the fascinating plot complications that she uses in this book is showing how “duty” to life usually means increasing the likelihood of death. As a result, you see death more visibly in front of you through this book than you ever will in every day life.”
After I read this person’s review I thought, dang, maybe I didn’t read the story carefully enough. I just read it for the story.
It’s kind of stream-of-consciousness while she’s getting sick, and in and out of delirium, and you have to piece together what’s really happening.
Beautiful writing. Very sad.
The thing that amazes me is, I never even heard of the epidemic of 1918 until about a year ago. I’m 34, educated, informed, etc. I never heard of the epidemic in history books, etc. Not until I was watching something comparing the current possible bird-flu/s, and the program’s speculation as to what animal it jumped from. Anyway, so many deaths, I was shocked I hadn’t heard about it until that point.
Bleagh. I’m sorry to hear that the writer did a poor job with the topic. (I do have the “other” flu book, the one triticale mentioned, I’ve just not read it yet).
Disease can make a tremendously gripping and suspenseful topic if it’s done right. But it sounds like the author of this one went into too many digressions. (Sometimes I found Richard Preston did that, with his books on ebola and smallpox. It was like, ok, ok, the woman found a hole in her safety-suit and she was in a room with infected monkeys….and you’re taking a break to talk about some nun who died in Germany?)
I have to be careful when I read books about disease though, at the wrong time they can make me go all Adrian Monk and want to autoclave my flatware and never leave the house…
I used to work at a bookstore that did employee recommendations. One day when I was writing up my recommendation for that book, an older gentleman walked up to the info desk to ask for help in locating something. When he saw the book he started into this whole incredibly sad story about growing up in an orphanage because his father died of the flu and then his mother a short while later. He was younger than ten years old when that happened. It’s an encounter that will stay with me for a while, I think.
ricki – Yeah – It is obvious he has a lot of passion for the topic, but there are too many thrulines. One is the spread of the disease itself. This is my favorite part. One is the scientists who hunkered down to figure out what to do. Amazing stuff. But … do I need to know the intimate biographical details of each one? I’m getting a bit lost … I forget who is who … Welch, Paul Lewis .. .they’re all kind of blending together in my mind now.
But the story itself is so so scary.
Need to read a better book on the topic, most definitely.
Marti – wow. Just … wow.
Man, I read this book about six months ago and I had the exact same reaction. It was great, but I just kept thinking, “End! ENNNNDDDD!”
Mark – I am so so glad to know it’s not just me!!
I hate to put a book down – but I’m puttin’ this one down.