“Have you no regard for oblivion?”

Abstract

Envisioning Disease, Gender, and War: Women's Narratives of 1918 Influenza Pandemic by Jane Fisher Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 262 pages Brian Dillon Nearly a century after an epidemic began in final months of World War I, then swiftly and viciously spread across continents, death toll continues to defy rational processing. From March 1918 until 1920, Jane Fisher notes in Envisioning Disease, Gender, and War, at least 50 people worldwide and probably closer to 100 million (14) died from fever, often with fluid-filled lungs. The remarkably imprecise statistics on death toll reflect, in part, international sweep of disease. research shows Africa suffering a higher death rate than Europe, Asia having highest death rates of all.Some countries, including Nigeria, lacked precise records for causes of fatalities. Even where records were maintained, experts could not distinguish between pneumonia and virus-born influenza, nor could elevated numbers of stillborns and women lost in childbirth in United States be accurately linked to (as poet Ellen Bryant Voigt notes in her terse, staggering commentary following her 1995 sonnet sequence Kyrie [781). Fisher's extensively researched prologue summarizes scientific findings, which have increased significantly in last generation, prompted in good part by Alfred Crosby's 1989 America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918. Misnamed colloquially as the Spanish influenza because Spain, not directly engaged in war and thus free from wartime media censorship, allowed accounts to be published about mysterious disease, origins of remain under debate. An army base in Kansas? In rural Asia, where pigs, poultry, and people cohabitate closely (1.1)? Fisher, weighing in on this debate, contends that Recent scientific research has confirmed avian origin of 1918 virus.When readers of World War I literature contemplate this conclusion, they may recognize a weird irony in fact that creatures that play such life-affirming roles in this literature, from singing larks that announced break of day in Isaac Rosenberg's memorable poem to canaries depended upon by tunnelers in Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong, could be culprit of such devastation. In contrast to substantial canon of such literature written both during and since war--from Wilfred Owen's five poems published during conflict to Belfast-based Michael Longley's poems prompted by his Ether's military experience, from Vera Brittain's memoirs detailing her service as a nurse and her personal losses to Pat Barker's trilogy of historically-grounded novels--few literary works address effects of pandemic. Fisher attributes this to pandemic's contrast with World War I, which, she argues, took place within comprehensible parameters (9). The war's obscene motives, irrational military tactics, and individual acts of heroism allow for, even invite, discussions of various kinds in historical texts and literary works. Recall Krebs in Heming way's Soldier's Home who returns to Kansas from his overseas service roughly a half year after war ended: he spends his afternoons reading newly published. historical volumes on battles he participated in.' Conversely, Fisher writes, the 1918 pandemic remains still largely a mystery, challenging human understanding in terms of its origin, its extent, its epidemiology, and its precise mortality and morbidity (9). Media censorship in both US and Europe contributed to consequent silence in literature of time. Even though Fisher narrows her discussion to literature written by women (with exception of some brief commentary on male African Elechi Amadi's The Great Ponds), her endnotes outline a relatively small body of literature prompted by pandemic. …