Quarantine: A guide for the perplexed

Rather than fight against our cultural moment, with its understandable anxieties and fragmented attention spans, you can embrace it by reading short stories. If you want reassurance from someone with medical training, start with Anton Chekhov’s short stories (A Doctor’s Visit is a good collection). A sympathetic but not sentimental chronicler of human nature, Chekhov gives us portraits of peasants, sailors, preachers, and soldiers whose fears and pleasures, though separated by centuries and continents from our own, nevertheless feel familiar.

Also worth reading is The Everyman’s Library edition of The Stories of Ray Bradbury, which offers 100 of his most compelling tales — although if you’re nervous about how much time we are all spending at home with technology during this period of social distancing, you might want to skip “The Veldt.” Kurt Vonnegut’s short stories, collected in Welcome to the Monkey House, each offer a tiny class on human nature, from our misguided tendency to punish excellence in the pursuit of equality (“Harrison Bergeron”) to the mysteries of relations between the sexes (“Miss Temptation”).

If science fiction and plague lit are still too much of an incitement to worry, perhaps the best I can offer is a literary version of comfort food: poetry. William Wordsworth, William Carlos Williams, W.H. Auden, Philip Larkin, and Elizabeth Bishop teach us that awareness and understanding can be practiced even in life’s smallest and seemingly mundane moments, something worth remembering as we spend time shut away in our homes with little social contact.

If all else fails, reread an old favorite (for me, that’s George Eliot’s Middlemarch) and, however briefly, escape the purgatorial anxiety that is, for now, part of our daily lives.

Christine Rosen is a senior writer at Commentary magazine and a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.

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WHAT TO DRINK

Eric Felten

There was once a prince who, in the face of a devastating epidemic, went in for some serious social distancing. He gathered his courtiers in the abbey and welded the doors shut to keep out the great unwashed hands. The prince and his pals were well-provisioned for the duration. So much so they could even afford to enjoy a heck of a party. Among the entertainments: “There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine.” Or at least that’s the way a certain Mr. Poe described it.

The fete didn’t end well: The Red Death found a way in and proceeded to kill every last one of the revelers, establishing “illimitable dominion over all.”

You could say that that Poe fellow had a morbid disposition. But as is evidenced by his line about the wine, it’s clear that he realized that no self-respecting seclusion from disease is complete without something to drink.

It appears the authorities are in a mood to shut down the nation’s saloons for the long haul, which means you’ll need some directions to use at home if you want anything beyond beer or wine. I’m happy to help with some cocktail recipes apropos of the moment.

A Prohibition home bartender’s guide from 1927, Here’s How!, includes instructions for a delicious drink long forgotten but ready to be revived in our age of contagion. It is called the “quarantine cocktail,” and as the title of the book says, here’s how it’s done (I have adjusted the recipe slightly from the original to suit my own tastes):

Quarantine

1 oz gin

1 oz white rum

½ oz dry vermouth

2 oz fresh lemon juice

1 oz simple (sugar) syrup

1 egg white

Shake, shake, shake with ice in a cocktail shaker and then shake some more so that the egg white emulsifies. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry.

In the throes of the great and terrible Spanish flu, the medical establishments of various countries vehemently disagreed over whether some alcohol helped or hurt their patients. But those in the bar business were adamant that liquor was the quicker way to get on the road to recovery. A number of drinks claim to have come out of the 1918 pandemic. One of the more credible origin stories focuses on the bar at London’s Savoy hotel, where a cocktail called “the Corpse Reviver” was born. There would eventually be a whole family of Corpse Revivers, with the Corpse Reviver No. 2 gaining the most durable fame. But the original remains an elegant choice for cocktail hour behind our welded gates. First made with cognac and Calvados, I think it works just as well with brandy and bourbon — and when you’re under siege, you can’t be too picky about the ingredients you use.

Corpse Reviver

2 oz cognac

1 oz Calvados or bourbon

1 oz sweet vermouth

Stir with ice until very cold and then strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Then, let’s all hold our glasses high and, from a safe and government-approved distance, say to one another not “Cheers” but “à Votre Santé.”

Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?

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WHAT TO LISTEN TO

Mark Hemingway

As Americans retreat to their homes to ride out the coronavirus threat, it’s good to know that they’re doing their best to retain a sense of humor about the whole thing. R.E.M.’s minor ’80s hit “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” just reentered the charts after an over 30-year hiatus. Similarly, Rolling Stone notes that the other big quarantine song is Billy Joel’s similar “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” if for no other reason than people on social media are having fun making up new verses of the song that only cover the last month’s worth of biblical events. To quote another oddly apocalyptic song, it’s easy if you try: “Wuhan, pangolin, what a mess China’s got us in, no more NBA, goodbye 401(k), Tom Hanks has the flu, what else do we have to do?!”

Of course, for all the pretensions foisted on pop music, it serves fundamentally as a diversion. That can be a good thing at a time like this, but it also means that songs such as R.E.M.’s and Joel’s that seem to address the eschaton directly are few and far between. “When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still Around” by The Police is a contender despite some oddly dated lyrics about VCRs and whatnot. The lyrics of “Dead Man’s Party” by Oingo Boingo, on the other hand, seem almost like they were specifically written about life during a plague. Ditto for the lyrics to “Panic” by The Smiths. However, more than a few apocalyptic songs aren’t any good. I think I’d rather get the virus than have to hear The Doors’s “The End” again.

However, there are plenty of songs that speak to loneliness and “social distancing,” as it were. “So Far Away From Me” by Dire Straits, “Dancing With Myself” by Billy Idol, “Dancing on My Own” by Swedish pop star Robyn, and Al Green’s soul classic “Tired of Being Alone” all speak to the zoning laws we’ve hastily constructed for ourselves. If you want to embrace the black humor head-on, there are plenty of songs about death, but your best bet is optimism. Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” (and Cake’s great cover version) is a good starting point, as is Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You).”

Finally, a responsible music critic would probably say forget pop music for a moment. Take advantage of the weeks at home and sit down with Ted Goia’s The History of Jazz. Pull up all the seminal tracks mentioned in the book on YouTube and Spotify as you slowly work your way through it. It’ll take your mind off the plague altogether — and make you an appreciative and better-educated music lover.

Mark Hemingway is a writer in Alexandria, Virginia.

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WHAT TO WATCH

Kyle Smith

Looks like we’re all going to be watching a lot of TV in the coming weeks. Escapism is probably the best bet, but if you’re among those who can only think of one subject anyway, here are a few movies that resonate with the moment.

Outbreak (1995). A cheesy action thriller very much made in accordance with the 1990s blockbuster rule book, in which Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo play hero scientists trying to crack the codes of an Ebola-like virus while a sinister general plots to blow up an infected area. Every person should watch this movie, mainly because of one brief scene set in a movie theater that shows airborne pathogens traveling from one coughing person to a random neighbor. If this movie doesn’t scare you into social distancing, nothing will. Netflix.

Contagion (2011). Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 film about a pandemic that gets started in a restaurant in Hong Kong is a grueling procedural with an all-star cast including Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, and Marion Cotillard. Whereas Outbreak is silly and contrived, Contagion is lethally plausible. Today, it almost seems like a documentary, albeit not one for the fainthearted. Cinemax.

Children of Men (2006). Unlike, say, the Mad Max movies, with their fast-moving warring tribes competing in a kind of ultraviolent sport, Alfonso Cuaron’s somber film establishes a harrowing mood of dread and decay in a London of the near future, when the human race has become infertile, no one left alive is under 18, and the most popular consumer product is a suicide drug. Like Contagion, it isn’t a feel-good outing, but it has a surprisingly strong theme of Christian redemption. Starz.

I Am Legend (2007). Will Smith is, as far as he can tell, the last man on earth, so he and his trusty dog have New York City all to themselves. Their resourcefulness in the vacuum should renew your confidence that you can make it through a little self-quarantine period. And unlike Smith, we don’t have to worry about zombie vampires lurking around Grand Central Terminal. As far as we know. Fubo.

Shaun of the Dead (2004). Who doesn’t need a comic take on the apocalypse right now? Simon Pegg plays a humble London shop clerk who turns out to have a lucky knack for killing zombies. This proves most helpful when all of his neighbors turn undead and set about trying to devour him. Starz.

Kyle Smith is critic-at-large for National Review.

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WHAT NOT TO DO

Rob Long

A marketing firm recently surveyed about 5,000 people who work from home. It discovered that almost 80% of remote workers prefer working from home and never want to go back to an office again, from which we can extrapolate that 80% of remote workers live alone. Because if you live with other people, the next month or so is going to be unpleasantly clarifying.

We all live two lives: the life we live at home, with our spouse or spouse-equivalent and maybe a child or two running around somewhere, and the life we lead at work, where we are free to be charming and aggressive and lazy and all sorts of things we wisely compartmentalize away from our at-home identity. At work, we can lie about having been a high-school athlete, about being a tough, no-nonsense parent, about our service as a Navy SEAL.

At home, we can lie about how it was impossible to refuse the drinks invitation from the boss, that we’re the only one holding the damn company together, that “Sam from the office” who is so hilarious and awesome and who sends funny texts at 11 p.m. is not short for “Samantha from the office.”

Or, maybe it is, depending on your particular tastes and the complexion of your household. I’m not here to judge.

The problem with staying at home is that you’ll be staying there with other people, and as we all know, other people are the problem. Being at home, during a national crisis, is going to encourage a lot of behaviors that, when seen clearly, are a lot more toxic than touching your face.

Don’t, for instance, have work conference calls or Google Hangouts unless you’re wearing over-the-ear headphones. (The on-the-ear kind will inevitably leak some of the sound.) The way you are at work — how you sound, the words you use, the way you treat people above and below you on the org chart — should remain shrouded in mystery to your loved ones at home. They don’t need to hear you lambaste an underling or slavishly praise an overlord.

They won’t think your work-based in-jokes are funny, even if you carefully explain them. In fact, they will probably think they’re offensive and legally actionable. The safe strategy here is to keep it shut.

The reverse is also true. Don’t, under any circumstances, notice what your loved ones are actually doing on that laptop they’re so glued to. Don’t ask why it sounds like TikTok videos. Don’t ask, when they get off a conference call, why if they can talk to their colleagues so politely and respectfully, it’s impossible for them to do the same at home, to you. Don’t allow your mind to draw the connection between the newly observed work habits of your one-and-only and the curiously stagnant career path he or she has experienced to date.

Don’t, in other words, take the next two at-home months to get to know your beloved. You were both better off following a policy of emotional distancing, and as soon as we can get back to that, the healthier we will all be.

Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.