Whodathunk that the one great novel about a virus in New York City would be a raucous, vibrant romp, at least until its closing pages strip off the paint.
That’s Vincent McHugh’s sadly out of print “I Am Thinking of My Darling,” originally published in 1943 but without so much as a mention of the war, about a mysterious flu that hits the city from the tropics and causes its victims to lose their inhibitions. It’s a novel worth tracking down a used copy of, one that’s timely looking back on 2020 and ahead to 2021.
After the mayor decides to walk off the job to dedicate more time to his model trains, acting planning commissioner Jim Rowan finds himself serving as a shadow mayor, working to keep the power going, trains running and otherwise putting out figurative and literal fires while overseeing doctors’ and scientists’ efforts to suppress the virus’ spread and develop a cure or vaccine.
In that role, Rowan navigates the five boroughs, giving the reader a splendid tour that cuts across class though not so much racial lines as newly liberated men and women throw themselves at each other and sometimes him as he’s also racing to track down his actress wife, Niobe, another victim of the happiness bug who’s left their apartment and her Broadway show to roam the city playing parts in the great production of life while staying just a step ahead of her husband and the reader.
Rowan, a sophisticated man who takes a buoyant, New Deal-ish pleasure in his government work and in navigating the city’s operations and intricacies (which author McHugh studied while working for the Federal Writers’ Project, which employed many of New York’s great novelists and journalists as part of FDR’s WPA), describes his role during the outbreak as being “like being the sober host at a terrific party where everyone else has a fine, glittering edge.” In that role, Rowan deals with endlessly emerging issues including a governor threatening to step in and take control, national and local efforts to quarantine the city, the mechanics of promoting and distributing masks, and the complications of sorting out and sharing tentative new information about a little-understood illness. Sound familiar? Advertisement
But mostly Rowan is racing to keep up as it turns out that uninhibited happiness itself is a threat to order. Bartenders put it all on the house, supply chains break down, essential workers walk off of their jobs and people step away from unsatisfying lives while the 80% or so of the city that’s still bound up and uninfected gets a taste of what’s it like to be among the liberated, wide-awake and energized people seeing life fresh again and shedding the weight of their roles and years.
The book’s language overflows, with descriptions spilling over pages. And eventually, of course, Rowan gets infected himself and “Darling” gets more feverish and verbose as the virus continues to spread and he charms and succumbs to others’ charms even while continuing to hunt for Niobe.
Finally, the virus begins to ebb as the first infections run what turns out to be their course and a change in the weather helps stop the spread as the doctors manage to catch up, sort of like what people hoped would happen last summer.
That’s when Jim, still lit up, catches up with Niobe as she’s in character leading an evening rally at Madison Square Garden for the Society for the Preservation of Happiness packed with a cross-section of the city and, he observes, “nothing ugly or potentially violent. High and happy. The individual excitement of the fever screwed up a notch or two by the excitement of sharing it…It scared me for a moment. This could turn into anything. What the hell was happiness?”
Niobe escapes her husband at the rally’s end and “Darling” closes, abruptly, after Jim finds her again the next day leading a march up Fifth Ave. for the Society in the daylight just as the collective fever’s finally breaking. She’s there in front of “the normal New York crowd. Easygoing, critical, indulgent. No feeling about the parade now,” just gawking. Niobe, a grown woman in a drum major’s outfit tossing a baton while cheering happiness, is suddenly self-aware as “the feeling of the thing was gone. She looked cold and bewildered. Trembling. Nothing but nerve now, and all at once it was shabby and pathetic. People in the crowd laughed.”
And Jim Rowan, who’s spent the whole book cheerfully working to restore order, succeeds just in time to see its weight land full force on his wife and pin down his domestic happiness.