But let's be clear at the outset; isolation and solitude are not the same thing. Solitude is something that many people might seek in order to think or to write or to just get away from it all; but isolation is a mental state of "aloneness" and, I would add, it is a state in which all those usual hooks, upon which you hang your identity, are taken away from you. These hooks may include: friends, colleagues, job, leisure activities and sport. They will also include your family - not to mention your spouse. Without these people and institutions, that is, people and institutions you can use as personal reflectors, you will not be able to see yourself and you may drown.
Would Robinson Crusoe have remained sane without his Man Friday?
And remember, you do not have to be physically alone in order to feel isolated. Most of us would soon feel isolated and cut off from meaningful human contact if we lived in an unfamiliar culture, alone and with no knowledge of the language.
Now, what about the theme of isolation in books? Look at the three following storylines. Each takes a group of people and isolates them in some way. This isolation confuses them and leaves them vulnerable to abuse, and to be abused by, societal norms.
One dark evening; a country house with bad weather closing in around it, the maid announcing that a police inspector has arrived and he wants to speak to the owner - a wealthy industrialist.
In 1920s Australia, a lighthouse keeper and his wife find a dead man and a living baby washed up in a boat and claim the infant girl as their own.
One summer evening not long before World War 2, eight individuals arrive on an island off the Devon coast of England. Each individual has received an invitation and they are welcomed by the butler and the housekeeper. Then - without warning - the individuals begin dying off.
So back to the pandemic, isolation and inspiration.
Suppose you had been writing a contemporary novel in April this year? Well, you, dear writer, probably soon realised that you were in serious trouble. Why? Because the pandemic took away all those things you took for granted - things that simply make up normal human experience - and turned them on their ears, for example: people going to cinemas, theatres, the doctor, or people drinking in bars and shaking hands with friends or whispering in her ear or even having casual sex.
The actions above have been charged with new meaning. Given that we are approaching a "new normal," writers will be reflecting on how the pandemic has influenced the way we react to events, how we feel about other people, our governments and other institutions, the future and death, and what it feels like being a parent, a child, sick, and how to react to strangers in the supermarket and how to use technology to communicate.
Keep in mind that, as night follows day, novels will be written/are already being written about the time of Corona. They will evoke tales of isolation, loneliness and gratitude, and try and make readers feel the fear, the dislocation and make them gasp as they read about, for example, ill-educated parents try to teach their children.
"What on earth were they thinking?" readers will ask. And the answer?
There won't be one. Even if you were there, your answer will be synthetic, imagined or bastardised from bits of personal memory and large borrowings from collective memory but all that probably won't reflect the isolation many people are all feeling now
Therein lies the value of the diary - but I have written about diaries in a previous blog.
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