Fiction Makes Sense of Reality in The Decameron Project
This story was first published in Coronadiet’s old site on July 13, 2020.
“When reality is surreal, only fiction can make sense of it.”
The New York Times Magazine’s latest issue is a fiction-only trove of short stories penned by 29 authors who drew inspiration from the current pandemic situation. International artists gave life to vibrant illustrations, both ambiguously abstract and literally symbolic, that grace the thumbnail and opening page of each story. A click turns them onto their backs like tarot cards, indulging timely secrets that will be up to the reader to interpret. It’s a sweet escape from the monotony of everyday life, yet every story hinges upon the current reality in ways that show how universal habits and routines may not be so comparable after all.
The issue was inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s “The Decameron,” written when the bubonic plague devastated 14th century Florence. Boccaccio’s genteel female characters, along with their male companions, settle in the countryside tucked away from the city’s enduring battle. There, they initiate a series of routines that give rise to a hundred dramas and fables compiled into “The Decameron.” The 29 writers of this week’s magazine issue are modern Florentines secluded in their respective quarantine shelters throughout the world, contributing stories for a compilation that could only come to be in the current day and age.
Colm Toibin’s “Tales From the L.A. River” is the contextualization of a gay writer’s diary documenting his personal shutdown spent in Los Angeles’ Highland Park. The LA River acts as the backdrop against the narrator’s personal trials both large and small, cascading in the foreground of the story. The tributary is as much a through line for the story as it is for the protagonist’s bike ride that takes us along the journey made by shadow novelists of history’s past.
“For all of us, there are shadow people, shadow places, shadow episodes. Sometimes they take up more space than the paleness of what actually happens. That paleness makes me shiver, but the shadows make me wonder.”
In “Line 19 Woodstock/Glisan,” Karen Russell’s stoically humorous bus driver Valerie drives past omens hinting at a later accident while she picks up passengers representing the array of individuals that can be found on a metropolitan commute. Valerie’s inner workings are divulged throughout the course of her night shift, starting with her resentment toward two “lunar-hour regulars.”
“Valerie had been keeping her eye on two baby-faced girls in the back who had lowered their masks to make out. They didn’t have a death wish; they had a life wish so extreme it led them to the same end. You couldn’t convince these kids that they were vulnerable to any threat worse than a fatal loneliness.”
The story concludes on a strikingly direct and realistic note as Valerie ponders the economic and geographical forms of segregation that define society; in the end, all it takes is a metaphorical disaster like a traffic accident to humble and equalize people across different walks of life.
Mia Couto’s “An Obliging Robber” is a rich anecdote personifying the inhumane: a pandemic that has knocked on the doors of countless households globally. Couto’s protagonist of choice is effective and insightful — a wary, God-fearing man for whom “war and famine are [his] only visitors.” He has strategically chosen an obscure antagonist, mysterious for his masked appearance and careful actions but affable in his soft-spoken manner. As the narrative closes, Couto lands the last of his impactful blows by instilling a sense of hopelessness with his protagonist’s naivety and ultimate trust in humanity.
“At this point, the name of this illness the visitor is talking about dawns on me. I know the illness well. It’s called indifference. They would need a hospital the size of the whole world to treat this epidemic. Disobeying his instructions, I advance toward him and give him a hug. The man resists me vigorously and wriggles out of my arms. Back in his car, he hurriedly strips off. He frees himself from his clothes as if he were stripping himself of the plague’s own attire. The plague called poverty. I wave goodbye and smile. After years of torment, I am reconciled with humanity: Such a bumbling robber can only be a good man. When he comes back next week, I’ll let him steal that old television I’ve got in my bedroom.”
