"This is what it’s like to be alive in history"

November 14, 2023 8:37 AM

"When History Happens: Lyta Gold reflects on the writings of Connie Willis and the heroes of history". Gold writes in Current Affairs magazine three years ago about the Blitz, COVID-19, pandemics, choices, systems, power and powerlessness, grief, trauma, advertising, war and progress.

Connie Willis on FanFare: Domesday Book and Bellwether.

posted by paduasoy (6 comments total)

I really enjoyed this read -- thank you for posting!
posted by cider at 10:38 AM on November 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

This was fun, thanks.
posted by PussKillian at 12:25 PM on November 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

I love Connie Willis so much. This makes me realize I need to re-read Blackout / All Clear.

And what a reminder of what COVID felt like in 2020, the not knowing...

Everyone who has ever lived and died was a person, and Willis makes you feel it; they all lived, they were all frightened and brave and irreplaceable.

We're all so darn vulnerable.

[S]o many of us find ourselves unprepared for the shock of living through dramatic events. It’s because history is fucking terrifying. We don’t know what will happen. We have no idea if it’ll all turn out okay. We don’t know if what we’re suffering is a temporary blip, the prelude to a revolution, or a fast slide into apocalypse. We are, in Walter Benjamin’s famous image, blown backwards through history, seeing only the wreckage that comes before.

Yeah, this is still what it feels like. Trump running again. Ukraine. Climate change. All of it.

This is what it’s like to be alive in history—we never have any proof that our actions matter, that we’re making any difference. The left tends to focus on fixing structural problems; this makes sense, as many problems are indeed structural rather than the fault of individuals. But it’s very easy to get lost in “the structural” and “the systemic” and forget that even the structural and the systemic are a series of choices made by individuals, and those choices have power and meaning when made collectively. Throwing up our hands in despair at systemic injustice is, as our own Nathan J. Robinson puts it, the result of “paralysis” which comes “because there is so much going on around you at any one time, and everything feels beyond our control, that we just feel we are barely staying afloat while being carried by a gigantic tidal wave, and it is as futile to try to turn the course of history as it is to try to stop a tsunami. But the most unsettling thing is that this is the reassuring lie. Being certain of your powerlessness lets you get away with quietism; I can do nothing so I do not need to try. The truth is far worse: there might be a way to stop the wave, and it might be our job to figure it out.”

Okay, okay. I'll fire up the postcard writing again. I'll make some donations -- though not to candidates in my state because I'll probably also be an election judge again. I'll make GOTV phone calls. I'm tired just thinking about going through it all again. But maybe it made the difference, in 2020. This timeline is pretty bad, but it could be a lot worse...
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:48 PM on November 14, 2023 [7 favorites]

"good actions matter, even in a chaotic system" are definitely words to keep in mind in our increasingly uncertain times.
posted by EvaDestruction at 6:18 PM on November 14, 2023 [9 favorites]

OnceUponATime: "maybe it made the difference, in 2020."

It did. It made all the difference.
posted by kristi at 1:27 PM on November 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm only sorry I hadn't seen this article earlier. Connie Willis is a huge favorite of mine, even if some of her books haven't aged well purely because time is the subject and so much has come and gone. Most of them are still golden. I have often thought, before and after the pandemic, of The Domesday Book: Kivrin looking after the hapless children, how [redacted] died because [redacted] loved him to death, really, and didn't know how to look after him when ... it's too much.

What the article doesn't really touch on -- understandably, given the moment -- is that when Willis wants to be, she is also hilarious. She cites the old screwball comedies as an inspiration. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a book I've given as a gift because it's so delightful, a time-travel farce.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:58 AM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]