Nemesis

"Philip Roth set what would be his last novel in the Newark, New Jersey neighbourhood where he was born and raised. Before the 2020 pandemic, the most famous race for a vaccine took place in mid-century America, entirely funded by voluntary donations from the American people—the race for a polio vaccine. Nemesis describes a fictitious outbreak of polio in 1944, eleven years before the vaccine. For me the story has great resonance with the events unfolding in 2020. The fear of polio, initially untreatable like COVID-19, was very great. Though facts and figures can convey the nature of a dreadful pandemic or a horrifying epidemic targeting children, the emotional reality is best portrayed in works of fiction. News media have done their best to make the experience of COVID-19, in intensive care units for example, real for those not involved; but can we truly enter the hearts and minds of those caught up in the contagion? “The story has great resonance with the events unfolding in 2020. Mask wearing becomes contentious. Personal hygiene becomes obsessive” Roth succeeds entirely with his protagonist Bucky Cantor, a young sports-teacher whose identity and self-esteem are wholly invested in his own physical prowess and his intense concern for the children in his care. Polio, the mysterious crippler and killer, threatens both. If only a vaccine could be found! Suspicions about the source of infection haunt relationships between communities. Mask wearing becomes contentious. Personal hygiene becomes obsessive. Roth intensifies the tension by inflating the frequency of fatalities. And then Bucky escapes to a kind of paradise—a summer camp in the mountains where his sweetheart is waiting and the beauty of both the natural world and his own prospects are revealed to him. But he is doomed to suffer permanent paralysis and there is no escape or remedy for the disease. In a final demonstration of his power as a writer, Roth ends the story with an indelible image of his young hero throwing the javelin at the pinnacle of his prowess. When the polio vaccine arrived, no wonder it seemed like a miracle. A single vaccine to defeat the dread disease. COVID-19 vaccination also arrived miraculously, first one then two, three, four, five, with half a dozen still to come, and a second generation to follow. It is fitting testament to the science of immunology and the new technologies that make vaccines possible."