The Pandemic in Non-Fiction
It’s been five years since the COVID-19 pandemic, not that anyone who is reading this has forgotten. In some ways it feels like it’s been less than five years, in other ways it feels like it’s been a lifetime ago, but we’ve reached a spot where it’s starting to show up more and more in the media.
In 2022, the Kevin Williams penned, John Hyams directed slasher film Sick was released, the same year as Greg Garcia (creator of My Name is Earl and Raising Hope) series Sprung. Both were set during COVID and the COVID played an intricate part of the plot. Although I enjoyed both the movie and the series, in 2022 it felt too soon, and even now in 2025 it feels too soon. I mention this because the biggest movie set with a COVID backdrop is releasing soon, Ari Aster’s (Midsomer) Eddington.
Maybe it’s because of the political and social breakdown that seemed to occur during COVID and the exhaustion that took place, but I just do not have an interest in seeing anything else set during COVID. I’m sure it’s going to be used as a backdrop for years to come, and maybe at some point in the future there will be an element of nostalgia, but right now… I lived it. I don’t want to watch it. I felt the same way after 9/11 and movies and documentaries were released and even almost twenty-five years later, I just don’t have any interest in seeing that again.
I was prompted to write this because I’ve noticed that a lot of non-fiction books were written during the pandemic. I mean, it makes sense, folks had free-time on their hands and they dove into all sorts of hobbies. Where the problem occurs is that pretty much every single book, I’ve read mentions that it’s being written during the pandemic, and then it offers social commentary regarding the topic of the book and how it relates to the pandemic. Not only does this date the work dramatically, but it also makes me raise an eyebrow at the content. If you are writing this in a triggered state because of the pandemic, how accurate is this information? Is this book simply a coping mechanism for you to try to explain away this disease? And how did the shifting political debates factor into how you presented this information?
It’s funny, because if you had written fiction, and these ideas slipped through, I wouldn’t be as put-off. It would simply be a reflection of the time and how you could see the author’s confusion and pain through its characters journey, but when you flat out state it and then proceed to blather on, I just can’t take you serious anymore.
I’ve noticed this often over the past couple of years, and recently I mentioned how I was going to shift into reading more fiction. I only picked up this non-fiction book at the request of my wife and to explore a topic I was interested in. I was bombarded with pandemic and global catastrophe comments in the introduction, and then the fourth chapter was pretty much spent on it as well. If I wasn’t as interested in the topic, I probably would have just stopped reading. It’s so exhausting.
I’m mind blown why editors allowed so much pandemic prose to make its way into these books. Did they not think about how it would date the content, or how in just a year or so the pandemic information would no longer be relevant? It’s one thing if you are writing a historical book on the pandemic, but if you are writing a psychology or philosophy book, really?
I don’t watch The Family Guy, although I did watch the first season back in 1999. I remember in the mid-2000s, I caught a rerun or two on cable, and I was horrified by how badly it aged. The pop-culture references were no longer relevant and in my personal opinion, made the show only worthwhile if watched live. I mean, what would a teenager think today watching The Family Guy from twenty years and seeing a Jessica Simpson/Nick Lachey joke? This is the problem when you allow a current event to infiltrate your work, especially when presented in a media form that is supposed to last for more than a couple of years. Then again, maybe my impression that a good book should be just as valuable today as it was forty years ago is misguided. Maybe it’s me who is out of touch.
I enjoy going back and reading my blogs from 2020. I wrote a few good ones, like when I made some horror recommendations for how I was feeling due to the pandemic. I also wrote some short posts that were a way for me to calm myself and remain calm. I kept my complaining about my job in healthcare offline, but even those entries are worth flipping through to me, but I am under no illusion that anyone else would want to read them. I wouldn’t want to subject anymore to my own nervous energy that accompanied every blog post and I guess when I’m reading a book, I’m just sick of seeing that nervous energy make its way out when you are supposed to be educating me on a certain topic.