Prologue: The 1918 Influenza Pandemic and Modern Memory

Abstract

The 1918 influenza pandemic, World War I's lethal twin, has been neglected in the Western world for almost a century, taking on the aura of a cultural and scientific mystery. Paul Fussell begins his 1975 work The Great War and Modern Memory by noting ``the Curious Literariness of Real Life,…the ways that literary tradition and real life transect and the reciprocal process by which life feeds materials to literature.''1 By simply juxtaposing literature and life, he neatly omitted the difficult and rather inexact process of how real life becomes part of history or literature, where it assumes a stable range of meanings open to debate and takes on a cultural presence and solidity. When read by contemporary audiences, his bold omissions beg questions central to his endeavor. His foundational work suggests other historical events might also share the ``Curious Literariness'' he describes, opening themselves to exacting interpretation and corresponding with broader paradigms of narrative and meaning even if they remain absent, invisible, or underinterpreted for many decades. This chapter traces the complex processes of repression and recollection surrounding these forgotten parts of the 1918 influenza pandemic, allowing it to reemerge in the last decade of the twentieth century as a vital part of public discourse.