How to go on holiday in a pandemic

By Mark O’Connell

In April I was supposed to be in New York for the American launch of my new book, whose subject, you may be amused to learn, is apocalyptic anxiety. Obviously I didn’t go to New York. But I did have a book launch of sorts, in the form of a Zoom webinar hosted by the bookstore where the irl event had been scheduled to take place.

So one evening I sat in my living room in Dublin, while an editor I work with at an American magazine sat in his living room in Brooklyn, and we both drank our beers while having as free-flowing a conversation as the situation permitted. The event was deemed a success, given the circumstances. But it was hard not to experience a Zoom webinar as a somewhat flat and dispiriting substitute for a real gathering, in just the same way that everything these days seems a flat and dispiriting substitute for real life.