One of the Better Days

In the current issue of TLS, Alexander Starritt re-reads Ivan Denisovich. Full text here.

“That’s the genius of Denisovich and the horror of it, too: that circumstance can gradually make a man’s desires so small, can so degrade him, that in the end he’s grateful for the crumbs from Fate’s table. It’s like what they say about frogs in hot water: that if you drop one into a bubbling pot, he’ll jump out; but if you put him in while the water’s cold and heat it gradually, he’ll stay there till he’s cooked.

My mum recently died after a decade-long illness. But re-reading Denisovich during the pandemic, I see this frog-in-a-pot phenomenon at work with the virus too. Imagine someone told you back in January about the deaths, house arrests and economic immiseration. And yet, now that we’ve gradually got here, what we talk about is how to bend the rules for dinner with our friends and whether lockdown made us fatter or thinner.

Back in April, The Sun, which is an emanation of popular sentiment (albeit a highly idiosyncratic one), published a front page that read: “LOCKDOWN BLOW: PUBS SHUT TILL XMAS”. And off to the side in a jaunty little circle designed to look like a spiky blob of virus: “596 dead, see page 4”. That’s pure Ivan Denisovich.”