Pandemic Reading Project
It is highly likely that you are bored and have run out of reading material. My purpose here is to introduce you to one author who will provide all the books you need, whether you are a fan of fiction or non-fiction. As well, a large number of subjects are covered.
You will be surprised to learn that the producer of all these books, on different topics and in different genres, was a professor of English. Don't let that discourage you. He was an interesting fellow and the English Department at Berkeley was clearly different back in his day. You can easily learn more about him in the sources I will offer. For now, here are some of the subjects he wrote about and there will surely be one-or-two that will interest you. We will begin with the fiction.
The Pandemic
Although you may be trying to avoid reading about the current Covid crisis, you can't. Nor can your friends and relatives and we are all reading and talking about the same things, which at this moment are vaccines. Introduce some variety into the conversation, by speculating about what would happen if the virus resulted in the loss of most of mankind (or theykind or whatever.) In the novel Earth Abides, a young man returns from the wilderness only to find that most of the population has disappeared - because of a virus. It is a well-crafted tale. The earth abides, the animals do well, but the humans do not.
The Weather
Always a very popular subject and now we are experiencing it in extreme forms. The National Weather Service ran out of the usual names for storms this year and had to take some from the Greek alphabet. Although the Atlantic tropical storms have only been given names since 1953, Stewart named storms in his novel, Storm which was a Book of the Month Club selection back in 1941.
The weather was also partially responsible for the destruction of almost 10 million U.S. acres by fires. Stewart's novel Fire, "is the blazing story of Spitcat, a forest fire, and of the eleven days during which it was born, almost died, and raged across a green and gracious Sierra forest to leave only black desolation and a terrible silence. It is the story of a flaming disaster that took only a few days to happen, but would need a hundred years to mend. It is also the intensely human story of the men and women who risked their lives and pitted their strength and strategy against this red terror of the forest."
Now For Some Non-Fiction
Not all of Stewart's work is going to be covered, but if you are growing impatient and want to read a book about possible cannibalism among pioneers in the Sierra Nevada mountains, read Ordeal by Hunger (or just read the almost book length account about the Donner Party in Wikipedia.)
Travel
You are not supposed to be travelling, but you can read about doing so. I covered books about trails and wandering around and included Stewart's The California Trail, He also wrote about Route 40 and the roads heading north to Alaska and south to Costa Rica. He travelled a lot to gather research about the names of places. That is Stewart pictured above with his wife.
Names
The problems we are having now with many names was covered in my post - Names on the Land, which is also the title of one of Stewart's books. There are others by him about other names. The New York Review of Books re-publishes 'classics' and Names on the Land is one of them. It is fascinating and I have a copy if you want to borrow it.
University Politics
You probably aren't eager to tackle this topic which has been much in the news. Stewart did write about the subject and Year of the Oath has some relevance. When university professors were forced to sign an oath indicating they were not members of the Communist Party, Stewart objected and noted that "Men and Women of Spirit object to having a knife put at their throats." It takes a spirited individual these days to stand up to those now wielding the knives.
Sources:
This is now far too long. To quickly see if Stewart is likely to interest you read the Wikipedia entry for him. This source is not being updated, but it is very good: George R. Stewart. This one is continually updated and very good. Earth Abides (there is also a Wikipedia entry for this book.)
There is a copy of Earth Abides in the London Public Library System and at Western. Other books by Stewart available in the Western Libraries are listed below.
Books by George R. Stewart
The books in red are available in the libraries of Western University for those who live in the London area and have access to the collections (Search done in December 2020).
Novels:
East of the Giants, Holt, 1938.
Doctor's Oral, Random House, 1939.
Storm (Book of the Month Club selection), Random House, 1941.
Fire, Random House, 1948.
Earth Abides, Random House, 1949, 3rd edition, Hermes, 1974.
Sheep Rock, Random House, 1951.
The Years of the City, Houghton, 1955.
Nonfiction:
Bret Harte, Houghton, 1931, reprinted, AMS Press, 1977.
Ordeal by Hunger, Holt, 1936, reprinted, Houghton, 1960, with a supplement and three accounts by survivors, 1992.
Names on the Land, Random House, 1944.
Man: An Autobiography, Random House, 1945.
The Year of the Oath, Doubleday, 1950 , reprinted, Da Capo Press, 1971.
U.S. 40 , Houghton, 1953, reprinted, Greenwood Press, 1973.
American Ways of Life, Doubleday, 1954, reprinted, Russell, 1971.
N.A. 1 , Houghton, 1957.
Pickett's Charge, Houghton, 1960.
The California Trail, McGraw, 1963.
Committee of Vigilance: Revolution in San Francisco, Houghton, 1964.
Good Lives, Houghton, 1967.
Not So Rich as You Think, Houghton, 1968.
American Place-Names, Oxford University Press, 1970.
Names on the Globe, Oxford University Press, 1975.
American Given Names: Their Origin and History in the Context of the English Language, Oxford University Press, 1979.
Also author of Technique of English Verse, 1930, Bibliography of the Writings of Bret Harte, 1933, and John Phoenix Esquire, 1937. Juveniles: To California by Covered Wagon, Random House, 1954.
The picture at the top is from the Berkeley Historical Plaque Project. For a recent article about Earth Abides see this article in the Berkeley alumni magazine: "A Killer-Type Virus Ends the World! Revisiting Earth Abides, the Novel That Inspired Stephen King and Jimi Hendrix," by Pat Joseph, Summer 2020.
Post Script: Western University has also started a digital plaque project. See: Western University Names.
