{"id":428022,"date":"2022-04-07T17:28:15","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T14:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/emily-st-john-mandel-cant-stop-writing-about-pandemics\/"},"modified":"2022-04-07T17:28:15","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T14:28:15","slug":"emily-st-john-mandel-cant-stop-writing-about-pandemics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/emily-st-john-mandel-cant-stop-writing-about-pandemics\/","title":{"rendered":"#Emily St. John Mandel can\u2019t stop writing about pandemics"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a29255827052\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a29255827052\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/emily-st-john-mandel-cant-stop-writing-about-pandemics\/#%E2%80%9CEmily_St_John_Mandel_cant_stop_writing_about_pandemics%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;Emily St. John Mandel can\u2019t stop writing about pandemics&#8221;<\/a><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-3' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-3'><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-3' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/emily-st-john-mandel-cant-stop-writing-about-pandemics\/#Whats_on_her_nightstand\" >What\u2019s on her nightstand?<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CEmily_St_John_Mandel_cant_stop_writing_about_pandemics%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;Emily St. John Mandel can\u2019t stop writing about pandemics&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n<div>\n                In 2014, the Canadian-American author Emily St. John Mandel was catapulted to fame by her fourth novel,\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Station Eleven<\/i>, a remarkable portrayal of a horrific flu pandemic that kills 99 per cent of humanity, and of the <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/trip-and-travel\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"10\" title=\"Trip &amp; Travel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">travel<\/a>ling troupe of Shakespearean actors who visit settlements around the Great Lakes in the years following the plague. An im<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a>te hit with critics and readers alike,\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Station Eleven<\/i>\u00a0gained renewed prominence with the arrival of a real-world pandemic and an HBO Max mini<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/watch-movies-tv-seriess\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"8\" title=\"Watch Movies &amp; TV Series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">series<\/a> that aired in December. Mandel\u2019s newest novel,\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Sea of Tranquility<\/i>, returns to many of the older work\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">theme<\/a>s, featuring an author whose book tour for her pandemic novel is interrupted by an actual pandemic. It was largely composed while Mandel was watching COVID-19 play out and comparing it with the way she had imagined it would.<\/p>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">Brian Bethune: To quote a journalist in your new novel,\u00a0<\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\"><i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Sea of Tranquility<\/i><\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">, \u201cI\u2019m guessing I\u2019m not the first to ask you what it\u2019s like to be the author of a pandemic novel during a pandemic.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>Emily St. John Mandel:\u00a0<\/strong>It was an intense, surreal experience, though I hesitate to say it, because who wasn\u2019t having an intense, surreal experience in the spring of 2020? Around that time, when the pandemic hit, I received requests to write op-eds and essays on exactly that\u2014on being the author of\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Station Eleven<\/i>\u00a0during a real-life pandemic\u2014and it felt kind of gross to me. To say yes to any of them would be to use the pandemic as a marketing opportunity. So I didn\u2019t write any, but the idea drove me to try autofiction, a genre that blends elements of autobiography with fiction.<\/p>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: What was the genesis of\u00a0<\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\"><i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Station Eleven<\/i><\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">, six years before COVID-19?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> At first, I was just interested in the art part of it, and the book wasn\u2019t going to be post-apocalyptic at all. When I met my husband 18 years ago, he was writing plays, and that gave me second-hand involvement with independent theatre\u2014way, way off-Broadway. I admired those actors; they were very talented people, but nobody was making a living. It reminded me of my time as a dancer. I attended the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and belonged to a couple of companies, so I knew about the joys of art for art\u2019s sake. At the same time, I wanted to write about <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/technology\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"4\" title=\"Technology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">technology<\/a>, because it seemed to me then\u2014and it still does\u2014that we live in an age of miracles, technologically speaking, which we take for granted. Maybe a way to think about these things is to contemplate their absence. So the project of\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Station Eleven<\/i>\u00a0was: if all of our technology fell away, what would that world look like? What would we long for and try to recreate? If you\u2019re going to get into a post-tech world, then you\u2019ve somehow got to end the world as it is. That\u2019s how the flu pandemic came about. It was just a horribly efficient way to end civilization.<\/p>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: The book features an \u201cincomplete list\u201d of changes, which begins with tech, but also mentions the loss of medicine, particularly antibiotics, and the end of reading about the lives of others and feeling less alone.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> That\u2019s something I thought about a lot\u2014how intensely local our world would become.<\/p>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: You wrote an essay on plagues that came out about the same time as\u00a0<\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\"><i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Station Eleven<\/i><\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">, which includes accounts from Captain George Vancouver\u2019s exploration of the smallpox-devastated B.C. coast. (Vancouver was among the first Europeans known to have landed in British Columbia, in the late 18th century.) Did that come out of your research for the novel?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> Yes, I learned about it when I read\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Pox Americana<\/i>\u00a0by Elizabeth Fenn, which is about the 1775-1782 epidemic. I wanted to get a better grasp of how pandemics work. I found myself most drawn to that smallpox pandemic because it took place in the part of the world where I grew up, in southwestern British Columbia. Those stories are just so haunting.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>READ:\u00a0Meet the muses behind Robert Munsch\u2019s most iconic stories<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: Is that why George Vancouver reappears in\u00a0<\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\"><i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Sea of Tranquility?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> He does. I had the narrator, Olive Llewellyn, recite my\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Station Eleven<\/i>\u00a0lecture! As I mentioned, there\u2019s that autofiction component to\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Sea of Tranquility<\/i>. Right after\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Station Eleven<\/i>\u00a0came out, there was this long promotional tour, and I ended up doing a lot of talks and on-stage conversations, so I developed this lecture about the novel that leaned heavily on my research on pandemics and thinking more broadly about post-apocalyptic fiction. So when I was writing\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Sea of Tranquility<\/i>, I just gave that lecture to Olive.<\/p>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: Olive\u2019s version has a note of deep parental dread running through it that wasn\u2019t in the essay.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> Oh, absolutely. When I wrote and published\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Station Eleven<\/i>, I didn\u2019t have a child. My daughter was born two years later. It\u2019s very different thinking and talking about the end of the world when you\u2019re trying not to imagine your child being affected by it. That was a bit of a balancing act for me and for Olive as well.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1235584\" style=\"width: 1796px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1235584 lazyload\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/INTERVIEW-EMILY-ST-JOHN-MANDEL-BETHUNE-APR01-02.jpg\" alt=\"(Photograph by Erik Tanner)\" width=\"1786\" height=\"2500\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Photograph by Erik Tanner)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: Your first three novels garnered little attention. And then\u00a0<\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\"><i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Station Eleven<\/i><\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">\u00a0was, by any definition, a breakout novel. Even your publishers weren\u2019t expecting it\u2014you had a five-city book tour that grew to something like 50 cities in seven countries for over a year. Why do you think it resonated the way it did?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> I think it\u2019s a fundamentally hopeful story; there\u2019s a pandemic, and then life continues. And maybe that\u2019s something a lot of us, myself included, were longing to hear. That turned out to be especially true in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, which were terrifying, and we didn\u2019t know how far we could fall. I think a lot of the book\u2019s success came down to that hopefulness.<\/p>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: After\u00a0<\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\"><i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Station Eleven<\/i><\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">, you published\u00a0<\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\"><i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">The Glass Hotel<\/i><\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">\u00a0in 2020 and now\u00a0<\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\"><i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Sea of Tranquility<\/i><\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">. Do you see these three novels as linked in a particular way? Is there a Mandelverse?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> The Mandelverse, exactly. I do like to think of the books as a multiverse. There\u2019s definitely character overlap and themes that echo through multiple novels. In\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Glass Hotel<\/i>\u00a0there is no plague, but the novel centres around Vincent, her friend Mirella and her brother Paul. In\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Sea of Tranquility<\/i>, Mirella and Paul play bigger roles, with Vincent as this peripheral character. So it\u2019s all part of the same interlinked universe.<\/p>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: Do you plan to stay in this universe?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s interesting to revisit the same characters, because you get to consider them more deeply. There\u2019s a pleasure in order, in trying to make the world more cohesive for ourselves. That\u2019s a big part of why I use the same characters in multiple books.<\/p>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\"><strong>BB:<\/strong> The HBO Max version of\u00a0<\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\"><i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Station Eleven<\/i><\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">\u00a0was actually filmed during the pandemic. How did they do it?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> It\u2019s extremely impressive. They filmed two episodes in Chicago before the pandemic started; production had always been scheduled to shut down because those were winter episodes and they were going to pick up in the late summer. That hiatus ended up lasting much longer than planned, and the production moved to Canada where, at the time, the COVID situation was vastly better than it had been in Chicago. It was a very strange meta thing that they had to do: film a show about a pandemic during the pandemic.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>MORE:\u00a0Kirsten Hillman on U.S. protectionism and the possible return of Donald Trump<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: After they moved the story\u2019s setting from Toronto to Chicago, they had to move the filming back to Toronto<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> Ironic, right?<\/p>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: You watched it and you liked it. Did it feel different to you because there was a real pandemic going on? It aired as Omicron surged.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> I might be the worst person to ask. It felt different to me, but I\u2019m sure it felt different to a lot of viewers, in the same way that the book felt different to a lot of readers after COVID came.<\/p>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: What were your experiences during lockdown? Did you develop pandemic hobbies and habits and new <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/game\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"7\" title=\"Game\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">game<\/a>s with your daughter?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> My daughter and I played the same Enchanted Forest game that Olive plays with her daughter in\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Sea of Tranquility<\/i>. There was such a divide in the pandemic between people with young kids versus people without. I would look at my Twitter feed in the early days of lockdown, and I felt like it was evenly divided. People without kids were like, \u201cLockdown is terrible and really stressful, but I just binge-watched three shows, taught myself how to knit and now I\u2019m learning Italian.\u201d People with small children? \u201cI spent the day frantically trying to do my job while homeschooling and trying to keep my child sane and it\u2019s impossible. And there isn\u2019t a spare moment.\u201d I felt a little more in that camp, although after about five months or so, I had the incredible good fortune of being able to form a pod with two other families and a nanny. But at first it was just a frantic juggling act every day. Just trying to keep it all together as a parent and stay alive because we didn\u2019t know much about COVID back then or how it might spread or if kids were affected.<\/p>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: When you watched TV or read, did you keep as far away from the pandemic as you could, or were you into the pandemic literature that has come out recently?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> I was more into avoiding it. At one point I did download\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Contagion<\/i>, the Steven Soderbergh movie about a global pandemic, but I never watched it. I was interested in escapism at that time, so I read all the fiction I could get my hands on.<\/p>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: The origin of\u00a0<\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\"><i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Sea of Tranquility<\/i><\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">, a pandemic-set novel written in lockdown, seems obvious at first, but you must have started it before COVID.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> Maybe three months before COVID started, I was playing around with this autofiction project and I wasn\u2019t sure if it would make it into the final draft of anything. Then, when the pandemic hit, it seemed an interesting way to write about the strange experience I was having as the author of a celebrated pandemic novel during an actual pandemic.<\/p>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: So there was no pandemic in\u00a0<\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\"><i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Sea of Tranquility<\/i><\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">\u00a0until the pandemic came?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> Correct. For a second pandemic book in a row, the pandemic came late.<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<div style=\"background-color: #f8baaf; padding: 20px;\">\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Whats_on_her_nightstand\"><\/span>What\u2019s on her nightstand?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>With her new novel,\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Sea of Tranquility<\/i>, out in the world in April, Emily St. John Mandel has a few books queued up to read herself. Here\u2019s what\u2019s on her list.<\/p>\n<div id=\"longform-carousel-container\" class=\"carousel slide\" data-interval=\"false\" data-ride=\"carousel\">\n<div class=\"carousel-inner\">\n<div class=\"carousel-item active\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/INTERVIEW-EMILY-ST-JOHN-MANDEL-BETHUNE-APR01-05.jpg\" alt=\"Sankofa, the third novel from Nigerian writer Chibundu Onuzo, examines identity and prejudice through the story of a mixed-race British woman who leaves the U.K. in search of her African father after the death of her mother.\" class=\"d-block w-100\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><i>Sankofa<\/i>, the third novel from Nigerian writer Chibundu Onuzo, examines identity and prejudice through the story of&#13;<br \/>\na mixed-race British woman&#13;<br \/>\nwho leaves the U.K. in search of her African father after the death of her mother.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"carousel-item\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/INTERVIEW-EMILY-ST-JOHN-MANDEL-BETHUNE-APR01-04.jpg\" alt=\"Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by British writer Patrick Hamilton, published in 1935, is a trilogy about working-class London life. Hamilton is most famous for his play Gas Light, the source for the acclaimed 1944 American film.\" class=\"d-block w-100\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><i>Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky<\/i> by British&#13;<br \/>\nwriter Patrick Hamilton, published in 1935, is a trilogy about working-class London life. Hamilton is most famous for his play <i>Gas Light<\/i>, the source for the acclaimed&#13;<br \/>\n1944 American film.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"carousel-item\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/INTERVIEW-EMILY-ST-JOHN-MANDEL-BETHUNE-APR01-03.jpg\" alt=\"Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro, echoes Mandel\u2019s preoccupation with technology, exploring the relationship between a solar- powered \u201cartificial friend,\u201d and the humans who orbit her.\" class=\"d-block w-100\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><i>Klara and the Sun<\/i>,&#13;<br \/>\nby Kazuo Ishiguro, echoes&#13;<br \/>\nMandel\u2019s preoccupation with technology, exploring the&#13;<br \/>\nrelationship between a solar-&#13;<br \/>\npowered \u201cartificial friend,\u201d and the humans who orbit her.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"carousel-control-prev\" role=\"button\" data-target=\"#longform-carousel-container\" data-slide=\"prev\"><span class=\"carousel-control-prev-icon\" aria-hidden=\"true\"\/><span class=\"sr-only\">Previous<\/span><\/a><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"carousel-control-next\" role=\"button\" data-target=\"#longform-carousel-container\" data-slide=\"next\"><span class=\"carousel-control-next-icon\" aria-hidden=\"true\"\/><span class=\"sr-only\">Next<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<hr\/>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: Olive asks one of her virtual book-tour audiences why there has been such an interest in post-apocalyptic literature in the past 10 years, and proposes a few possibilities. Is her thinking here yours too?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> She absolutely is delivering my\u00a0<i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Station Eleven<\/i>\u00a0lecture. One interesting aspect of travelling so much for that novel and meeting so many readers was that I heard a lot of ideas about why we\u2019re so invested in post-apocalyptic literature. Some people think that it has to do with economic inequality\u2014in a world that\u2019s fundamentally unfair, maybe on some level we want to just blow it all up and start over again. I\u2019ve also heard it described as a reaction to climate change. I sometimes think our interest in the post-apocalyptic genre has to do with the deep ambivalence we feel about our technology. On one hand it\u2019s wonderful; on the other, there is such a thing as being too connected and too available. And there is absolutely an erosion of privacy.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>RELATED:\u00a0Stephen Poloz on economic dangers ahead, staying positive and lessons from Star Trek<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: So that brings you back to\u00a0<\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\"><i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Station Eleven<\/i><\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">, and the secret longing for a world with less technology in it.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> Yes. That might be a big part of this.<\/p>\n<p><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">BB: In both of your plague novels, especially the new one, there\u2019s an express concern about the randomness of life, why one person falls ill and another does not, and whether there\u2019s meaning to that. One peripheral character who sticks in my mind is the interviewer in Nairobi in\u00a0<\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\"><i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">Sea of Tranquility<\/i><\/b><b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">, who\u2019s dying and really, really wants there to be some sort of reason for this, in order to find meaning in it. In your books, it\u2019s random that some live and some die, but that is not meaningless to you.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><strong>ESJM:<\/strong> No, it\u2019s not meaningless to me, but it is random. It\u2019s the spring of 2022 and I haven\u2019t gotten COVID yet. I\u2019ve been very careful, but I also crowded into the grocery stores just like everybody else on March 12, 2020, in New York City. And there\u2019s something very random about the way that I didn\u2019t get sick when I\u2019m sure countless other people did while going about the same activity. I wouldn\u2019t say that that implies meaninglessness, but there is definitely something very random happening to us.<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p><em>This interview appears in print in the May 2022 issue of<\/em>\u00a0Maclean\u2019s<em><i data-stringify-type=\"italic\">, and has been edited and condensed for clarity<\/i>. Subscribe to the monthly print magazine\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/secure.macleans.ca\/loc\/MME\/head_subscribe\">here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async defer crossorigin=\"anonymous\" src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News<\/a> articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/general\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/longforms\/emily-st-john-mandel-cant-stop-writing-about-pandemics\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Emily St. John Mandel can\u2019t stop writing about pandemics&#8221; In 2014, the Canadian-American author Emily St. John Mandel was catapulted to fame by her fourth novel,\u00a0Station Eleven, a remarkable portrayal of a horrific flu pandemic that kills 99 per cent of humanity, and of the travelling troupe of Shakespearean actors who visit settlements around the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":428023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/INTERVIEW-EMILY-ST-JOHN-MANDEL-BETHUNE-APR01-01-766x431.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17209,158,67806,127673,127674,103541],"class_list":["post-428022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-books","tag-culture","tag-editors-picks","tag-emily-st-john-mandel","tag-longreads","tag-the-interview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}