Viral frost gradually turned into a thaw. One country after another begins to remove restrictions imposed earlier to fight the infection. How to survive a pandemic COVID-19 in the US, we learned from a famous American writer Karen white. The author of the international bestsellers “Dancing on the crest of a wave”, “Rhapsody of a windy island” and another two dozen novels told about his native South, paranormal phenomena and relationships with loved ones.
it is believed that the seclusion, the natural state for a writer. How do you survive the quarantine?
– I was lucky enough to live in his house near the beach in Florida. Since then, as the children grew up, and I don’t have all the time to be home with my family in Atlanta, the beach has become the place of my seclusion, I write. As much as I love socializing, I still enjoy the solitude and used to set your own schedule and deadlines.
Feel even a little easier since the forced isolation, when eliminated the need for physical movement and travel. News distracting and sometimes overwhelming, so rarely turn on the TV, and put the “do not disturb” while writing. I’m a very slow writer by nature, but since March has already written twelve chapters. For me is a record!
– As in America people perceive the pandemic?
– According to my humble observation, people first needed time to realize the seriousness of the situation, because the virus was so far away on another continent. Then, when in America, recorded the first cases, people started to think. When the authorities of individual States began to introduce quarantine measures, we realized that we all in the same boat.
I didn’t notice the panic, except for a surge in demand for commodities (e.g., toilet paper and disinfectants for the hands). Now the restrictions are gradually removed, and people can’t wait to return to work and resume a normal life. However, I’m sure the world will soon realize that there will be no return to normal life – we will all live in a new environment, at least for some time.
Heroes of your novels often find themselves at a crossroads. And today many say that the pandemic has put humanity before choosing in different spheres: economy, lifestyle, relationships. What do you think about this?
– I strongly believe that adversity is a synonym of opportunity, and this theme is reflected in many of my books. Sometimes we get stuck in life, unable to change and move forward, because everything has become a habit. Routine controls our life. The pandemic literally shook us out of a familiar reality, forced to slow down and connect not only with loved ones but also themselves frombattle. Now we can have a fresh look at taken in life decisions and to see what we are capable of change.
Before the pandemic I never allowed myself to relax. I’m a bit of a workaholic, and for me it was usual to work seven days a week. Due to the fact that my trip suddenly got cancelled, I started to be at home and do not have enough time over the years: solve puzzles to make an album, sit on the couch with my dogs and just read. Finally got around to movies I don’t have time to watch before. I had to put it on hold, to find time for reflection, and I hope that we will continue to move in such slow motion, making sometimes the breaks just to enjoy life.
– In your books intertwine a variety of ages. And with what time, in your opinion, similar to the current situation?
– Many people think that the pandemic COVID-19 is similar to the epidemic of Spanish flu in 1917-1918, which killed fifty million people worldwide. There were no vaccines or antibiotics to treat secondary infections (which we have now), and people are weak understand the patterns of distribution of virus so that all control efforts were limited to isolation, quarantine and good personal hygiene – the measures, which were taken irregularly.
At the beginning of the pandemic in the early stages I observed in the society of the sentiments of unity, which resembled the behavior of people during the previous epidemic and ordeals of the Second World war. Everyone was trying to contribute to stop the catastrophe and make the curve of the incidence of kovida went down. Else happened this strange unprecedented explosion of demand for toilet paper. I still can’t explain it!
unfortunately, now people are losing patience, and after two months of isolation it is unbearable I want to go out and return to normal life – they forget that the virus is still in effect.
– How dealing with the past will allow us to find harmony in the present?
– I think it’s more important to learn from the past, than rethink it. As said by a famous Spanish novelist George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” As during the epidemic of Spanish flu last century, the lowest mortality was in those cities, which previously have taken measures to quarantine and isolation. So, obviously, we understand which method is most effective during the epidemic, – fortunately for us.
We also learned that vaccination can eradicate disease – take, for example, smallpox and polio. Today there are still people who deny vaccination or not be allowed to vaccinate their children. In the end, we see the resumption of some diseases.
This reminds me of the old saying “You can lead Losha��s to water, but you can’t make it drink”. Similarly is the case with human nature. But still, civilization somehow survived for thousands of years, despite human nature. I think she’s got a little bit contrary to that.
Many of your books deals with the complex relationships of close friends. In the conditions of the quarantine are increasingly talking about the growing family scandals. How, in your opinion, to keep love and friendship in such circumstances?
I love my family, but I don’t know how well we would get along, separated for months! Maybe it’s my creative brain, but as much as I love people and communication, some part of me needs silence and solitude to think.
I have No doubt that I would adapt that’s what it means to be a family member. Remember how we had to adapt to a new reality with the advent of a daughter and then a son. I tried not to be so picky when I saw the toys on the floor or a mess in the kitchen. On the contrary, he frequently reminded himself that he must sit on the floor and play with kids instead of thinking about what I should be doing something different.
as for those of my friends who live at home with the kids – they really enjoy the joint best (with the exception of forced learning at home!) and all walk together or ride a bike that early in the bustle of everyday life is not enough time.
I think that solitude does not equal loneliness, for each of us it is useful to be alone. To survive the quarantine with loved ones, I strongly recommend to make this daily routine, so that everyone had the opportunity to be alone, even in the closet or in the corner of the room. But if you are alone in quarantine, get a pet. They are great companions and do not talk!
In the novel “Rhapsody of a windy island” for each character a secret, which largely separates them. Don’t make it a pandemic we are more closed to each other?
– Secrets can divide people, but sometimes they tie them. In my other book “the Night the lights went out” the characters have many secrets, and the idea that friends are often not bound by the secret, and keeping secrets.
In my experience, during a pandemic, thanks largely to new technologies – I found that I was more often to communicate with friends and family. Could spend hours chatting on the phone with old friends. I’m calling video calls my father who lives in a nursing home, more than usual visited him personally to quarantine. I meet online with my two kids (we live in different States) about once a week to play a House Party app and chat with them and my husband. We have more time for simple everyday conversations. So we gradually got to know each other. Yet the greatest secrets abouthave obnaruzhilos, but I keep hoping!
– Actions of your books takes place in the South America. Remember the fictional County of Yoknapatawpha Faulkner and Margaret Mitchell novel “gone with the wind”. All that for you in the American South?
– I am a traditional southerner. My father’s family came from Western Europe to South and North Carolina in 1700 years (my mother’s family came from Italy in the late 1900-ies). Both were born and raised in Mississippi (the home of William Faulkner), and it is often called “the Most southern place on Earth”.
My father was building a career in an international company, and thanks to him, I basically grew up abroad, so I never had a place I could call home. However, my visits to my grandmother in Indianola, Mississippi (birthplace of the Blues and famous Blues guitarist B. B. king), gave me this feeling of home.
My extended family (aunts, cousins, grandmothers, cousins and sisters) and longtime neighbors gathered at grandma’s house every day for lunch, played cards and had a long conversation on the veranda and in the kitchen, asking about the Affairs of each other. I used to sit under my grandmother’s kitchen table and listened as mom and her four sisters talked until dawn at that secret language that seemed to know only them. It is their slow southern speech I hear coming up with your characters, and remember the sights and smells of grandma’s kitchen, warm ripe tomatoes right off the vine – all I’m trying to recall when writing about the South. I still consider it home, although not lived there for almost thirty years.
– In a loop of “Tradd stritt” ghosts help Melanie Middleton to reveal secrets of ancient mansions and allow souls to find peace. How, in your opinion, the mystical coincidences shape our reality?
I Suppose I was lucky I never encountered paranormal phenomena directly (although I know people who lived through it). However, from an early age I knew that in this world of so much unexplained that events may occur which defy logical and scientific explanation. From dreams, when deceased loved ones come to visit family members, to convey a message, to a chance meeting with a stranger that changes the life. Inexplicable events occur regularly around the world.I calmly refer to their ignorance. I think the unknown makes life more interesting. I write fiction, and for me it does not matter, the mystical coincidences or not, but there is a formula: “what if”, which is the basis of all history. For a writer, it is important to be able to suspend disbelief, readers was fully immersed in the story and believed that all this could happen in reality.
