The Literary Space in the Covid-19 Pandemic (original) (raw)

The Literary Space in the COVID-19 Pandemic Literature's position in the COVID-19 pandemic is fairly peculiar compared to many of the other arts. While the pandemic caused an almost complete standstill of the performative arts and many of them are facing even a kind of gradual process of rebuilding after performances with full live audiences are permitted again, literature has remained strangely unaffected. In fact, the effects of the pandemic on literature have been partly quite contrary to those of the other arts. The basic reason is simple: both the production and experience of literature requires very little, if any, real-world human contact. The uneventful life caused by the pandemic also created a fertile ground for the consumption of literature, as people now had more time to read. Although much more research is needed for a comprehensive account of the effects of the pandemic on literary culture, some preliminary data already support these assessments: many people do report having increased the time devoted to reading. 1 The pandemic also shows up in the renewed interest that works like Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad, 1967) and Albert Camus' The Plaque (La Peste, 1947) have engendered in readers globally. The attitude people have taken toward literature during the pandemic, however, seems partly divided. For some, the freed time for literature has meant the possibility to explore new territories of literary culture, while for others literary stories have formed a source of comfortable escape amid an unsafe world. It is still too early to make any serious predictions about the long-term effects of the pandemic on people's reading habits and the literary culture in general, but it could, of course, mean a welcome 1 The background material for the introduction of the article has been gathered from the following online sources: "New Stanford study finds reading skills among young students stalled during the pandemic"