newyorker--2020-03-30--China’s Struggles with Hospice Care

China’s Struggles with Hospice Care

Mu Zhixia discovered the lump in her left breast on an unseasonably warm night in March of 2014 .
At twenty-seven , she was strong and healthy , and hadn ’ t seen a doctor since giving birth to her son , Xuan , two years before .
But her mother , Sulin , told her not to take chances and marched her to their local hospital , in Pingding , a small city in the province of Shanxi .
A doctor conducted a swift examination and wrote a prescription .
“ Doesn ’ t she need a scan ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ !
” the doctor responded .
“ The medication will be enough.
” Zhixia dutifully took the pills , but after a few months the lump was still there , so Sulin accompanied her to a hospital in Yangquan , a nearby industrial city of 1.5 million people .
The doctors said that she needed immediate surgery .
As is typical with dire diagnoses in China , they did not tell Zhixia that she had breast cancer , informing only her mother .
Sulin , in turn , assured her daughter that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a biopsy revealed that the cancer had spread .
The doctors put Zhixia on a course of chemotherapy , and she was hospitalized for several weeks .
A year later , the cancer returned , and the doctor who had prescribed the chemo remarked casually that if they had followed it up with radiation the outcome might have been better .
Sulin wanted to know why they hadn ’ t done that , but she felt too intimidated to say anything .
In the next three years , Zhixia had four more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ frailer each time .
The cost of her treatments , a hundred thousand yuan ( almost fifteen thousand dollars ) , plunged the family into financial crisis .
The cancer progressed to her lymph nodes , her lungs , her bones .
Her body became so ravaged that she was almost unrecognizable .
When her son was taken to visit , he had to be prompted to call her Mother .
Shanxi is in the heart of China ’ s coal country , and has disproportionately high rates of esophageal and lung cancer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when her father , a farmer , died of esophageal cancer .
( Sulin remarried , but her second husband succumbed to lung cancer . )
Still , Zhixia grew up to be a sunny , optimistic woman .
Moonfaced , with high cheekbones , she liked to say that she met her father whenever she looked in the mirror .
She quit school after seventh grade and worked various jobs to help support the family .
When she was twenty-five , she met her husband , a coal miner named Zhang Wei @ @ @ @ @ @ @ illness , in the spring of 2017 , Wei felt a pain in his back so severe that he couldn ’ t lift up their son .
He didn ’ t go to a doctor : caring for Zhixia left little time , and he figured that he ’ d hurt himself while swimming .
Two weeks later , the pain was so bad that he couldn ’ t get out of bed .
When he finally went to a doctor , he was informed that he had a blood disorder .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told him to check in to the hospital right away .
Wei said that he needed to keep working , to pay for his wife ’ s treatment .
Wei died on a brisk fall day , three months later .
What pained Zhixia the most was knowing that he had been alone at the end .
His mother was too distraught to enter his hospital room , his father had been at work in the coal mines , Zhixia had been receiving another round of chemo , and her own mother was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ days after , Zhixia told her mother , “ Please don ’ t let me die.
” By then , she knew that she had cancer : her father-in-law , who was illiterate , had inadvertently let her see one of her medical reports .
Zhixia ’ s doctors told Sulin to begin thinking about funeral arrangements .
In desperation , she started asking around about other medical facilities , and a neighbor told her about a man named Li Youquan , who had opened a small private hospital on the outskirts of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ai Hospital—you ’ ai means “ friendship and love ” —and it had a unit devoted to hospice care , a concept still unfamiliar in China .
Few cultures relish talking about death , but in China the subject remains taboo .
Mentioning it is considered so unlucky that dying people are often reluctant to discuss arrangements with their families or even to make wills .
( Last year , “ The Farewell , ” an American film about a Chinese family that uses a wedding as an excuse to gather around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suspicions , was a breakout hit in the West , but it was largely ignored in China , where such stories are commonplace . )
As a result , fewer than a hundred and fifty institutions specialize in end-of-life care , in a country where nearly twenty per cent of the population—a quarter of a billion people—is sixty or older .
The U.S. , with some seventy million people over sixty , has more than fifty-five hundred such institutions .
In China , the family has traditionally provided care for the vulnerable : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; stockpile grain against famine , ” one proverb counsels .
Confucian expectations of filial piety remain strong , but for most Chinese they have become increasingly difficult to fulfill .
Dizzying economic expansion has made China ’ s population ever more mobile , and the one-child policy , in force from 1979 to 2015 , means that many adults have no siblings with whom to share the burden of caring for relatives .
Hundreds of millions of workers who have moved to the country ’ s booming cities can not do much @ @ @ @ @ @ @ villages than wire whatever money they can spare .
Rural areas also lack adequate public-health services .
Close to half the population lives in the countryside , but about eighty per cent of China ’ s medical facilities are concentrated in cities .
Health-care costs have risen sharply in recent years , and Chinese patients must navigate a byzantine system of government coverage .
Most people have basic insurance , but anything beyond routine care usually requires steep out-of-pocket payments .
The early stages of the coronavirus pandemic brought to light some of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system , including underinvestment in primary-care clinics and overreliance on huge , rigidly bureaucratic urban hospitals .
But , if the coronavirus exposed the country ’ s health-care challenges in their most acute form , the quieter crisis in end-of-life care reveals a chronic underlying condition , whose symptoms are at once brutally economic and deeply cultural .
Prosperity and medical advances have transformed the way Chinese people live , but they have done little to address the question of how they should die .
Li Youquan named the Friendship and Love Hospital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ founded , like most of China ’ s first hospitals , by Western missionaries .
American representatives of the Church of the Brethren arrived in the area in 1910 , and their hospital trained generations of doctors and nurses .
It closed not long before the Communists came to power , in 1949 , and expelled foreign missionaries .
But , as Li told me when I visited him last summer , almost everything in China runs in cycles : “ Sooner or later , what was banned will be reborn.
” Li @ @ @ @ @ @ @ early fifties , with alert eyes set in a frank , expressive face , and he comes from a family of farmers .
His route to providing palliative care was a circuitous one .
In the late eighties , he attended a vocational school that specialized in traditional Chinese medicine .
After graduating , he left traditional medicine behind and did an internship at the largest hospital in Yangquan , where he encountered an ultrasound machine for the first time , and was amazed .
“ In Eastern medicine , there is so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .
“ But with ultrasound you could actually see inside a patient ’ s body.
” After scraping together enough money to buy a machine , he started operating a clinic out of his house , near the village where he was born .
Charging a couple of dollars per scan , he found that there was good money to be made detecting tumors and pregnancies .

When I asked Zhang about his health, he had trouble explaining the details of his condition, something that Meiying told me is common among the people she sees. Until he was in his mid-fifties, he had never stepped inside a hospital, and rarely thought about his body as anything more than a machine from which he needed to extract as much work as possible. But one day, five years ago, he had coughed up enough blood to soak an entire handkerchief. When he visited the First People’s Hospital, in Yangquan, he was told that an operation was required, to biopsy a tumor on his spleen. He could not afford it, and, besides, there would be no one to care for him while he recovered. Seeking a second opinion, he ventured to Taiyuan, the provincial capital, but the verdict was the same. In the past three years, Zhang has twice stayed at Friendship and Love to receive intravenous infusions. The second time, he checked himself out early, against his doctor’s orders. It was harvest season, and Zhang had no one else to reap his corn.
I noticed a pair of faded calendars, years out of date, hanging above Zhang’s bed. One featured the face of President Xi Jinping. The other showed that of Jesus. Some Christians had given him the calendar a few years ago, he said, promising that Jesus could save him. Zhang started attending their meetings. “But Jesus did not cure me,” he said scornfully, adding that the Christians were no help at all with obtaining medication or I.V. infusions, or with harvesting the crops in his absence. “If neither Jesus nor his followers could do those basic chores, what are they good for?”
Our visit unfolded almost like a social call, but Meiying slipped in questions about the things she’d come to check up on. Zhang admitted that he still had trouble keeping food down. She asked after his younger son, who had recently been threatening suicide. Meiying had done what she could to help, getting in touch with the son on WeChat and telling him not to do anything rash. She advised Zhang to focus on taking care of himself, but his son’s problems and other family disputes agitated him. Every so often, he picked up his cigarettes and then, with a glance at Meiying, put them down. The senselessness of suicide, as he desperately clung to life, baffled him. “Life might be short and brutal, but the point is to survive,” he said.
At the end of our visit, he gave Meiying a bag of plums that he had picked from his own trees. After we left, Meiying observed that Brother Zhang’s case was not unusual. As people moved where the work was, the only people left in the villages were the very old, the very young, and the disabled. Shi Lizhen, the head nurse of the geriatric department at the first hospital Zhang visited, told me that when she started working, more than thirty years ago, elderly patients typically had six or seven children, two or three of whom could devote themselves entirely to their parents’ care. Those days were gone, and the hospital’s resources were so scarce that they couldn’t take inpatients who didn’t have around-the-clock caregivers. Some patients hired health aides, but many were too embarrassed to ask their children to help with the cost. Shi, who is fifty-seven, mentioned that her daughter lives in Beijing, seven hundred miles away, and is a mother herself. “When I look at my patients now, immobile in bed, I think about myself and what my future will look like,” she said.
One day during my stay in Yangquan, Li Youquan and I drove two hours to Taiyuan, to visit Shanxi Tumor Hospital, the province’s largest hospital and one of the first in China to specialize in cancer care. In its vast atrium, amid a sea of red banners bearing socialist slogans, there was a no-smoking sign and a poster warning of the link between smoking and cancer. Nearby, a man sat staring at his phone, a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth. In China, the messages on posters are sometimes a better guide to what is not happening than to what is. Other signs referred to anti-corruption policies and stipulated grave penalties for bribery and profiteering in health-care settings. But, in a dimly lit stairwell, there were phone numbers and notes scribbled on a concrete wall, advertising the services of people who could falsify almost any kind of medical paperwork—patient records, diagnoses, prescriptions, bills.
Shi Lizhen had told me that, in addition to outright corruption, there were many gray areas. Doctors at public hospitals receive paltry remuneration for patient consultations but much more when they order major procedures. As a result, surgeries are suspiciously common. For hospitals, drug sales are an important revenue stream, so overprescription is rife. Shi sometimes encounters patients who are fully recovered but are still being prescribed medication. She discreetly suggests that they ignore their prescriptions, but they usually tell her that they are afraid of offending the doctors. “So we reach a compromise,” she said. “The patient buys the medicine, so that the doctor gets paid, but they’ll just take it home instead of using it.”
In Taiyuan, Li and I went to the Shanxi hospital’s residential compound to visit his friend Song Jianguo, the former head of the hospital’s respiratory department. Song, who was in his early sixties, had just retired, after having received a diagnosis of Stage IV stomach cancer. Greeting us at the door of his apartment in pajamas and slippers, he explained that he had just finished a round of chemotherapy. He had sharp cheekbones and exuded a placid, scholarly air. In his left nostril was a thin nasogastric tube.
When I apologized for bringing up end-of-life care, Song laughed dryly. “It’s a subject we should talk about more openly in this country,” he said, pointing out that, even in a hospital of this scale, there was no consistent palliative care. Again, distorted incentives were part of the problem: doctors earned far less for prescribing pain medication than for ordering chemotherapy or surgery. There were cultural factors, too. Many patients in severe pain were wary of opioids, which they associated with addiction, and China’s newfound wealth inspired unrealistic expectations. “There’s this very optimistic idea that, if we spend enough, diseases will be cured at the rate that new skyscrapers are built and bullet-train tracks are laid,” Song said. “But that’s not how the human body works.” Richer patients couldn’t accept that money wouldn’t guarantee survival, and those who couldn’t afford treatments, he said, “sometimes jump from their window to spare their family the burden of caretaking and the expense.”
Song took a shallow, labored breath. He worried that a deepening distrust of doctors was undermining end-of-life discussions: “It’s impossible when the patient or the patient’s family is thinking at every turn, Oh, is the doctor saying there’s nothing we can do because that’s really the case or because he doesn’t think he’ll earn enough to be worth his effort?” Song adjusted his nasal tube. “Everyone should know what’s coming. When that day comes, we have to know the difference between giving up and letting go.”
One day in May, at Friendship and Love, Zhixia was visited by one of the aides, a woman in her fifties named Cuihe, a former kitchen worker in a restaurant who had come to work in the hospital after her mother had been a patient there. After chatting for a bit, Cuihe read aloud from a book about Mother Teresa. When Cuihe mentioned that she and the others had been reading it in a training workshop, Zhixia said, “I didn’t like school, so I don’t know very much.” Cuihe smiled and said that she hadn’t had much schooling, either. After reading a chapter about faith, Cuihe asked Zhixia what she thought the passage was about. “I guess it’s about the relationship between a parent and a child, about love and our attitudes to love,” she said, and then added, “It’s about death, too. I think I will die soon.”
Cuihe asked if she was afraid of death. In Zhixia’s five years as a cancer patient, no one had ever asked her that. “When the pain overwhelms me, I’m not afraid,” Zhixia said. “I just want it to stop so badly that, if death can take away the pain, I almost prefer it.” She let out a ragged breath and tried to sit up. “What do you think death is?” Cuihe asked softly. Zhixia thought for a moment and, with Cuihe’s help, sipped water through a straw. “I don’t know,” she responded. “Lately, I’ve been thinking about time passing, and what time is like after death. When I’m suffering, every second feels like a year.” Zhixia tried to smile, but parting her chapped lips made them bleed.
Later, Meiying, who was Zhixia’s favorite aide, asked if Zhixia had told her son about her illness. “He knows nothing,” Zhixia replied. She said that she’d been taking as many pictures with him as she could, and had organized her and her husband’s medical records so that when her son was old enough he could read them. As Zhixia spoke, she started to cry, but muffled her sobs so as not to disturb her mother, who had nodded off in a chair next to her bed. She told Meiying that she’d thought about writing a letter to her son, but worried that she wouldn’t be able to express what she felt. “It’s O.K. to keep it simple,” Meiying said, and suggested that it might be even better to talk to the boy directly. “The way you speak to him is what he will remember years from now.”
The oldest hospice in China, Songtang Care Hospital, opened in Beijing in 1987. Its founder, Li Songtang, now in his seventies, likes to recount how he came to realize that the dying had needs beyond the merely medical. During the Cultural Revolution, he was sent, as a seventeen-year-old, to Inner Mongolia, to work as one of the “barefoot doctors,” whom the Communists dispatched to provide basic care in underdeveloped communities. There he met an exiled professor from Beijing, who was terminally ill with stomach cancer. In the last days of his life, the man became obsessed with clearing his name of the political crimes of which he’d been accused. Li, desperate to give him peace of mind, eventually came up with a lie, saying that he had persuaded authorities to expunge the charges. Li told me that he has never forgotten the way the dying professor grabbed his arm in gratitude. The Party’s exoneration, Li realized, was “his only medicine and salvation.”
“Dying is not the scary part,” Li told me, as we sat in a conference room at the hospital. “It’s the uncertainty, the anxiety, of feeling utterly out of control.” His facility houses about three hundred patients, and, throughout the years, hospital personnel have visited from all over the country to observe how it functions. The staff’s daily check-ins with patients are focussed less on medical requirements than on soothing anxieties and fostering a sense of connection. When Li showed me around, we came across a late-stage-Alzheimer’s patient making her way down a corridor, clutching the railing affixed to a wall. She had to work a substitute factory shift, she explained urgently, because her daughter was out sick. “Your daughter is very lucky to have such an able mother,” Li gently replied.
Li noted that, despite Songtang’s success, not many places have replicated its model. “Hospice care is not economically prudent,” he said. “People who derive the most benefit from it don’t live long enough to advocate for it. And the sense of cultural taboo about death deters the living from promoting it.” The facility has had to move a dozen times because of complaints from its neighbors; once, protesters who blamed the hospice for bringing a curse on the neighborhood smashed its windows.
“We met in Purgatory, and I think we’re going to try to make it work long distance.” Cartoon by Sofia Warren Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
An avid collector of antiques, Li proudly pointed out how the hospital building incorporated many pieces of Qing-dynasty architecture. He started salvaging these in the nineties, when Beijing’s construction boom indiscriminately razed pagodas and temples. “Chinese society is caught between the old and the new paradigms,” Li reflected. “It hasn’t decided what it wants to discard and what it wants to import.” As he spoke, he took long drags from a cigarette. Smoking was a habit he’d picked up in his teens, to cope with the stresses of being a barefoot doctor, but he told me that he wasn’t worried about cancer. “We all carry cancer within us,” he said. “It’s relentless checkups at predatory hospitals that actually kill you.”
I toured a number of other upscale facilities in Beijing and began to wonder how my mother, back in New York, would fare in such places. For almost a decade, she has suffered from A.L.S., the fatal neurodegenerative disease that causes progressive, and eventually total, paralysis. In Beijing, a publicist led me around a facility called Golden Heights—its interior a riot of floral chintz and gilding—and told me that its clientele included the business élite and retired TV stars. There was a gym, a calligraphy room, Ping-Pong tables, a grand piano, and a “nostalgia room” filled with old calendars, enamel basins, and a black-and-white TV from the eighties. A brochure detailed some of the costs: a deposit of a hundred thousand yuan (fifteen thousand dollars) and a room charge that started at ten thousand yuan a month. Standard health aides could be hired for twenty thousand yuan a month, but employing people capable of caring for someone with late-stage A.L.S. would cost much more.


newyorker--2020-03-30--George Saunders on Politics and the Future

Your story in this week ’ s issue , “ Love Letter , ” as the title suggests , takes the form of a letter , which is written by a grandfather to his grandson .
What made you choose the epistolary form for this one ?
I ’ d been e-mailing with my dad about the state of the world and having a really good time with that .
Then some young friends of our daughter ’ s came to our house ( back in those treasured , long-ago days of yore when people still “ came to your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conversational version of the same thing .
And it struck me that all that cross-generational fretting and debating was a form of love , for one another and for the country .
Some of the tone of those talks got into the story—the frankness , the fondness , the urgency .
A bit of my e-mail typing style also carried over—a sort of brisk , opinionated , affectionate shorthand .
The story is set a couple of Presidencies into the future , after ( presumably ) Donald Trump has been reëlected and then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election.
” Civil rights have been undermined and the country has become corrupt and autocratic , and the grandfather no longer recognizes it as his homeland .
Do you think of the story as a fantasy dystopian narrative or an all-too-plausible cautionary tale ?
I mean , before the failed impeachment and the rash of firings , I think I would have felt this scenario to be a little hysterical or alarmist .
And probably it is—it ’ s more of a thought experiment , I guess .
But seeing all that go @ @ @ @ @ @ @ position of so many Senate Republicans—their total commitment to Trump , no matter what—it really struck me anew that our governance is just a system of tacit agreements .
And , if you wanted to design someone to take that system apart from the inside , Trump would be your guy .
Not that he ’ d intend to , necessarily , but he can ’ t seem to help it .
It seems dispositional with him .
He ’ s been wealthy and famous his whole life , he ’ s relentlessly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to accept criticism , and he seems , let ’ s say , not entirely aware of the norms that have kept this fragile thing in place for so long .
So : a kind of perfect storm , when you factor in the partisan divide and the force multiplier that is social media and whatever it is that McConnell and Jordan and Hannity and Limbaugh , et al.
, are seeking so ardently .
Also alarming to me is this new suite of “ patriotic ” associations ( Trump , religion , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ respect for authority , ” dissent misinterpreted as disloyalty , flags and eagles and angels , etc.
, etc . )
, which might allow a feeling of love for one ’ s country to be co-opted and channelled in an authoritarian direction .
I ’ m reminded of what Deborah Eisenberg said , when writing about Gregor von Rezzori ’ s classic “ Memoirs of an Anti-Semite , ” regarding the great harm that can be done by just a handful of powerful people , as long as they have the “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people who glance out of the windows of their secure homes and see a cloudless sky.
” She goes on to list the sins of such passive people : “ carelessness , poor logic .
.
.
inattentiveness.
” The grandfather feels some regret that , at the critical time—i.e.
, now—he didn ’ t do anything to prevent this all from happening .
Do you anticipate sharing his regret ?
Yes .
But , also like him , I ’ m not entirely sure what I might have done differently ( i.e.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ I literally had that thought the other day : There should be a march .
How is that .
.
.
done ?
( This was before the notion of “ a march ” had been outdated by the virus . )
And that ’ s why I wrote the story , to be honest .
I felt as though I ought to be doing more than just kvetching at the TV .
And the only thing I ’ ve ever done that had a whiff of power about it has been writing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a call to arms , so to speak ?
Well , to alertness , yes .
What it did to me , as I wrote it , was make me feel fond of the way of life we ’ ve enjoyed all these years .
It made me realize , I guess , that I really do believe in American democracy , with all its flaws , and would like to do my part to protect it during my time here .
Made me see myself ( see all of us ) as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve protected it in the past .
It also made me think about my daughters and my own mortality , something along the lines of , Well , you ’ re going to leave them some kind of world , and it will either be one where civility and truth are honored or one where they ’ re not .
I think we ’ re moving toward the latter .
Which would be , you know , worse .
Worse for them and their kids to live in .
And it could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ literally forgotten it was ever any other way .
And that was my thinking even before the coronavirus outbreak , which , I think , has demonstrated how dangerous an anti-truth posture can be ( it responds slowly to a crisis ) and that civility is not some sort of fancy topping on a culture but its essence .
The grandfather has some optimism about the ability of his grandson and his generation to salvage democracy .
Do you think the faith is well placed ?
I think he admires his grandson ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should be encouraging that passion or trying to squelch it .
That ’ s easy to answer abstractly , but if it was your grandson or granddaughter , in an actual moment of fear , I bet it would be incredibly difficult .
I know that , at times of even mild crisis in my life , I ’ ve gone suddenly indecisive and might , in a situation like this one , tend to err on the side of inactivity—which is , of course , action of a sort .
The story @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are your general feelings about politically driven fiction ?
Well , I ’ m against it but sometimes can ’ t help it .
( I succumbed , for example , with a story called “ Adams , ” back during the Iraq War . )
Fiction generally doesn ’ t do well with polemic .
If you start out to write a story “ against ” something , you ’ d better hope it ends up doing more than just that , or else it ’ s a screed .
Here , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had to do with the conundrum mentioned above : whether to encourage those you love to engage in a passionate action that might be dangerous or whether to discourage them .
At what point does this relationship go south , if the grandfather just keeps saying , “ I love you , so do nothing , ” or , “ In order that you not endanger yourself , I request that you stay neutral , i.e.
, please cease believing in anything and have no views of your own.
” Or , more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you love.
” Also : I ’ d been trying , out of a general sense of frustration , to write some nonfiction pieces that were more overtly political , but they weren ’ t working .
They were too sure of themselves and over the top and wouldn ’ t have persuaded anyone or even inclined anyone , left or right , to think anew .
For example , I had one in which the narrator , a Trump supporter and Stephen Miller acolyte , outraged that there are still dead “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ movement to “ Make American Graves American Graves Again.
” At rallies , everyone ’ s chanting “ Dig them up !
” and so on .
And , in the end , the narrator pledges to dig up his immigrant grandfather and ship the corpse back to Italy .
It was funny enough but it didn ’ t do that “ shaking up the snow globe ” thing that writing can do .
It felt like a form of sneering , or preaching to the choir , or sneering to the choir @ @ @ @ @ @ @ able to say , “ That takes it too far .
I don ’ t believe in that .
That has nothing to do with what I actually believe .
”

Photograph by Leonardo Cendamo / Getty
Your story in this week’s issue, “Love Letter,” as the title suggests, takes the form of a letter, which is written by a grandfather to his grandson. What made you choose the epistolary form for this one?
I’d been e-mailing with my dad about the state of the world and having a really good time with that. Then some young friends of our daughter’s came to our house (back in those treasured, long-ago days of yore when people still “came to your house”) and we did a conversational version of the same thing. And it struck me that all that cross-generational fretting and debating was a form of love, for one another and for the country. Some of the tone of those talks got into the story—the frankness, the fondness, the urgency. A bit of my e-mail typing style also carried over—a sort of brisk, opinionated, affectionate shorthand.
The story is set a couple of Presidencies into the future, after (presumably) Donald Trump has been reëlected and then his son has won a “sham election.” Civil rights have been undermined and the country has become corrupt and autocratic, and the grandfather no longer recognizes it as his homeland. Do you think of the story as a fantasy dystopian narrative or an all-too-plausible cautionary tale?
Right, that’s the question.
I mean, before the failed impeachment and the rash of firings, I think I would have felt this scenario to be a little hysterical or alarmist. And probably it is—it’s more of a thought experiment, I guess. But seeing all that go down, and the strange, alt-universe position of so many Senate Republicans—their total commitment to Trump, no matter what—it really struck me anew that our governance is just a system of tacit agreements. And, if you wanted to design someone to take that system apart from the inside, Trump would be your guy. Not that he’d intend to, necessarily, but he can’t seem to help it. It seems dispositional with him. He’s been wealthy and famous his whole life, he’s relentlessly attention-seeking, he doesn’t seem to accept criticism, and he seems, let’s say, not entirely aware of the norms that have kept this fragile thing in place for so long.
So: a kind of perfect storm, when you factor in the partisan divide and the force multiplier that is social media and whatever it is that McConnell and Jordan and Hannity and Limbaugh, et al., are seeking so ardently.
Also alarming to me is this new suite of “patriotic” associations (Trump, religion, knee-jerk defense of him misunderstood as “respect for authority,” dissent misinterpreted as disloyalty, flags and eagles and angels, etc., etc.), which might allow a feeling of love for one’s country to be co-opted and channelled in an authoritarian direction. I’m reminded of what Deborah Eisenberg said, when writing about Gregor von Rezzori’s classic “Memoirs of an Anti-Semite,” regarding the great harm that can be done by just a handful of powerful people, as long as they have the “passive assistance of many, many other people who glance out of the windows of their secure homes and see a cloudless sky.” She goes on to list the sins of such passive people: “carelessness, poor logic . . . inattentiveness.”
The grandfather feels some regret that, at the critical time—i.e., now—he didn’t do anything to prevent this all from happening. Do you anticipate sharing his regret?
Yes. But, also like him, I’m not entirely sure what I might have done differently (i.e., should be doing differently). I literally had that thought the other day: There should be a march. How is that . . . done? (This was before the notion of “a march” had been outdated by the virus.) And that’s why I wrote the story, to be honest. I felt as though I ought to be doing more than just kvetching at the TV. And the only thing I’ve ever done that had a whiff of power about it has been writing.
Should we read the story as a call to arms, so to speak?
Well, to alertness, yes. What it did to me, as I wrote it, was make me feel fond of the way of life we’ve enjoyed all these years. It made me realize, I guess, that I really do believe in American democracy, with all its flaws, and would like to do my part to protect it during my time here. Made me see myself (see all of us) as part of a lineage of people who’ve protected it in the past.
It also made me think about my daughters and my own mortality, something along the lines of, Well, you’re going to leave them some kind of world, and it will either be one where civility and truth are honored or one where they’re not. I think we’re moving toward the latter. Which would be, you know, worse. Worse for them and their kids to live in. And it could get to the place where people have literally forgotten it was ever any other way.
And that was my thinking even before the coronavirus outbreak, which, I think, has demonstrated how dangerous an anti-truth posture can be (it responds slowly to a crisis) and that civility is not some sort of fancy topping on a culture but its essence.
The grandfather has some optimism about the ability of his grandson and his generation to salvage democracy. Do you think the faith is well placed?
I think he admires his grandson’s passion and is unsure whether he should be encouraging that passion or trying to squelch it. That’s easy to answer abstractly, but if it was your grandson or granddaughter, in an actual moment of fear, I bet it would be incredibly difficult. I know that, at times of even mild crisis in my life, I’ve gone suddenly indecisive and might, in a situation like this one, tend to err on the side of inactivity—which is, of course, action of a sort.
The story is obviously a political one. What are your general feelings about politically driven fiction?
Well, I’m against it but sometimes can’t help it. (I succumbed, for example, with a story called “Adams,” back during the Iraq War.)


newyorker--2020-03-30--Yaeji’s New Mixtape Is the Opposite of Social Distancing

When I first heard “ New York 93 , ” by the Korean-American d.j .
and producer Yaeji , it felt like something I ’ d waited for my whole life , only I ’ d never known to want it .
The track , released by Godmode Records in 2016 , begins with the faint outlines of a house tune—an echo of an echo , as synth pulses , bass kicks , and occasional drip-drops all hint at a euphoric anthem that takes its sweet time to peak .
Yaeji whispers softly over the track , humming a singsong @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she ’ s beckoning you closer to tell a secret .
By the time that tambourines arrive , snapping everything into place , you ’ re like confidants .
And then it abruptly comes to a close .
Much of the way in which we hear the world derives from how we grew up .
Listening to Yaeji , I realized that the rhythms and cadences of various Asian languages , spoken at home or in friends ’ houses , at restaurants or on Asian TV stations , were part of how I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were voices that I occasionally tried to tune out .
But they conveyed feelings and formalities , expressions of affection and angst , that didn ’ t always translate perfectly into English—the seemingly mellow , nagging lilt of Mandarin , for example , might actually communicate desperate yearning .
These different emotional registers have become more familiar to us all .
As K-pop becomes a global force , it trains listeners from around the world in how to hear anew .
You don ’ t need to understand Korean to luxuriate in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the liberating effects of the ecstatic and the garish .
Yaeji , whose real name is Kathy Lee , was born in Queens in 1993 .
Her family moved to Long Island , and then to Atlanta , before settling in South Korea .
In 2011 , she returned to the United States to study at Carnegie Mellon , where she became immersed in dance music .
She began making tracks and d.j.
’ ing for the college radio station , occasionally uploading songs to SoundCloud .
She followed “ New York @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which fleshed out her cute , almost miniaturized fusion of vocal house and Asian pop .
She covered Drake ’ s house-tinged R. & B. hit “ Passionfruit , ” replacing the original ’ s wounded machismo with a kind of tender resilience .
As increasingly happens these days , she moved relatively quickly from posting music for free online to playing festivals such as Coachella .
Her songs continued to toggle between moments of twee intimacy and the collectivizing throb of the dance floor .
“ Raingurl , ” a track from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and ethereal synths , as Yaeji describes timidly walking into the club : “ Mother Russia in my cup / And my glasses fogging up / Oh yeah , hey dawg , hey , what ’ s up.
” The mixtape “ What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던 , ” which comes out this week , is her first release on XL Recordings .
“ Thanks to the ones that walk alongside me / I can continue on , ” she sings in Korean on the title track .
There ’ s more of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voice than on her early songs , which often evoked a fuzzy , A.S.M.R.-like feeling .
“ The things I drew , ” she continues , “ I ’ ve created that world / With the people I love.
” It wasn ’ t until Yaeji began getting acclaim in the Korean press that her parents , who live in Seoul , truly understood what she did .
Her success has brought her around the world , and the effects are apparent on “ What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던 , ” which is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the United States and Asia .
“ Money Can ’ t Buy , ” featuring the Brooklyn rapper Nappy Nina , is like a hip-hop track put together on an assembly line , all bleeps , drill sounds , and sprays of machine exhaust .
“ Sit in a circle and look at each other and reminisce how we got to meet each other / Laugh with each other and show one another what it ’ s like to share love with each other , ” Yaeji chants in English .
There ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We Drew 우리가 그려왔던 , ” straying from the straight-ahead house rhythms of her initial singles .
The electro-thump of “ In the Mirror 거울 ” moves toward moody , headbanging territory ; “ These Days 요즘 ” is like an excursion into dub-jazz , an unravelling steady beat serenaded by a distant , almost ghostly saxophone .
Other tracks can feel frivolous , as if she were pressing Record simply to capture a fleeting moment .
On “ Free Interlude , ” the rappers Lil Fayo , Trenchcoat , and Sweet Pea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A church has a steeple / I like all sorts of people / Every type of person / Dimples , I have several.
” ) It sounds as though you ’ ve arrived too late to share in the joke .
I first heard Yaeji in 2016 , during a time when going outside , let alone going out , was still a matter of personal choice .
Her songs , slipstreams of language and feeling , suggested a future I wanted to see bloom .
I initially mistook the title “ New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the hat to a golden age of the city ’ s hip-hop and club scenes ; in fact , it is simply the place and year of her birth .
Musical revolutions are experienced anew each time young people happen across something they haven ’ t heard before .
Last fall , Yaeji threw a party that she called “ Elancia , ” an attempt to recall the days when she began raving in New York , in the early part of the past decade—many years after what people often presume to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s easy to get hung up on whether a sound or a style is truly original—or whether the brash new generation just suffers from historical amnesia .
Yet the original part , the feeling that propels young artists forward , is that of discovery .
It ’ s been odd to listen to “ What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던 ” in the past couple of weeks , as calls to isolate ourselves have grown increasingly urgent .
Yaeji ’ s music is about the opposite of “ social distancing ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the brilliance of your friends , sweating alongside strangers .
In our lowest moments , the thing that makes life meaningful is the realization that those who came before us found meaning , and endured .
For many , that idea becomes clearest in the presence of others .
Yaeji ’ s music has always been about communion and friendship , portals into other possible time lines around the globe .
And that ’ s precisely what makes it such a tease right now .
“ What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던 ” is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ glimpses into a career on the go .
But , for the time being , none of us is going anywhere .
Listening to music hasn ’ t brought me much comfort lately , because it reminds me that the past seems impossibly far away , and the future promises only uncertainty .
Being present is no longer a choice , the stuff of meditation or wellness .
It ’ s a condition of life .
Listening to Yaeji alone last week , the highs somehow felt higher , and the silly parts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an introvert , ” G.L.A.M .
raps on “ Spell 주문 , ” which feels like a scaled-down K-pop anthem ; it gets funnier the more I listen to it .
The lush synths that announce “ My Imagination 상상 ” sound even dreamier .
“ What I wan na do / Eat rice and soup , ” Yaeji raps in Korean on “ Money Can ’ t Buy.
” “ What I wan na have / Money can ’ t buy.
” When you engage with art or music , you are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s never yours , even if you ’ re the one who made it .
It ’ s a gift , a secret that ’ s passed among those who care , changing the texture of existence , maybe in minuscule ways .
There ’ s nothing better than listening to music with strangers—dancing , sharing amazement , scanning faces to see if you ’ re the only one in this moment .
Afterward , life no longer sounds the same .
For now , these songs by a young Korean-American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sees—a world brought into being with friends , goofing around in a studio or sweating together on a dance floor—are about some bygone way of life , or simply a reminder of what awaits , as long as you can wait .
♦

When I first heard “New York 93,” by the Korean-American d.j. and producer Yaeji, it felt like something I’d waited for my whole life, only I’d never known to want it. The track, released by Godmode Records in 2016, begins with the faint outlines of a house tune—an echo of an echo, as synth pulses, bass kicks, and occasional drip-drops all hint at a euphoric anthem that takes its sweet time to peak. Yaeji whispers softly over the track, humming a singsong of English and Korean, as though she’s beckoning you closer to tell a secret. By the time that tambourines arrive, snapping everything into place, you’re like confidants. And then it abruptly comes to a close.
Much of the way in which we hear the world derives from how we grew up. Listening to Yaeji, I realized that the rhythms and cadences of various Asian languages, spoken at home or in friends’ houses, at restaurants or on Asian TV stations, were part of how I came to hear the world. These were voices that I occasionally tried to tune out. But they conveyed feelings and formalities, expressions of affection and angst, that didn’t always translate perfectly into English—the seemingly mellow, nagging lilt of Mandarin, for example, might actually communicate desperate yearning. These different emotional registers have become more familiar to us all. As K-pop becomes a global force, it trains listeners from around the world in how to hear anew. You don’t need to understand Korean to luxuriate in the music’s extravagant approach to melodrama, the liberating effects of the ecstatic and the garish.
Yaeji, whose real name is Kathy Lee, was born in Queens in 1993. Her family moved to Long Island, and then to Atlanta, before settling in South Korea. In 2011, she returned to the United States to study at Carnegie Mellon, where she became immersed in dance music. She began making tracks and d.j.’ing for the college radio station, occasionally uploading songs to SoundCloud. She followed “New York 93” with two great EPs, which fleshed out her cute, almost miniaturized fusion of vocal house and Asian pop. She covered Drake’s house-tinged R. & B. hit “Passionfruit,” replacing the original’s wounded machismo with a kind of tender resilience. As increasingly happens these days, she moved relatively quickly from posting music for free online to playing festivals such as Coachella. Her songs continued to toggle between moments of twee intimacy and the collectivizing throb of the dance floor. “Raingurl,” a track from 2017, alternates between soupy house rhythms and ethereal synths, as Yaeji describes timidly walking into the club: “Mother Russia in my cup / And my glasses fogging up / Oh yeah, hey dawg, hey, what’s up.”
The mixtape “What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던,” which comes out this week, is her first release on XL Recordings. “Thanks to the ones that walk alongside me / I can continue on,” she sings in Korean on the title track. There’s more of a soaring, strident quality to her voice than on her early songs, which often evoked a fuzzy, A.S.M.R.-like feeling. “The things I drew,” she continues, “I’ve created that world / With the people I love.”
It wasn’t until Yaeji began getting acclaim in the Korean press that her parents, who live in Seoul, truly understood what she did. Her success has brought her around the world, and the effects are apparent on “What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던,” which is full of new collaborations with artists from the United States and Asia. “Money Can’t Buy,” featuring the Brooklyn rapper Nappy Nina, is like a hip-hop track put together on an assembly line, all bleeps, drill sounds, and sprays of machine exhaust. “Sit in a circle and look at each other and reminisce how we got to meet each other / Laugh with each other and show one another what it’s like to share love with each other,” Yaeji chants in English.
There’s a sketchbook quality to “What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던,” straying from the straight-ahead house rhythms of her initial singles. The electro-thump of “In the Mirror 거울” moves toward moody, headbanging territory; “These Days 요즘” is like an excursion into dub-jazz, an unravelling steady beat serenaded by a distant, almost ghostly saxophone. Other tracks can feel frivolous, as if she were pressing Record simply to capture a fleeting moment. On “Free Interlude,” the rappers Lil Fayo, Trenchcoat, and Sweet Pea trade somewhat nonsensical verses. (“A church has a steeple / I like all sorts of people / Every type of person / Dimples, I have several.”) It sounds as though you’ve arrived too late to share in the joke.
I first heard Yaeji in 2016, during a time when going outside, let alone going out, was still a matter of personal choice. Her songs, slipstreams of language and feeling, suggested a future I wanted to see bloom.
I initially mistook the title “New York 93” for some nostalgic tip of the hat to a golden age of the city’s hip-hop and club scenes; in fact, it is simply the place and year of her birth. Musical revolutions are experienced anew each time young people happen across something they haven’t heard before. Last fall, Yaeji threw a party that she called “Elancia,” an attempt to recall the days when she began raving in New York, in the early part of the past decade—many years after what people often presume to be the city’s creative peak. It’s easy to get hung up on whether a sound or a style is truly original—or whether the brash new generation just suffers from historical amnesia. Yet the original part, the feeling that propels young artists forward, is that of discovery.
It’s been odd to listen to “What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던” in the past couple of weeks, as calls to isolate ourselves have grown increasingly urgent. Yaeji’s music is about the opposite of “social distancing”: going out, idly basking in the brilliance of your friends, sweating alongside strangers. In our lowest moments, the thing that makes life meaningful is the realization that those who came before us found meaning, and endured. For many, that idea becomes clearest in the presence of others. Yaeji’s music has always been about communion and friendship, portals into other possible time lines around the globe. And that’s precisely what makes it such a tease right now. “What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던” is a collection of drafts and sketches, glimpses into a career on the go. But, for the time being, none of us is going anywhere.
Listening to music hasn’t brought me much comfort lately, because it reminds me that the past seems impossibly far away, and the future promises only uncertainty. Being present is no longer a choice, the stuff of meditation or wellness. It’s a condition of life. Listening to Yaeji alone last week, the highs somehow felt higher, and the silly parts seemed even sillier. “Introverse from an introvert,” G.L.A.M. raps on “Spell 주문,” which feels like a scaled-down K-pop anthem; it gets funnier the more I listen to it. The lush synths that announce “My Imagination 상상” sound even dreamier. “What I wanna do / Eat rice and soup,” Yaeji raps in Korean on “Money Can’t Buy.” “What I wanna have / Money can’t buy.”
When you engage with art or music, you are exploring someone else’s imagination. It’s never yours, even if you’re the one who made it. It’s a gift, a secret that’s passed among those who care, changing the texture of existence, maybe in minuscule ways. There’s nothing better than listening to music with strangers—dancing, sharing amazement, scanning faces to see if you’re the only one in this moment. Afterward, life no longer sounds the same. For now, these songs by a young Korean-American woman telling us about the world she sees—a world brought into being with friends, goofing around in a studio or sweating together on a dance floor—are about some bygone way of life, or simply a reminder of what awaits, as long as you can wait. ♦


newyorker--2020-03-30--Inside Tove Jansson’s Private Universe

Inside Tove Jansson’s Private Universe

In the nineteen-fifties and sixties , one of the most famous cartoonists in the world was a lesbian artist who lived on a remote island off the coast of Finland .
Tove Jansson had the status of a beloved cultural icon—adored by children , celebrated by adults .
Before her death , in 2001 , at the age of eighty-six , Jansson produced paintings , novels , children ’ s books , magazine covers , political cartoons , greeting cards , librettos , and much more .
But most of Jansson ’ s fans arrived by way of the Moomins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ white creatures that look a little like upright hippos , and were the subject of nine best-selling books and a daily comic strip that ran for twenty years .
Jansson travelled frequently to conduct her duties as the ambassador of Moominvalley , mingling at parties where businessmen wore Moomin ties .
In 1963 , she wrote home , from the midst of professional obligations in Stockholm , “ I was woken by another TV crew wanting a comment on the cultural situation .
.
.
.
I ’ ve still got masses to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ children ’ s culture reps and translators and art galleries .
.
.
.
I ’ m feeling pretty cocky but also trying to maintain my image : gentle , cultivated , enraptured child of nature.
” The work of being a public figure was neatly summed up , for her , in the never-ending burdens of correspondence .
Her short story “ Messages , ” published near the end of her life , is composed of snippets of letters she received : Hi my name is Olavi .
You write well but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a happy ending .
Why do you do this ?
We look forward to your valued reply soonest concerning Moomin motifs on toilet paper in pastel shades Hi !
We ’ re three girls in a mad rush with our essays about you could you help us by saying in just a few words how you started writing and why and what life means to you and then a message to young people you know the kind of thing .
Thanks in advance Dear Miss Jansson , You must understand that the only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ panholders with Moomin figures which I design myself and make in the kitchen without any paid help at present .
How would 6 % be for a start Several pages of this is charming ; forty years ’ worth would have been wearying .
Yet , as the sole emissary of her fictional world , Jansson felt the need to be gracious .
In 1948 , after she had published the first couple of Moomin books , but before anyone was demanding her approval of Moomin oven mitts , she already had opinions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s younger brother Lars ( whom she called Lasse ) had mailed some unsolicited poetry to Dorothy Parker , who never responded .
In a letter to a friend , Jansson was offended on his behalf : “ If I was the Great Woman , and received some ( really quite good ) love poems from a young man in Finland .
.
.
in my own language with an adoring dedication , I ’ d damn well send a few lines in reply.
” She would not be that sort of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what sort ?
Twenty years after Jansson ’ s death , we now have a record of the joys—and strains—of a lifetime of correspondence .
“ Letters from Tove ” ( University of Minnesota ) , a four-hundred-and-eighty-page volume , edited by Boel Westin and Helen Svensson and translated by Sarah Death , includes dispatches to her family , friends , and lovers .
The selection begins during her days as an art student in Stockholm and culminates in the early nineteen-eighties , when her letter writing ( though not her work ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Westin ’ s “ Tove Jansson : Life , Art , Words ” ( 2014 ) , a comprehensive English-language biography of Jansson , these letters offer the most complete portrait of the artist to date .
They show a person who is increasingly selective about which parts of herself she will share with whom .
She writes to most of her correspondents in the mode of a traveller , awake to her surroundings and the world .
With only a few does she expose her inner life , and , once she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” she shares her artistic struggles with nobody .
Jansson was born in Helsinki in 1914 , the eldest of three children in a Swedish-speaking family ( a minority in Finland ) .
Her father was a charismatic sculptor and her mother a successful illustrator .
“ Home and studio were one , ” as Westin writes in her biography , “ with no clear distinction between work and family life.
” When she was still quite young , Tove began helping her mother with her many commissions .
She noted in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be a wild thing , not an artist.
” At twenty-three , Jansson left home to study painting in Paris , where she soon enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts .
Her yearning , detailed letters to her family express her disappointment with the school and its irrelevant assignments : “ This time for instance it ’ s ‘ Moses strikes the rock ’ and ‘ People waiting for a bus.
’ We have four days to get it done.
” After two weeks , she quit the school , complaining to her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ place for having fun or hoping for the Prix de Rome , and possibly one gleaned some superficial technique to use in disguising one ’ s mediocre talents.
” Jansson transferred to a smaller atelier , run by a more radical Swiss artist who , learning of her defection , “ went quite pale at the thought of the terrible danger I ’ d escaped from.
” After leaving school , with the Second World War unfolding , she struggled to complete what she hoped would be a masterwork : a psychologically tense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But the painting was exhibited , in a group show , to disappointing reviews .
Months later , Jansson wrote unhappily about her work in a journal , “ Too many canvases are ‘ able , ’ or forced , or ‘ artificial.
’ .
.
.
My greatest asset should be painting , but either it is failing or I am failing .
”

There might be quite a lot of trolls in Ireland, I’ve heard? Here, they’re all hibernating. . . . Soon, I’ll start waiting for spring. Then, I go on to my island in the Finnish Gulf, a tiny one with no trees or bushes—only rock and wild flowers. And big, beautiful storms. You would love it!
What accounts for the popularity of her enigmatic characters? For one thing, Jansson’s intelligent intimacy and humor, which suffuses the books and her letters. She wasn’t drawn to nihilism, like many postwar artists, or to any Freud-inspired movements, with their suggestive, anarchic dreamscapes. In a letter, she deemed Surrealism “seductive but, for me, without potential for development. A gown so sensational one can only wear it for a single season.” Instead, she created a reassuring world with a moral code, and characters with problems much like our own. The Moomins are not so much cute as strangely familiar, as though Jansson happened to look in a new direction and find these tender and serious fellow-creatures, who had been with us all along.
“Letters from Tove” is organized not by chronology but by correspondent, with a chapter devoted to each of Jansson’s most meaningful interlocutors. This has the illuminating effect, for readers, of retelling the same story from many angles. Of all her correspondents, the person Jansson revealed herself to most thoroughly was the Russian-Jewish photographer Eva Konikoff. The two met when Jansson was in her twenties, and they travelled in the same Helsinki artistic circles until 1941, when Konikoff fled to the United States, and their correspondence began. Jansson’s letters reach their lyrical and emotional heights during the war years, when she was in her middle to late twenties. They are poetic and full of dread: “I lie here looking at the birch tree outside my window, which rustles like a thousand silk petticoats—the sea is a greeny-black and the first rain has arrived,” while in the forest are “big burnt areas left by those airborne oafs and their firebombs. . . . The planes come roaring in over our heads on a daily basis, like death’s black cross in the heavens.”
When a boyfriend of Jansson’s, Tapsa, came home on a brief, much anticipated leave from the front, he visited a mistress who was “big and platinum blonde and very made-up and seemed kind and pathetic,” a description that somehow evokes a Moomin. Hours later, in bed, after an evening alone with Tapsa, Jansson tried to summon a feeling of love, but the ongoing stress of the war—political arguments with her father, one of her brothers off fighting, the hateful anti-Semitic slogans—weighed heavily on her. In a letter to Konikoff, she recounts being suddenly repelled by Tapsa:
Everything that makes me not want to get married came back to me, all the men I’ve seen through and despised. . . . I see what will happen to my Painting if I get married. Because when all is said and done I have in me all those inherited female instincts for solace, admiration, submission, self-sacrifice. Either a bad painter or a bad wife. And if I become a “good” wife, then his work will be more important than mine, my intellect be subordinate to his, I shall bear him children, children to be killed in future wars! And at the same time I shall see through it all, and know that I acted against everything I believed in.
A breakthrough in an artist’s life often corresponds with a breakthrough in her art, and so it was for Jansson. In 1946, the year after the first Moomin book had appeared, her brother Lars introduced her to the theatre director Vivica Bandler. “I saw a tall aristocratic girl with a prominent nose, thick straight eyebrows and a defiantly Jewish mouth,” Jansson writes. “She is blind in one eye, but the other is clear, dark, penetrating.” And, although Jansson had a boyfriend and Bandler was married, they began an affair. She describes experiencing love with a woman for the first time:
It came as such a huge surprise. Like finding a new and wondrous room in an old house one thought one knew from top to bottom. Just stepping straight in, and not being able to fathom how one had never known it existed. . . . I’m finally experiencing myself as a woman where love is concerned, it’s bringing me peace and ecstasy for the first time.
To Konikoff, Jansson writes that she “never for a moment saw anything unnatural” in her desire, and, although the affair ended, a longtime friendship and a theatrical collaboration eventually emerged from it. Jansson returned to her boyfriend, Atos, and, in a letter the following year, awkwardly proposed to him that they marry: “It wouldn’t change our way of life, I don’t think. If you don’t want to, we can talk about something else when you get back.” The marriage never occurred, and, six years after the affair with Bandler, Jansson, still reminiscing in letters to Konikoff, writes that “the happiest and most genuine course for me would be to go over to the ghost side.”
Jansson’s most profound relationships were with women, and her letters to friends were far more intimate even than her letters to her beloved Atos. In 1956, she met Tuulikki Pietilä (“Tooti”), a prolific graphic artist and engraver. They would remain partners for forty-five years, until Jansson’s death. But, as Westin and Svensson put it, “anyone who lived with Tove Jansson also had to live with her family.” Her mother, nicknamed Ham, stayed with Jansson on and off. Even as a teen-ager, preparing to go away to school, Jansson had worried about her mother. In a letter from 1961, she describes the stress of managing both Tooti and Ham in their “all-female household.” She felt that it had become impossible to please one without displeasing the other, and during a time of intense strife she wrote to a friend, “Sometimes I think I hate them both and it makes me feel ill.”
One of Jansson’s short stories, “Travelling Light,” from 1987, explores the fantasy of being liberated from the endless demands of other people. It begins with a ship leaving the shore. “I wish I could describe the enormous relief I felt when they finally pulled up the gangway!” the narrator says. But soon he finds himself roped into conversation with a stranger, who begins “holding forth about his misunderstood childhood”; even worse, the two men turn out to be cabinmates. Desperate to get away from everyone and sleep in peace, the narrator ends up huddled on the wet deck of the ship, draped in his overcoat, when an old woman appears above him, whispering, “I’ll show you some photos of my son. This is what Herbert looked like when he was four.” Humans are such needy creatures!
This short story belongs to the second half of Jansson’s creative life. In 1959, after seven years and more than ten thousand drawings, she abandoned the Moomin strip, handing it over to her brother Lars. (A beautiful, complete collection of Jansson’s cartoons was published by Drawn & Quarterly, in 2014.) Jansson wrote to a friend about ending the daily comics, “I never spare them a thought now it’s over. I’ve completely drawn a line under all that. Just as you wouldn’t want to think back on a time you had toothache.” In the early seventies, after the death of her mother, she turned to fiction for adults. She wrote five novels; a memoir, “Sculptor’s Daughter”; and many short stories (some of which were posthumously collected by New York Review Books in “The Woman Who Borrowed Memories”). Her overwhelming Moomin duties never abated, and she all but gave up writing for children.
Remnants of Jansson’s early style are preserved in her more mature work. Her later novels—“The True Deceiver” (1982) and “Fair Play” (1989)—are episodic, as if producing comics had trained her imagination in a certain form. She created characters, then turned them around in a variety of situations, with the cartoonist’s confidence that the empty white spaces between chapters would be rich and evocative. But she also plumbed a new kind of darkness: the tangible menaces of her cartoon worlds—forests, seas, the infinitude of the cosmos—now took shape within the unruly depths of the characters themselves. It was a subtle realm that must have been satisfying to explore. As her fiction became more interior and autobiographical, Jansson’s letters seem to have become more superficial. She sent far fewer of them, funnelling her introspections into one stream, not two.
Jansson wrote “The True Deceiver,” one of her greatest novels, when she was in her late sixties. Riveting, original, and strange, it concerns Anna Aemelin, a writer and illustrator of children’s books, who lives alone and whose life is infiltrated—for better and worse—by Katri, a mysterious loner, who behaves at once like an assistant and a grifter. Anna has been endowed with Jansson’s preoccupation with maintaining an image—that performance as a “gentle, cultivated, enraptured child of nature.” To this end, she has a system for organizing the many fan letters she receives from her child readers:
Pile A was from the very young, who expressed their admiration in pictures, mostly drawings of bunny rabbits. If there was a written message, the child’s mother had written it. Pile B contained requests that were often urgent, especially with regard to birthdays. Pile C was what Anna called the Sad Cases pile, and these letters required great care and reflection.
Katri suggests that Anna use a form letter to deal with the deluge, but Anna protests. What if siblings, or children in the same class, compared? When Katri proposes enlisting a secretary, Anna is infuriated: “It’s me they’re asking, not anyone else . . . !” Katri tells her not to sentimentalize her correspondents simply because they are young, and their letters awkward and misspelled. “I have gradually learned that everyone, absolutely everyone of every size, is out to get something,” Katri says. This may be the most cynical line in any of Jansson’s novels. It is as though the Great Woman saw, in her fiction, at least, something true about what animates the exchange between an artist and her fans. The artist wants to be seen as the figure she is striving to be; the fan simply wants to be seen. Anna finally gives Katri the task of replying to the children, but later chastises her for not doing a good enough job:


Choose Your Weapon

There was no complimentary hand sanitizer for the concerned customers of Gorge Guns , in Hood River , Oregon , on a recent Friday .
Erika Bales , the shop ’ s twenty-nine-year-old owner , wasn ’ t worried about the virus .
“ I figure , just let nature take its course , ” she said .
Her customers were less nonchalant .
Bales , who had a neat manicure and a number of tattoos , said that , days earlier , people had begun realizing that “ everyone ’ s buying things and everything ’ s gon na @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for her , unprecedented .
She was out of ARs and .308 rifles .
A few shotguns remained , and she told shoppers that they could saw them off , to a legal length .
“ Obama didn ’ t even bring in these numbers , ” Bales said .
At noon , a woman in her sixties came in .
She wore plastic gloves and had a scarf wrapped around her face , and she traced a wide arc around the only other non-employee in the store .
“ I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of March , ” she said , referring to her protective gear .
“ I don ’ t feel sick at all .
I ’ m self-quarantining.
” She left her house only for essential activities .
This was one .
“ I ’ m buying a gun , ” she said .
“ I can ’ t believe it.
” She went on , “ My son was a little upset about it.
” ( He preferred his bow and arrow . )
“ I ’ m old and I live alone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if there ’ s going to be civil unrest .
The world is not the same.
” She added , “ It didn ’ t have to be this way.
” Unlike many of the shop ’ s regulars , she was no fan of Trump : “ He ’ s a divider all the way .
First he said , ‘ Five people have died , big deal.
’ Now he ’ s saying , ‘ I always knew it ’ d be dangerous.
’ ” Talk turned to Portland .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” a young woman said .
Her name was Rosemary , and she was helping Bales out , since the restaurant where she waited tables had closed .
“ I don ’ t like to go in cities anymore , anyway , ” the customer said .
“ But these rumors about them putting this country in full lockdown are inaccurate , ” Rosemary said .
“ It ’ s a scare tactic .
It ’ s not like all of a sudden we ’ re gon na wake up one day and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is ending.
” “ I don ’ t know , ” the customer said .
“ The exponential growth is happening.
” “ If anything , we ’ re definitely repopulating , if nobody is at work , ” Rosemary said cheerily .
“ We won ’ t have a shortage of humans , that ’ s for sure.
” Bales helped her customer choose a weapon .
( “ Pick three , ” the customer told her . )
As Bales rummaged around , the customer said , “ I ’ m @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A friend of my son ’ s. ” Bales returned with the first option .
“ A .22 Mag , ” she said .
“ Holds thirty rounds.
” The customer peered at the gun .
“ I like the color of it , ” the customer said .
“ It ’ s not black.
” She picked it up .
“ It feels good .
And it ’ s got a safety .
I ’ m going to take this one .
You ’ ve got ammo for it , right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few of the gun ’ s features .
“ As long as you ’ re accurate , it ’ ll do damage , ” she said .
“ This is just going to be for close range , ” the customer said .
“ In my house .
If it happens.
” ( Asked what “ it ” was , she said , “ In two months , if the cities are starving , they ’ re gon na come out .
And I understand that.
” ) Bales piled boxes of ammunition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ll take them all , ” the customer said .
She ducked outside to get her wallet from the car .
“ I think she ’ s a liberal , ” Bales said , once the door closed .
“ There ’ s so many coming in .
First-time-gun-owner liberals .
I ’ ve probably seen ten this week .
It ’ s so funny , because I hope it just turns them on to liking the Second Amendment .
I mean , the Constitution was created for a reason .
To protect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bill was nearly seven hundred dollars , including electronic ear protection and sixteen boxes of bullets .
She could come back and pick up the gun once her digital background check cleared .
The customer asked , “ If I don ’ t get approved , what happens ?
” “ You already got approved , ” Bales said , glancing at a computer , with some surprise .
“ Yeah .
Some people go through fast.
” The new gun owner asked if there was a shooting range nearby .
She asked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She asked how to carry the gun out .
“ I can ’ t believe this !
” she said , stepping into the world with her brand-new gun .
♦ • How to practice social distancing , from responding to a sick housemate to the pros and cons of ordering food .
• How people cope and create new customs amid a pandemic .
• What it means to contain and mitigate the coronavirus outbreak .
• How much of the world is likely to be quarantined ?
• Donald Trump in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus is likely to spread for more than a year before a vaccine could be widely available .
• We are all irrational panic shoppers .
• The strange terror of watching the coronavirus take Rome .

Illustration by João Fazenda
There was no complimentary hand sanitizer for the concerned customers of Gorge Guns, in Hood River, Oregon, on a recent Friday. Erika Bales, the shop’s twenty-nine-year-old owner, wasn’t worried about the virus. “I figure, just let nature take its course,” she said. Her customers were less nonchalant. Bales, who had a neat manicure and a number of tattoos, said that, days earlier, people had begun realizing that “everyone’s buying things and everything’s gonna be gone.” The resulting rush was, for her, unprecedented. She was out of ARs and .308 rifles. A few shotguns remained, and she told shoppers that they could saw them off, to a legal length. “Obama didn’t even bring in these numbers,” Bales said.
At noon, a woman in her sixties came in. She wore plastic gloves and had a scarf wrapped around her face, and she traced a wide arc around the only other non-employee in the store. “I’ve been doing this since the beginning of March,” she said, referring to her protective gear. “I don’t feel sick at all. I’m self-quarantining.” She left her house only for essential activities. This was one. “I’m buying a gun,” she said. “I can’t believe it.”
She went on, “My son was a little upset about it.” (He preferred his bow and arrow.) “I’m old and I live alone, and we don’t know if there’s going to be civil unrest. The world is not the same.” She added, “It didn’t have to be this way.” Unlike many of the shop’s regulars, she was no fan of Trump: “He’s a divider all the way. First he said, ‘Five people have died, big deal.’ Now he’s saying, ‘I always knew it’d be dangerous.’ ” Talk turned to Portland. “It’s a ghost town,” a young woman said. Her name was Rosemary, and she was helping Bales out, since the restaurant where she waited tables had closed.
“I don’t like to go in cities anymore, anyway,” the customer said.
“But these rumors about them putting this country in full lockdown are inaccurate,” Rosemary said. “It’s a scare tactic. It’s not like all of a sudden we’re gonna wake up one day and everyone is sick and the whole world is ending.”
“I don’t know,” the customer said. “The exponential growth is happening.”
“If anything, we’re definitely repopulating, if nobody is at work,” Rosemary said cheerily. “We won’t have a shortage of humans, that’s for sure.”
Bales helped her customer choose a weapon. (“Pick three,” the customer told her.) As Bales rummaged around, the customer said, “I’m going to have a soldier train me. A friend of my son’s.” Bales returned with the first option. “A .22 Mag,” she said. “Holds thirty rounds.”
The customer peered at the gun.
“It’s a Kel-Tec PMR-30,” Bales said.
“I like the color of it,” the customer said. “It’s not black.” She picked it up. “It feels good. And it’s got a safety. I’m going to take this one. You’ve got ammo for it, right?” Bales nodded and noted a few of the gun’s features. “As long as you’re accurate, it’ll do damage,” she said.
“This is just going to be for close range,” the customer said. “In my house. If it happens.” (Asked what “it” was, she said, “In two months, if the cities are starving, they’re gonna come out. And I understand that.”) Bales piled boxes of ammunition on the counter. “I’ll take them all,” the customer said. She ducked outside to get her wallet from the car.
“I think she’s a liberal,” Bales said, once the door closed. “There’s so many coming in. First-time-gun-owner liberals. I’ve probably seen ten this week. It’s so funny, because I hope it just turns them on to liking the Second Amendment. I mean, the Constitution was created for a reason. To protect us.”
The customer returned. The bill was nearly seven hundred dollars, including electronic ear protection and sixteen boxes of bullets. She could come back and pick up the gun once her digital background check cleared. The customer asked, “If I don’t get approved, what happens?”
“You already got approved,” Bales said, glancing at a computer, with some surprise.
“O.K.! Can I take it?”
“Yeah. Some people go through fast.”
The new gun owner asked if there was a shooting range nearby. She asked if she needed a concealed-carry permit. She asked how to carry the gun out. “I can’t believe this!” she said, stepping into the world with her brand-new gun. ♦
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-03-30--Pandemics and the Shape of Human History

What ’ s often referred to as the first pandemic began in the city of Pelusium , near modern-day Port Said , in northeastern Egypt , in the year 541 .
According to the historian Procopius , who was alive at the time , the “ pestilence ” spread both west , toward Alexandria , and east , toward Palestine .
Then it kept on going .
In his view , it seemed to move almost consciously , “ as if fearing lest some corner of the earth might escape it.
” The earliest symptom of the pestilence was fever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was so mild that it did not “ afford any suspicion of danger.
” But , within a few days , victims developed the classic symptoms of bubonic plague—lumps , or buboes , in their groin and under their arms .
The suffering at that point was terrible ; some people went into a coma , others into violent delirium .
Many vomited blood .
Those who attended to the sick “ were in a state of constant exhaustion , ” Procopius noted .
“ For this reason everybody pitied them no less @ @ @ @ @ @ @ predict who was going to perish and who would pull through .
In early 542 , the plague struck Constantinople .
At that time , the city was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire , which was led by the Emperor Justinian .
A recent assessment calls Justinian “ one of the greatest statesmen who ever lived.
” Another historian describes the first part of his reign—he ruled for almost forty years—as “ a flurry of action virtually unparalleled in Roman history.
” In the fifteen years before the pestilence reached the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made peace with the Persians , overhauled the Eastern Empire ’ s fiscal administration , and built the Hagia Sophia .
As the plague raged , it fell to Justinian , in Procopius ’ words , to “ make provision for the trouble.
” The Emperor paid for the bodies of the abandoned and the destitute to be buried .
Even so , it was impossible to keep up ; the death toll was too high .
( Procopius thought it reached more than ten thousand a day , though no one is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ John of Ephesus , another contemporary of Justinian ’ s , wrote that “ nobody would go out of doors without a tag upon which his name was written , ” in case he was suddenly stricken .
Eventually , bodies were just tossed into fortifications at the edge of the city .
The plague hit the powerless and the powerful alike .
Justinian himself contracted it .
Among the lucky , he survived .
His rule , however , never really recovered .
In the years leading up to 542 , Justinian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the western part of the Roman Empire from the Goths , the Vandals , and other assorted barbarians .
After 542 , the Emperor struggled to recruit soldiers and to pay them .
The territories that his generals had subdued began to revolt .
The plague reached the city of Rome in 543 , and seems to have made it all the way to Britain by 544 .
It broke out again in Constantinople in 558 , a third time in 573 , and yet again in 586 .
The Justinianic plague , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t burn itself out until 750 .
By that point , there was a new world order .
A powerful new religion , Islam , had arisen , and its followers ruled territory that included a great deal of what had been Justinian ’ s empire , along with the Arabian Peninsula .
Much of Western Europe , meanwhile , had come under the control of the Franks .
Rome had been reduced to about thirty thousand people , roughly the population of present-day Mamaroneck .
Was the pestilence partly responsible ?
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by men but also by microbes .
Just as there are many ways for microbes to infect a body , there are many ways for epidemics to play out in the body politic .
Epidemics can be short-lived or protracted , or , like the Justinianic plague , recurrent .
Often , they partner with war ; sometimes the pairing favors the aggressor , sometimes the aggressed .
Epidemic diseases can become endemic , which is to say constantly present , only to become epidemic again when they ’ re carried to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ To this last category belongs smallpox , dubbed the speckled monster , which may have killed more than a billion people before it was eradicated , in the mid-twentieth century .
No one knows exactly where smallpox originated ; the virus—part of the genus that includes cowpox , camelpox , and monkeypox—is believed to have first infected humans around the time that people began domesticating animals .
Signs of smallpox have been found in Egyptian mummies , including Ramses V , who died in 1157 B.C .
The Romans seem to have picked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when they went to fight one of their many enemies , the Parthians , in 162 .
The Roman physician Galen reported that those who came down with the new disease suffered a rash that was “ ulcerated in most cases and totally dry.
” ( The epidemic is sometimes referred to as the Plague of Galen . )
Marcus Aurelius , the last of the so-called Five Good Emperors , who died in 180 , may also have been a smallpox victim .
By the fifteenth century , as Joshua S. Loomis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Germs and Their Power Over Humanity ” ( Praeger ) , smallpox had become endemic throughout Europe and Asia , meaning that most people were probably exposed to it at some point in their lives .
Over all , the fatality rate was a terrifying thirty per cent , but among young children it was much higher—more than ninety per cent in some places .
Loomis , a professor of biology at East Stroudsburg University , writes that the danger was so grave that “ parents would commonly wait to name their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Anyone who made it through acquired permanent immunity ( though many were left blind or horribly scarred ) .
This dynamic meant that every generation or so there was a major outbreak , as the number of people who had managed to avoid getting infected as children slowly rose .
It also meant , as Loomis rather cavalierly observes , that Europeans enjoyed a major advantage as they “ began exploring distant lands and interacting with native populations.
” Alfred W. Crosby , the historian who coined the phrase “ the Columbian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ virgin soil epidemic , ” defined as one in which “ the populations at risk have had no previous contact with the diseases that strike them and are therefore immunologically almost defenseless.
” The first “ virgin soil epidemic ” in the Americas—or , to use another one of Crosby ’ s formulations , “ the first New World pandemic ” —began toward the end of 1518 .
That year , someone , presumably from Spain , carried smallpox to Hispaniola .
This was a quarter of a century after Columbus ran @ @ @ @ @ @ @ native Taíno population had already been much reduced .
The speckled monster laid waste to those who remained .
Two friars , writing to the King of Spain , Charles I , in early 1519 , reported that a third of the island ’ s inhabitants were stricken : “ It has pleased Our Lord to bestow a pestilence of smallpox among the said Indians , and it does not cease.
” From Hispaniola , smallpox spread to Puerto Rico .
Within two years , it had reached the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán @ @ @ @ @ @ @ City , a development that allowed Hernán Cortés to conquer the capital , in 1521 .
A Spanish priest wrote , “ In many places it happened that everyone in a house died , and , as it was impossible to bury the great number of dead , they pulled down the houses over them.
” Smallpox seems to have reached the Incan Empire before the Spaniards did ; the infection raced from one settlement to the next faster than the conquistadores could travel .

What’s often referred to as the first pandemic began in the city of Pelusium, near modern-day Port Said, in northeastern Egypt, in the year 541. According to the historian Procopius, who was alive at the time, the “pestilence” spread both west, toward Alexandria, and east, toward Palestine. Then it kept on going. In his view, it seemed to move almost consciously, “as if fearing lest some corner of the earth might escape it.”
The earliest symptom of the pestilence was fever. Often, Procopius observed, this was so mild that it did not “afford any suspicion of danger.” But, within a few days, victims developed the classic symptoms of bubonic plague—lumps, or buboes, in their groin and under their arms. The suffering at that point was terrible; some people went into a coma, others into violent delirium. Many vomited blood. Those who attended to the sick “were in a state of constant exhaustion,” Procopius noted. “For this reason everybody pitied them no less than the sufferers.” No one could predict who was going to perish and who would pull through.
In early 542, the plague struck Constantinople. At that time, the city was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, which was led by the Emperor Justinian. A recent assessment calls Justinian “one of the greatest statesmen who ever lived.” Another historian describes the first part of his reign—he ruled for almost forty years—as “a flurry of action virtually unparalleled in Roman history.” In the fifteen years before the pestilence reached the capital, Justinian codified Roman law, made peace with the Persians, overhauled the Eastern Empire’s fiscal administration, and built the Hagia Sophia.
As the plague raged, it fell to Justinian, in Procopius’ words, to “make provision for the trouble.” The Emperor paid for the bodies of the abandoned and the destitute to be buried. Even so, it was impossible to keep up; the death toll was too high. (Procopius thought it reached more than ten thousand a day, though no one is sure if this is accurate.) John of Ephesus, another contemporary of Justinian’s, wrote that “nobody would go out of doors without a tag upon which his name was written,” in case he was suddenly stricken. Eventually, bodies were just tossed into fortifications at the edge of the city.
The plague hit the powerless and the powerful alike. Justinian himself contracted it. Among the lucky, he survived. His rule, however, never really recovered. In the years leading up to 542, Justinian’s generals had reconquered much of the western part of the Roman Empire from the Goths, the Vandals, and other assorted barbarians. After 542, the Emperor struggled to recruit soldiers and to pay them. The territories that his generals had subdued began to revolt. The plague reached the city of Rome in 543, and seems to have made it all the way to Britain by 544. It broke out again in Constantinople in 558, a third time in 573, and yet again in 586.
The Justinianic plague, as it became known, didn’t burn itself out until 750. By that point, there was a new world order. A powerful new religion, Islam, had arisen, and its followers ruled territory that included a great deal of what had been Justinian’s empire, along with the Arabian Peninsula. Much of Western Europe, meanwhile, had come under the control of the Franks. Rome had been reduced to about thirty thousand people, roughly the population of present-day Mamaroneck. Was the pestilence partly responsible? If so, history is written not only by men but also by microbes.
Just as there are many ways for microbes to infect a body, there are many ways for epidemics to play out in the body politic. Epidemics can be short-lived or protracted, or, like the Justinianic plague, recurrent. Often, they partner with war; sometimes the pairing favors the aggressor, sometimes the aggressed. Epidemic diseases can become endemic, which is to say constantly present, only to become epidemic again when they’re carried to a new region or when conditions change.
To this last category belongs smallpox, dubbed the speckled monster, which may have killed more than a billion people before it was eradicated, in the mid-twentieth century. No one knows exactly where smallpox originated; the virus—part of the genus that includes cowpox, camelpox, and monkeypox—is believed to have first infected humans around the time that people began domesticating animals. Signs of smallpox have been found in Egyptian mummies, including Ramses V, who died in 1157 B.C. The Romans seem to have picked up the pox near present-day Baghdad, when they went to fight one of their many enemies, the Parthians, in 162. The Roman physician Galen reported that those who came down with the new disease suffered a rash that was “ulcerated in most cases and totally dry.” (The epidemic is sometimes referred to as the Plague of Galen.) Marcus Aurelius, the last of the so-called Five Good Emperors, who died in 180, may also have been a smallpox victim.
By the fifteenth century, as Joshua S. Loomis reports in “Epidemics: The Impact of Germs and Their Power Over Humanity” (Praeger), smallpox had become endemic throughout Europe and Asia, meaning that most people were probably exposed to it at some point in their lives. Over all, the fatality rate was a terrifying thirty per cent, but among young children it was much higher—more than ninety per cent in some places. Loomis, a professor of biology at East Stroudsburg University, writes that the danger was so grave that “parents would commonly wait to name their children until after they had survived smallpox.” Anyone who made it through acquired permanent immunity (though many were left blind or horribly scarred). This dynamic meant that every generation or so there was a major outbreak, as the number of people who had managed to avoid getting infected as children slowly rose. It also meant, as Loomis rather cavalierly observes, that Europeans enjoyed a major advantage as they “began exploring distant lands and interacting with native populations.”
Alfred W. Crosby, the historian who coined the phrase “the Columbian Exchange,” also coined the term “virgin soil epidemic,” defined as one in which “the populations at risk have had no previous contact with the diseases that strike them and are therefore immunologically almost defenseless.” The first “virgin soil epidemic” in the Americas—or, to use another one of Crosby’s formulations, “the first New World pandemic”—began toward the end of 1518. That year, someone, presumably from Spain, carried smallpox to Hispaniola. This was a quarter of a century after Columbus ran aground on the island, and the native Taíno population had already been much reduced. The speckled monster laid waste to those who remained. Two friars, writing to the King of Spain, Charles I, in early 1519, reported that a third of the island’s inhabitants were stricken: “It has pleased Our Lord to bestow a pestilence of smallpox among the said Indians, and it does not cease.” From Hispaniola, smallpox spread to Puerto Rico. Within two years, it had reached the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, in what’s now Mexico City, a development that allowed Hernán Cortés to conquer the capital, in 1521. A Spanish priest wrote, “In many places it happened that everyone in a house died, and, as it was impossible to bury the great number of dead, they pulled down the houses over them.” Smallpox seems to have reached the Incan Empire before the Spaniards did; the infection raced from one settlement to the next faster than the conquistadores could travel.
It’s impossible to say how many people died in the first New World pandemic, both because the records are sketchy and because Europeans also brought with them so many other “virgin soil” diseases, including measles, typhoid, and diphtheria. In all, the imported microbes probably killed tens of millions of people. “The discovery of America was followed by possibly the greatest demographic disaster in the history of the world,” William M. Denevan, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has written. This disaster changed the course of history not just in Europe and the Americas but also in Africa: faced with a labor shortage, the Spanish increasingly turned to the slave trade.
The word “quarantine” comes from the Italian quaranta, meaning “forty.” As Frank M. Snowden explains in “Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present” (Yale), the practice of quarantine originated long before people understood what, exactly, they were trying to contain, and the period of forty days was chosen not for medical reasons but for scriptural ones, “as both the Old and New Testaments make multiple references to the number forty in the context of purification: the forty days and forty nights of the flood in Genesis, the forty years of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness . . . and the forty days of Lent.”
The earliest formal quarantines were a response to the Black Death, which, between 1347 and 1351, killed something like a third of Europe and ushered in what’s become known as the “second plague pandemic.” As with the first, the second pandemic worked its havoc fitfully. Plague would spread, then abate, only to flare up again.