First Lines Revised for the Coronavirus Epoch

George Orwell, 1984

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. We were still indoors and hadn’t washed our hair for seven days.

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of COVID-19, it was the age of sterilization, it was the epoch of FaceTime, it was the mastering of Zoom meetings, it was the season of hoarding toilet paper, it was the season of canned vegetables, it was the spring of hand sanitizer, it was the winter of standing six feet away at all times.

Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans

Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard because he would not stay inside. “Stop!” cried the groaning old man at last, “Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree during the 1918 Flu.”

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the toilet paper herself.

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

The president called himself a “war hero” while declaring the Coronavirus a hoax. All this happened, more or less.

Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea