“Life, remembered is a series of photographs and disconnected
short films”
Canadian novelist Emily St. John Mandel’s fourth novel
Station Eleven (published in 2014) is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where 99
percent of human population is wiped out by an unforeseen pandemic disease. The novel won
the Arthur C Clarke Award for best science-fiction novel [also one of the
year’s National Book Award finalists]. Despite the increasingly familiar
post-apocalypse sub-genre and getting pigeon-holed as sci-fi, Station Eleven is
much more distinct and understated than the usual survivalist exercise. Emily
Mandel herself believes her novel doesn’t belong to any particular genre.
Unlike many apocalypse novels, Emily’s narration is deeply introspective,
wallowing less on the dystopian horror elements and rather hopefully focuses on
the fresh culture that emerges once past the climate of mayhem.
I initially believed the novel might duplicate few of the
broadly imaginative dystopian setting of Stephen King’s The Stand or Robert
McCammon’s Swan Song or Justin Cronin’s Passage Trilogy (though there’s a clever
reference to this novel). But one-third into the book, I was intrigued by how
private the tale is. Emily Mandel weaves a dual narrative -- set before the end
of the world and twenty years after –that goes back and forth and follows the
beauty of everyday existence through very small pocket of characters. By
setting the novel two decades after the societal collapse, the writer smartly
brings a ruminative perspective which mostly foregrounds the hopeful and
unbreakable relationship between art and humanity. Emily does hint upon the devastation and
violence perpetuated in the lawless world, but mayhem and terror isn’t
showcased as the only constant factor in the post-apocalyptic world. It subtly
implies how much art could play a vital role in unearthing a fresh civilization
and gradually disarm the gathered dark forces.
The novel begins with the death as expected. But the death
isn’t the result of dangerous viral strain that will soon wipe out 99% of
humanity. An experienced and super-famous Hollywood actor Arthur Leander
collapses on the stage while playing King Lear at Toronto’s Elgin Theater.
Jeevan Choudhary, an audience member and paramedic-in-training rushes towards
Arthur and delivers CPR. But it’s too late. The actor’s heart has given up. However,
it would be fascinating to note that Arthur and Shakespeare remain as
connecting bridge to all the major characters. Soon after Arthur’s natural
death, the spread of a deadly strand of flu (known as ‘Georgian Flu’) brings
the entire human civilization to its knees. The story then shifts 20 years
after the pandemic to follow ragtag members of Traveling Symphony. Kirstin
Raymonde, the once 8 year old child actor who was part of the King Lear
performance, is now the narrator of this disparate world. The 28 year old Kirsten
and fellow survivors tour small and fairly isolated communities in the Midwest,
performing Shakespeare and Orchestra music for the soulful,
entertainment-deprived communities.
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| Author Emily St. John Mandel |
The troupe of musicians and actors has faced their due share
of violent conflicts over the years and has largely followed the same route
without unnecessarily immersing themselves into the dirty local politics. The
troupe’s horse-pulled caravan is adorned with a line from Star Trek Voyager:
‘Because survival is inefficient’. By bringing art to the ruined towns, the
troupe hopes to showcase the best of humanity (“People want what was best about the
world”, one troupe member remarks). We learn that Kirsten obsessively collects
clippings and other information about Arthur from old-world magazines, the
famous actor who was once kind to little Kirsten. It was Arthur who had gifted
Kirsten her beloved graphic novel Station Eleven (about a smart physicist Dr.
Eleven living in a huge spaceship after Earth’s surrender to an alien race). The
origin of comics takes us back in time and provides us with the novel’s most
interesting character Miranda, Arthur’s first wife whose personal afflictions
fuels her creative energy. Like Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Star Trek, the
graphic novel not simply stands as an alluring symbol of the past, but also emerges
as the vital connecting nod between the past and present. The conflicts in the
novel kicks-in when the troupe comes across a town that’s taken over by a
malevolent ‘Prophet’ and couple of their former members, staying in the town,
is pronounced missing. Thankfully, the story-line involving the ‘Prophet’
doesn’t take up familiar route, as writer Emily keeps on jumping back and forth
to contemplate on the sweetness of life, before and after the end of the world
we built. Despite the fragmented narrative structure, Emily Mandel makes rich
thematic connections and bestows profound emotional connection between the characters.
Station Eleven is clearly less about apocalypse and more
about memory, fame, yearning, loss and the transcendent beauty of art. The
novelist infuses a deeply affecting and thoughtful elegiac tone into a story we
otherwise dismiss it as ‘simple-minded page-turner’. Emily Mandel is less
interested in making a broad statement on human race’s collective destiny. She
rather keeps her narrow yet astoundingly focused vision to reflect on our
built-in instinct for artistic expression, in the midst of desperation and
catastrophe. What’s more interesting is how the author doesn’t take a
discriminative attitude in positioning the different art forms. There’s
Shakespeare and Beethoven whose timeless quality we oft cherish as high-art.
But then there’s also constant reference to Star Trek and a graphic novel (seen
as cheap entertainment). In Emily Mandel’s world, the art culture isn’t fit
under strict categories, but simply as different forms of expression within a
single existing plane, speaking to individuals in myriad ways.
Station Eleven watches our contemporary world with a sense
of wonder and how we take all such advancements for granted. “You walk into a
room and flip a switch and the room fills with light……. All of the information
in the world is on the Internet, and the
Internet is all around you, drifting
through the air like pollen on a summer breeze”, remarks Kirsten who finds this
vision of old-world nearly unbelievable. Few of the survivors holes up at a
abandoned airport, its Skymiles Lounge is over the years turned into ‘Museum of
Civilization’, where the non-functional gadgets that once drove human’s
existence are laid out neatly. In another scenario, a librarian hopes to
restart the flow of information through a newspaper and puts together oral
history of the new rise of civilization. Emily Mandel conveys the loss in those
scenarios through her painful yet lyrical prose that we are nudged to ponder
upon the little beauties of life we tend to overlook. Even when conveying the
private losses of the characters (for example when Jeevan processes the
unanticipated events inside the theater or when Miranda perceives the end of
her glitzy Hollywood life) the author’s description rings with deep truth and
shines with quiet beauty. Perhaps the
fact that Station Eleven doesn’t have any grand revelations and explosive
actions may disappoint readers seeking an elaborate post-apocalyptic fiction.
Nevertheless, it’s a superior literary work, which takes a trendy genre setting
to get at the fundamental truth of art and human condition.
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