Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. That was also the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.
Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves the Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.
That accurately describes the book I read and the story that Station Eleven is. But that, strangely, is not what I was told Station Eleven was about.
Station Eleven is copyrighted 2014, but it seems to have really grown to prominence in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. To one extent, that makes sense. It is, after all, about a pandemic, an apocalyptically deadly one, and about the hellscape that comes after.
But in another sense, that doesn’t make any sense, because Station Eleven takes place before and after a deadly pandemic, but it’s not really about the pandemic and the hellscape that follows. It’s really about Arthur Leander and his quest for connection. The pandemic and the hellscape are just the tableau on which that quest takes place.
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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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