August 2020: Viruses and Pandemics

The topic for August 2020 was Viruses and Pandemics.  The topic was inspired by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the corresponding Covid-19 pandemic, but was selected in March before any shelter-in-place orders and restrictions on public gatherings (which has prevented the group from meeting at its usual location since April).  In the group’s first online meeting since the Covid pandemic began, works of fiction and nonfiction were presented, offering insight, criticism, and parallels to past pandemics.

Fiction

The Decameron

Boccaccio, Giovanni.  The Decameron.  Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 1980.  Collector’s edition, bound in full leather.  Boccaccio completed The Decameron in 1353, following the Black Plague epidemic in Italy in 1348.  The book is structured as a frame story in which ten characters—seven young women and three young men—flee plague-ridden Florence for a secluded villa in the countryside.  During their ten-day isolation, each person tells a story every day related to a topic chosen by one of the characters.  The one hundred stories of The Decameron include tales of wit, tragedy, and the erotic.  In addition to the frame story, Boccaccio’s “Induction of the Author” (introduction) is considered an important medical piece as he describes the beginning of the illness/plague upon the citizens of his city.  Sixty percent of the population of Florence and its countryside died in the 1348 plague.  The Decameron was first published in English in 1886.

First appearance of "The Masque of the Red Death"

Poe, Edgar Allan.  “The Mask of the Red Death: A Fantasy.” Graham's Magazine Vol. 20 (May 1842).  Six issues of Graham’s Magazine, January through June 1842, bound together.  In the May 1842 number, the first printing of "The Masque of the Red Death" appeared.  This is a famous Poe short story about a horrific pandemic that was devastating the country.  A Poe scholar, M. C. Mabbott, wrote, "This masterpiece is unsurpassed, perhaps unequaled, among Poe's very short stories."  The most apocalyptic of Poe's tales, the story ends, "And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable domination over all". 

In its first appearance in 1842, Poe titled the story “The Mask of the Red Death: A Fantasy.”  Poe revised the story in 1845, published in the Broadway Journal, retitled as the now-standard “The Masque of the Red Death.”   While its first appearance in Graham’s Magazine was not illustrated, later publications in book form have generated iconic images of “The Masque of the Red Death,” including Harry Clarke’s 1919 engraving (shown here).

A Poe-related aside...

This collector, over more than 40 years, has assembled an important Edgar Allan Poe book collection (over 500 books) which includes many first editions from the 1830's and 1840's.  He has also assembled a large collection of signed American astronaut books from the 1960's through the present focusing on the first 45 American astronauts.  These two collections did not have much in common until one day he came across and was able to buy a letter linking the two. 

Letters to and from Neil Armstrong regarding Eldorado

An original letter from June 30, 1969, signed by Neil Armstrong on National Aeronautics and Space Administration letter head addressed to a Mr. Pearson.  Also included is a copy of a letter from Mr. Pearson to Neil Armstrong suggesting a name for the site of the first moon landing.  The suggestion was "Eldorado" from an Edgar Allan Poe poem.  Wisely NASA selected another name, the Sea of Tranquility.  Eldorado was a mythical, unattainable city of gold or ideal that many men spent their lives trying to find only to die trying.  This was not what NASA or Neil Armstrong had in mind.  Nevertheless, the letter is an important link between the collector's two main book collections.  Original signed Neil Armstrong letters are now extremely pricey especially with additional provenience material to support the authenticity.

Letter of Provenance and copy of Poe's Eldorado

Now back to viruses and pandemics...

Facing It

Reed, Paul.  Facing It.  San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1984.  Facing It is regarded as the first novel about HIV/AIDS.  In 1984, Armistead Maupin published Babycakes, the fourth books in his Tales of the City series, in which a character has AIDS; but Reed’s Facing It was the first novel focused solely on AIDS.  In the story, the main character’s health fails, and he is diagnosed with the new immune deficiency syndrome beginning to spread throughout the country.  Reed’s story follows the protagonist’s struggle to understand his illness and reconcile the conflicts it presents.  This copy is signed by the author on the title page.

 

Flight from Neveryon

Delany, Samuel R.  Flight from Neveryon.  New York: Bantam Books, 1985.  Delany’s fantasy Neveryon trilogy is considered the first work of fiction published by a major publisher to address HIV/AIDS.  The third tale of the Neveryon trilogy, “The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals” tells what happens when the virus attacks the fantasy land of Neveryon.  The purpose of a government, the author asserts, is to protect its citizens.  In Neveryon, the incompetence and apathy of the government fail to protect its people from a devastating infectious disease.  “The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals” is a not-so-veiled critique of New York City’s response to HIV/AIDS early in the pandemic and Mayor Ed Koch’s lackluster leadership during this time.

Medical Note to "The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals"

The story is followed by a Medical Note by the publisher.  The Medical Note conveys an overview of the medical knowledge of HIV/AIDS at the time and information on prevention.  The three-page note concludes with contact information for Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York and the number for the AIDS Hotline.  A publisher’s Medical Note such as this is rare, if not unprecedented, in literature.

 

Safestud

Exander, Max.  [Paul Reed]  Safestud: The Safesex Chronicles of Max Exander.  Boston: Alyson Publications, Inc., 1985.  Max Exander is a pseudonym for writer Paul Reed, under which he published erotic fiction.  As a gay writer living through and writing about the emergence of the AIDS pandemic, Reed saw an opportunity to use fiction as a means of educating readers on safer sex practices and helping to normalize the use of condoms and safer sex techniques.  Safestud was Reed’s first erotic fiction to prioritize safe sex in the encounters of his protagonist, Max Exander.  Reed therefore creates a new genre in literature—safe sex erotica—in this seminal work.  Safestud was the first of three novels in the Safesex Chronicles of Max Exander series.

Nonfiction

Epidemics of the Middle Ages

Hecker, Justus Friedrich Carl.  Epidemics of the Middle Ages.  London: Trubner & Co., 1859.  First translated from the German in 1846.  Second edition.  Bound in half leather with marbled boards. 360 pages.  In Epidemics of the Middle Ages, Hecker offers three treatises on different epidemics occurring in the Middle Ages: The Black Death (1346 to 1353); The Dancing Mania (various social outbreaks between the 14th and 17th centuries); and, The Sweating Sickness (five visitations between 1485 and 1551).  Hecker's work is of great importance to both the history of medicine and folklore.

 

And the Band Played On

Shilts, Randy.  And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic.  New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.  An investigative journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, Shilts wrote extensively about medical, social, and political aspects of the emerging disease affecting gay men, which came to be known as AIDS.  In And The Band Played On, Shilts set out to chronicle the discovery and spread of HIV/AIDS, with a well-documented critique of the incompetence and indifference on the part of government officials and elected leaders and the apathy toward those infected with, and affected by, the disease.  Shilts later explained the title of the book, And the Band Played On, as a more colorful way of saying “business as usual.”  The title conveys Shilts’s critique of how people responded to HIV/AIDS with an “ordinary pace to an extraordinary situation.”