My first encounter with “Station Eleven” (Station Eleven) was via a blurb about the television serial adaptation. What I read was interesting enough for me adding the title to my backlog. Weeks later, I am hearing about the show and I spy my housemate reading the novel. So I decided to binge watch a few episodes to catch-up with current conversation. After episode 5, I aborted watching the remaining, then, available episodes. The show allowed me to pinpoint why I do not like nor enjoy post-apocalyptic stories. Characters are either striving to restore the world to some pre-apocalypse state or aiming at reformatting to a new world (order); but when the characters concerned are doing neither, albeit performing Shakespearean plays for entertainment, I am more bored and less interested in the story.

      When my local public library announced the novel was scheduled for an upcoming book club meeting, reluctantly, I picked up and read. (“Tolle lege.”)

     Like the television series, an aspect that made me dislike the novel was the non-linear temporal narrative. Such neither added nor enhanced the story. If anything, the effect was a huge distraction and cloaks a confusing, lackluster plot. Plot such as there was, did not appear until I was about 45% way into to the book, and resolved pages — chapters well before the novel’s end pages. While reading, I kept thinking, Where is the story going with these long character backstory diatribes? At best, I am reminded how the back & forth across different character storylines is similar to Virginia Woolf’s intersecting lives narrative in The Waves.

A few bullet points worth mentioning.

• The book contained some bad writing, literally, to the point I was even taken out of the book. The novel could have used another set of editor eyes.

• Borrowing from a point made by a book club member during discussion on the novel, Clark is a central figure that connects almost everyone in the book. Although easy enough thinking Arthur Leander was the linchpin to the story, but when in fact, Clark is character that connects everyone “before” and “post-pan”. The closed set of characters strikes me as a contrived convenience that rings hollow against the effort at realism in the story.

[• P. S. edit Some critics would nitpick on the flawed premise by pointing out how such a virulent virus would have burned itself out long before spreading around the globe killing more than half the population. I am willing to suspend my disbelief on that issue; but what really bothered me is how no one interested in studying the virus survived the pandemic. It was as if, by design?, every person knowledgeable, capable, or willing to tackle the pandemic died. After twenty years, no one, no community has developed beyond an Amish commune lifestyle!? Granted, there are not enough peolpe in the immediate wake of the pandemic apocalypse to worry about grass cutting, but to leave the world as such after twenty years is pure neglect. Why? Are the humans that remain so lazy that they could not be bothered to clear, clean, or recuperate?]

• One of the annoyance of dealing with post-apocalyptic stories are the stupid people who seem to survive and wreck havoc in the community. Leaving aside the cult leaders that inevitably emerge, the real danger are those who lack sensibility and, worst still, lack any skills useful in a post-apocalyptic scenario. Granted not everyone need be some urban prepper or some physician/farmer/mechanical engineer with military experience, but what we are presented in the novel where everyone we know to survive, with exception of Jeevan, is devoid of utility when it comes to surviving a post-apocalyptic situation.

     Let me belabor this point since my observation was challenged by one who failed noticing who survived.

     Long before the Trolley Car Problem became vogue in pop philosophy discourse, there was the Lifeboat Problem. With limited space and resources, who does one choose to save onto the lifeboat? Well, between the great opera singer and the physician, the choice seems simple and clear, almost in any context. (Sorry, Leotyne Price.) What I find striking is how of all the people to survive, the novel opted focusing upon the most useless. As far as the reader knows, no physician survived leaving Jeevan who was a nascent EMT becoming the de facto doctor (who made house calls). After twenty years, he is the sole physician practicing medicine in the whole of the Michigan/Illinois lake region!? Seriously!?

     Further highlighting their stupidity is not realizing downloading the whole of the internet before losing power was unnecessary. They had access to the greatest resource in the world, the public library, or any library for that matter. No need to download Wiki articles on how to farm. Go to to the nearby library and pick-up a book. Want to learn mechanics, go to the library and pick-up a book.

— But they were afraid to leave out their area, I can imagine an interlocutor arguing. Evidently, some one would need to leave, to collect necessary resources such as food, water, and medicine. There were hunters who left the airport. People travelled far and wide came to the airport — nay, the Museum of Civilization. (By the way, in the whole airport, there was only one pilot?)

    Seems to me, the only people to survive the pandemic are the very people who are least helpful, skillful, or* knowledgable in surviving after an apocalypse. [P.S. edit being blunt, no one competent, my original word choice shared at the book club meeting, or proficient at operating a power plant or manufacturing plant survived; even worst none who did survive demonstrated any ambitions at wanting to learn, or scarier still, perhaps none were capable of learning.] Given the post-pan focus upon a transient collective of musicians and thespians, the television show’s BIPoC & non-traditional casting seem to stress the carnival circus aspect, I gather the author, Mandel, was trying to posit the thesis with “survival is not sufficient” motto that the arts have utility even in the most dire of situations such as in a post-pandemic apocalypse.

Now there are, at least, two avenues of consideration. (i) The choice and preference for Shakespeare echoes the attachment to the “before times” which merits a discussion topic in of itself and, what I am responding to most, (ii) the enterprise of the creative arts can only manifest in moments of leisure which happens only when there is sufficient sustainability in the essential elements of survival.

     Circling back to my pet peeve mentioned earlier, without a some goal, the characters are just surviving without incentive at improving their situation. They are living directionless lives. From the text, there is no indication that anyone with interests in recovery (or improvement) had survived the pandemic and thus those left behind are bereft the mental acuity to avail themselves of the existing and useful resources (books from the library, how difficult would it be to haul a bag of fertilizer from Home Depot?) instead rather engage in the quotidian struggle at re-inventing the proverbial wheel. Twenty years might not be sufficient time to restore the world to pre-apocalypse status but some signs or progress would be developing. Restoration does not mean bringing back the iPhone but neither does it mean living like the Amish, or worst, a third nation in the aftermath of a natural disaster.

* As a logician, all uses of disjunctives are inclusive