The Plague by Albert Camus

One of the great novels of the twentieth century. Also one of the most powerful expressions of existentialism and humanism ever written. I reviewed this book for the Narrative Medicine Series in 2002. See also the article A Hero for Our Times published in The Guardian.

The Plague is an allegorical novel set in the modern city of Oran on the north African coast. The principal character Dr. Rieux confronts a series of medical, ethical and moral dilemmas as an epidemic of bubonic plague breaks out and the city is quarantined. Rieux must overcome his fear, loneliness and despair in order to function while conceding that he is mostly powerless in the face of his microscopic enemy. As the crisis abates he concludes that he only did what had to be done and will be done again “by all who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilences, strive their utmost to be healers.”

Camus Quotations…

2016 Update: I was taught in medical school that the “Ring Around the Rosie…” nursery rhyme referred to The Plague. Nice story but it appears to be apocryphal!

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick is less well known than other science fiction authors of his generation (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein), but today he enjoys a growing reputation as his novels are adapted to the screen. Of these, A Scanner Darkly is the most recent, the most personal, and perhaps the most important. It is a semi-autobiographical story of drug addiction, corporate greed, and universal surveillance. Several of the characters are based on real people the author knew, and the damage done by drugs is not hypothetical. The story anticipates several developments of the last twenty years: pharmaceutical companies inventing diseases to fit the drugs they produce; a surveillance society with video cameras everywhere; and human beings who are written off by the society they live in.

The 2006 movie sticks close to the original novel, deftly exploiting Dick’s dry humor and sense of the absurd. The action centers around a loose group of “friends” who all share interest in (and possibly addiction to) the ominous “substance D.” In the words of one character, “There’s no week-end warriors on the D. You’re either on it, or you haven’t tried it.”

Philip K. Dick Quotations…