I was assigned The Plague as a junior at Punahou School in Honolulu, when taking a bracing class called Ideas in Western Literature. Then I realized that flitting from page to page would not do. As the storm cloud gathered and darkened, and each day’s press conference got grimmer, as the plague of our time released its ravages, I flitted from page to page, scanning fluorescent pink lines made with a highlighter, reading my own scribbled notes, searching for sentences to help me sink into the understandings I have carried with me for more than 45 years. I was writing a letter to a friend and wanted to remind myself of what I’d internalized from the book when I first read it. On March 19, after I and 40 million other Californians were told to shelter in place, I fished out my worn copy of Albert Camus’s The Plague.
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