The super flu it depicts may be deadly, but its also swift, running its course in a matter of days. As I have argued, the critical temporalities of the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel debunk the apocalyptic conception of history at the core of western modernity as a narrative construct. The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular. That we secretly desire a situation in which this entire apparatus is blown up and we all start over again on perfect equal footing. Published in 2014 to critical and popular success, Emily St. John Mandels Station Eleven is part of a widely-discussed, growing corpus of post-apocalyptic novels written by authors who do not typically write science fiction.1 In what Andrew Hoberek (2011) identifies as the genre turn of contemporary fiction, the post-apocalyptic genre has moved from the margins (tacky science-fiction) into the mainstream (legitimate, widely-recognized and practiced speculative fiction) (Buell 2013: 9), so much so that Frederick Buell frames it as a cultural dominant.2 As Andrew Tate puts it, contemporary narrative is haunted by dreams of a future that is a place of ruin (2017: 2). Now that that's all mapped and charted out and there are no more frontiers that's left us with a certain restlessness, that I suppose gets channeled into our interest in this futuristic, speculative fiction. Because it seems like an improbable outcome, when I look back at the sequence of events (Mandel, 2014: 77, 157). Backstories are filled in notably of Miranda (Danielle Deadwyler), Arthurs lover and the author of the graphic novel (called Station Eleven, but dont let the meta-ness put you off) that has been Kirstens lifeline over her 20 years of post-apocalyptic wandering. Thus, one might suggest that Mandels book describes an apocalypse that already happened in 20082009: it is a novel not about a post-apocalyptic future but a post-apocalyptic present, for the ships embody the breakdown of capitalisms fundamental premise of eternal growth (Hoberek, 2015: n.pag.). Hoberek, A 2015 The Post-Apocalyptic Present. Through their content and narrative structure, contemporary post-apocalyptic novels take issue with the apocalyptic delirium of destination of Western modernity (Derrida, 1992: 53), that is, with the closed and deterministic conception of time at the core of apocalyptic logic and its equally closed and normative utopian visions, which leave no space for agency and for alternative visions of the future. Globe and Mail, 12 September. Post-apocalyptic ravaged aftermaths implicitly subvert the central element of apocalyptic discourse, that is, a sense-making utopian historical teleology. The prophet believes that everything that has ever happened on this earth has happened for a reason (Mandel, 2014: 59), including the Georgia Flu, which he sees as a perfect agent of death [that] could only be divine (Mandel, 2014: 60). Mary McNamara is a culture columnist and critic for the Los Angeles Times. The only descriptions of the immediate aftermath Mandel gives her readers are through Jeevan, a paramedic who tries to help Arthur when he has a stroke on stage the night the pandemic begins. Israeli police lobbed hundreds of stun grenades, fired water cannons and arrested at least 40 people in response to Wednesdays demonstration in Tel Aviv against a judicial overhaul. Available at: http://www.tor.com/2014/09/12/a-conversation-with-emily-st-john-mandel/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. If traditional apocalyptic discourse is about time, contemporary post-apocalyptic discourse is also about time more specifically, it is about critical temporalities, constructions of time that critique a hegemonic temporality. Like Hicks, I argue that the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel addresses the nature of modernity (2016: 4); unlike Hicks, I argue that these fictions do so to critique, rather than to salvage, modernity, and specifically, to critique the apocalyptic understanding of time underlying Western modernity through what I term critical temporalities. The narrative moves literally and metaphorically away from the road the actual road of the first post-pandemic years as well as McCarthys The Road. Boston: Beacon. Thus, while the traditional apocalyptic narrative makes the conjunction of meaning and ending its theme, both in its expressed understanding of history and in its own narrative procedures (Zamora, 1989: 14), Station Eleven, as discussed, leaves readers with the sense of possibility, an open and unwritten future that challenges the closure and determinism of the sense of an ending and that, like the gaps in the fictional history of Cloud Atlas, allows space for human agency.13. The scene in which a dozen women give birth was the before giving way to the future, just as all the scenes in which Miranda struggles to write Station Eleven were. However, on the one hand, the novel is far from adhering to the radical utopian renewal of traditional apocalyptic discourse. Even in rural Pennsylvania, let alone Asia, you know your world becomes so small so quickly. Ah, you say no. Martin Carr We Got This Covered. American Literary History, 23(3): 48399. We start to plumb the depths of Kirstens soul, forged by suffering, saved by the Symphony and ready to save it, too, by any means necessary. Frankly I was grateful to skip all the store-looting and scavenging we are inevitably treated to in these kinds of tales. Washington Post, 15 October. Events unfurl like a runaway train: Jeevan (Himesh Patel), an anxiety-ridden mess, is attending a performance of King Lear when an onstage tragedy prompts him to intervene. If one of the precepts of the series own holy text, a graphic novel, is show, dont tell, it seems to me indicative of the series strengths that its most moving moments feature spliced-in images, memories, of the characters former selves. Season 1 Review: Station Eleven takes Mandels book and amps up its sense of a cozy post-apocalypse, where humanity comes together, rather than drifting After all, McCarthys text which depicts a father and sons journey in a post-apocalyptic US where, after an unspecified catastrophe, everything [is] dead to the root (McCarthy, [2006] 2007: 21) is one of the most famous examples of the contemporary body of post-apocalyptic novels as it won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. We always seem to think the world's ending. I in fact stole it shamelessly from Star Trek: Voyager. In the new HBO Max series Station Eleven, Davis plays the lead as a tough but vulnerable survivor of a pandemic. WebFull Review | Jan 12, 2022. Available at: https://www.booklistonline.com/Station-Eleven-Emily-St-John-Mandel/pid=6862248 [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. The chaos of historical contingency chaos which is even more evident and dreadful at times of crisis, such as that of the devastating Georgia Flu is tamed through the recourse to apocalyptic determinism, namely, to the belief that everything happens for a reason, as the prophets mother repeats throughout the novel. Chute, H L 2016 Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. Though their plague is much more devastating than ours (it has a 99% fatality rate), it is still quite something to see people coughing in enclosed spaces while those nearby bristle, and others wonder about masks or gather supplies so they can hunker in apartments until the virus has burned itself out. who dies of a heart attack onstage as he plays King Lear in Toronto. She was the leader of a band of survivors not because she was a ruthless martial arts expert but because she continued to write symphonies, and understood that music and theater fulfill a deep-seated need. 1. Traditional apocalyptic narratives are fictions of historical order (Zamora, 1989: 4) that flourish in times of crisis and, through his apocalyptic narrative, the prophet seeks to restore order in the chaotic post-pandemic world. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. The peculiarity of the novel is that all the stories with the exception of the sixth, the post-apocalyptic one, situated in the middle are interrupted in order to give way to the following one in a chronological order, and are then resumed in reverse order in the second half of the book. The sense of an ending and the deterministic foreshadowing it allows should pertain to the closure of time in traditional plots, not to the openness of time as lived, where the future is unwritten. This deliberate timing allows Mandel not to dwell on the horror and mayhem brought about by the Georgia Flu, horror and mayhem which are instead at the core of The Roads borrowed world (McCarthy, [2006] 2007: 130). New York: Vintage. Yet, just like The Road, Station Eleven articulates a critical temporality that subverts the utopian teleology of apocalyptic logic. In order to have a good story, there needs to be emotion or entertainment. Born in the Boston area, educated at USC and an adoptive New Orleanian for nearly 10 years, he returned to Los Angeles in 2019 as the newsrooms television editor. The mere existence of a character like the Conductor, played with bug-eyed, Emmy-worthy brilliance by Petty, made my heart sing. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Goldman, M 2005 Rewriting Apocalypse in Contemporary Canadian Fiction. New York Times, 5 September. I read, If you want the girl next door, go next door: Lori Petty on Station Eleven and surviving Hollywood, Anuplifting pandemic drama? This is a sci-fi book, there should be unknowns and mystery, this book lacked in that field greatly. The website's critics consensus reads, " Station Eleven rewards patient viewers with an insightful and thematically rich assertion thateven in the post-apocalypsethe show must go on." 20 years later it the Traveling Symphony, a group that travels and performs for people, roams the wastelands. You know, it's interesting. So yeah, there is a comic book that's drawn by a character in the present day. Public Books, 15 June. The Flash-forward Glimpses The road was all travellers walking with shell-shocked expressions, children wearing blankets over their coats, people getting killed for the contents of their backpacks, hungry dogs (Mandel, 2014: 1934). DOI: http://doi.org/10.1057/9781137430144, Munslow, A 2006 Deconstructing History. Log In; Author Emily St. John Mandel was not involved in the adaptation of her hit novel. Emily St. John Mandel's new novel, Station Eleven, opens with a vain actor and is there really any other kind? Emily St. John Mandels fourth novel Station Eleven recently made the National Book Awards shortlist for fiction. This ambitious story tackles a post-apocalyptic world in which a super flu has wiped out the majority of the population. In: Atwood, M (Eds. Is a Disarmingly Hopeful Post-Apocalyptic Tale. Alter, A 2014 The World is Ending, and Readers Couldnt Be Happier: Station Eleven Joins Falls Crop of Dystopian Novels. Gomel, E 2010 Postmodern Science Fiction and Temporal Imagination. 2nd ed. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.256. The goal of traditional apocalyptic logic is to order time and make it intelligible, by disclosing that the whole course of human history is tending towards a final resolution which will make sense of everything that happened before. WebSee 15 photos and 3 tips from 556 visitors to 7-Eleven. This passage is a clear intertextual reference to McCarthys The Road, whose world is complete with travellers with shell-shocked expressions, children walking covered in blankets, people being killed for their backpacks contents, and a hungry dog. They discuss both shows and recap the events of Station Eleven, then halfway into the podcast, set the two shows against each other in a head-to-head battle. We begin, really, to care, to wonder, to ask more questions. Im calling it a partial masterpiece! McCarthy, C [2006] 2007 The Road. Altre Modernit, 9: 6680. Mandels novel thus exposes apocalyptic temporality as an artificial teleological order that one imposes on contingency, often with oppressive agendas in mind, as is the case of the prophet. How Station Eleven pulled off the impossible, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Maybe, though people appear to be living in small, mostly primitive communities and the fact that the story confines itself to the shoreline of Lake Michigan (at least I think its Michigan) serves the narrative both spiritually and logistically. Now, as HBO Maxs tale of a pre-, post- and post-post-apocalyptic society much like our own concludes, senior editor Matt Brennan and columnist and culture critic Mary McNamara have it out about whether the series was truly great or something less. It's not that I don't think that there would be a period of absolute mayhem and chaos and horror. Berkeley: University of California Press. One of the prophets followers, who dies revelling in Revelations promise of a new heaven and a new earth (Rev. The wastelands start over again on perfect equal footing fourth novel Station Eleven, Davis plays the lead as tough. 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