{"id":1682,"date":"2020-03-18T21:18:10","date_gmt":"2020-03-18T21:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/?p=1682"},"modified":"2021-09-15T09:19:47","modified_gmt":"2021-09-15T09:19:47","slug":"staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-1704\" src=\"http:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/248\/2020\/03\/C1419ED4-B839-44DC-A942-15AF51DC5B0A-193x300.jpeg\" alt=\"Book cover\" width=\"193\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/248\/2020\/03\/C1419ED4-B839-44DC-A942-15AF51DC5B0A-193x300.jpeg 193w, https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/248\/2020\/03\/C1419ED4-B839-44DC-A942-15AF51DC5B0A.jpeg 322w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 193px) 100vw, 193px\" \/>If you&#8217;re looking for reading material to escape from the anxiety of living in a pandemic, that&#8217;s a great idea &#8212; we have plenty of suggestions for you, but you should probably skip this one!\u00a0 For those who have been re-reading\u00a0<em>The Hot Zone<\/em> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/movies\/movie-features\/contagion-most-urgent-movie-of-2020-964532\/\">watching<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/03\/10\/movies\/contagion-movie-coronavirus.html\"><em>Contagion<\/em><\/a>, this post is for you, and we want you to know that there&#8217;s nothing wrong with you: we get it!\u00a0 At a time like this, when disease is on everyone&#8217;s mind, fiction and nonfiction about epidemics can offer guidance, or reassurance, or even just a safe space in which to process current events.<\/p>\n<p>Disease was on everyone&#8217;s mind in London in the spring of 1722, just as it is around the world today.\u00a0 Bubonic plague had struck the French port of Marseilles and threatened to spread to other major trade hubs.\u00a0 In the midst of this fear and uncertainty, Daniel Defoe, the author of <em>Robinson Crusoe<\/em>, published <em>A Journal of the Plague Year<\/em>: the fictional &#8220;diary&#8221; of a survivor of London&#8217;s last major epidemic, the Great Plague of 1665-1666.\u00a0 He likely thought that just like today, people concerned about an impending epidemic might be interested in a story about one.<\/p>\n<p>The fundamental task of <em>A<\/em>\u00a0<em>Journal of the Plague Year<\/em> is to help readers picture something at once too large and too small to see: an infectious disease.\u00a0 We cannot directly &#8220;see&#8221; the enormous scale of an epidemic, any more than we can see something as small as a microbe.\u00a0 (That problem of not being able to see the disease particle itself was even more acute in the 1720s, when microscopes were a recent invention and the idea of tiny particles that could cause illness was still just a theory.)\u00a0 Defoe&#8217;s narrator, identified only as &#8220;H. F.,&#8221; captures the experience of only being able to &#8220;see&#8221; the disease through its effects: symptoms like coughing and fever, or the eerie silence of a neighborhood under quarantine.\u00a0 He captures the particular kind of dread, too, in not knowing whether those signs and symptoms of disease are reliable.\u00a0 While most patients with bubonic plague exhibit telltale lumps, Defoe writes, sometimes those lumps were only discovered internally, after death; you can only be certain whether someone has the disease or not once it&#8217;s too late.\u00a0 Just as it&#8217;s hard to know whether the disease is present or not in a particular person&#8217;s body, it&#8217;s hard to know where it is in a city or country either; as the situation worsens, reliable news gets harder to find and contradictory rumors fill in the gap.\u00a0 Even the official documents, Defoe&#8217;s narrator reports, don&#8217;t always tell the full story:\u00a0<em>A Journal of the Plague Year<\/em> includes regular updates on the death toll by neighborhood (the &#8220;Bills of Mortality&#8221;), but suggests that many cases may be unreported or miscategorized.\u00a0 Defoe mixes these official sources of news with H.F.&#8217;s own experience and anecdotes he hears from others, creating a sort of collage &#8212; adding up different kinds of accounts into a sort of composite view of a problem that&#8217;s too big to know.<\/p>\n<p>Above all, Defoe tries to make the plague <em>feel<\/em> real, despite (or perhaps because of!) the fact that its causes are too tiny and its effects too enormous for us to visualize.\u00a0 Readers whose main experience with old texts has been high-school Shakespeare might be surprised by Defoe&#8217;s style: while his words and sentence structure may seem old-fashioned, his writing is very plain, much more interested in the facts on the ground than in flowery metaphors.\u00a0 The narrator, after all, is a saddle-maker: a middle-class tradesman, practical rather than poetic.\u00a0 The plainness of the writing has a sense of urgency and concreteness, as if to say there&#8217;s no time for fancy rhetoric because the things described are actually happening.\u00a0 The more real the threat, the more plain the style, culminating in a moment when H.F. sees a mass grave of plague victims and is reduced to an inarticulate wreck: &#8220;it is impossible to say anything that is able to give a true idea of it to those who did not see it, other than this, that it was indeed very, very, very dreadful, and such as no tongue can express.&#8221;\u00a0 This description of the mass grave as being too dreadful to describe (except as &#8220;very, very, very dreadful&#8221;) paradoxically makes it <em>feel<\/em> real because of the way it seems to have shaken the narrator.\u00a0 The plague is a phenomenon we can only truly experience through its effects &#8212; here, though the effect it has on the narrator, who seems to be at a loss for words.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not clear whether the <em>Journal<\/em>&#8216;s readers thought it was literally a person&#8217;s diary.\u00a0 The idea of realist fiction &#8212; of narratives that seemed plausible but were not literally true &#8212; was still new at the time; when Daniel Defoe published <em>Robinson Crusoe<\/em> a few years before the\u00a0<em>Journal<\/em>, it was similarly presented as a first-person account by a real person that Defoe had just &#8220;edited.&#8221;\u00a0 That uncertainty about how literally the\u00a0<em>Journal<\/em> was intended to be taken is perhaps fitting: like the plague it describes, its reality lies on the effects it has on its readers, effects that are at once uncertain and impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n<p>There is a free audiobook edition of\u00a0<em>A Journal of the Plague Year<\/em> available on <a href=\"https:\/\/librivox.org\/a-journal-of-the-plague-year-by-daniel-defoe\/\">Librivox<\/a> and multiple e-versions available on <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/journalofplagu00defo\/page\/32\/mode\/2up\">Internet Archive<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re looking for reading material to escape from the anxiety of living in a pandemic, that&#8217;s a great idea &#8212; we have plenty of suggestions for you, but you &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/\" class=\"\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":449,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,15,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-little-free-library","category-resources","category-staff-picks"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Staff Picks: Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year - Books We Read<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Staff Picks: Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year - Books We Read\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you&#8217;re looking for reading material to escape from the anxiety of living in a pandemic, that&#8217;s a great idea &#8212; we have plenty of suggestions for you, but you &hellip; Read More\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Books We Read\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-03-18T21:18:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-09-15T09:19:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/248\/2020\/03\/C1419ED4-B839-44DC-A942-15AF51DC5B0A-193x300.jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nicholas Allred\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Nicholas Allred\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/\",\"name\":\"Staff Picks: Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year - Books We Read\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/248\/2020\/03\/C1419ED4-B839-44DC-A942-15AF51DC5B0A-193x300.jpeg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-03-18T21:18:10+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-09-15T09:19:47+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/#\/schema\/person\/8ce3617007aba8b91ccf387145b295e7\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/248\/2020\/03\/C1419ED4-B839-44DC-A942-15AF51DC5B0A.jpeg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/248\/2020\/03\/C1419ED4-B839-44DC-A942-15AF51DC5B0A.jpeg\",\"width\":322,\"height\":500,\"caption\":\"Book cover\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Staff Picks: Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/\",\"name\":\"Books We Read\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/#\/schema\/person\/8ce3617007aba8b91ccf387145b295e7\",\"name\":\"Nicholas Allred\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a29d845e00d27bd8f00b2c4952357896?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a29d845e00d27bd8f00b2c4952357896?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Nicholas Allred\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/author\/naa117\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Staff Picks: Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year - Books We Read","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Staff Picks: Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year - Books We Read","og_description":"If you&#8217;re looking for reading material to escape from the anxiety of living in a pandemic, that&#8217;s a great idea &#8212; we have plenty of suggestions for you, but you &hellip; Read More","og_url":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/","og_site_name":"Books We Read","article_published_time":"2020-03-18T21:18:10+00:00","article_modified_time":"2021-09-15T09:19:47+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/248\/2020\/03\/C1419ED4-B839-44DC-A942-15AF51DC5B0A-193x300.jpeg"}],"author":"Nicholas Allred","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Nicholas Allred","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/","url":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/","name":"Staff Picks: Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year - Books We Read","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/248\/2020\/03\/C1419ED4-B839-44DC-A942-15AF51DC5B0A-193x300.jpeg","datePublished":"2020-03-18T21:18:10+00:00","dateModified":"2021-09-15T09:19:47+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/#\/schema\/person\/8ce3617007aba8b91ccf387145b295e7"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/248\/2020\/03\/C1419ED4-B839-44DC-A942-15AF51DC5B0A.jpeg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/248\/2020\/03\/C1419ED4-B839-44DC-A942-15AF51DC5B0A.jpeg","width":322,"height":500,"caption":"Book cover"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/staff-pick-daniel-defoe-a-journal-of-the-plague-year\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Staff Picks: Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/#website","url":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/","name":"Books We Read","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/#\/schema\/person\/8ce3617007aba8b91ccf387145b295e7","name":"Nicholas Allred","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a29d845e00d27bd8f00b2c4952357896?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a29d845e00d27bd8f00b2c4952357896?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Nicholas Allred"},"url":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/author\/naa117\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/449"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1682"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5555,"href":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions\/5555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}