On Immunity: An Inoculation
by Eula Biss
First reviewed May 2015
I spent some time in this review expressing what it felt like it notice people in public reacting to the title—I can only imagine what it feels like in a post-COVID19 America to have anything even remotely vaccine-related out on the bus or train. Reading through my archives, I spent a lot of 2014/15 being very critical of a lot of non-fiction, and this reads like a response as to why I was “soft” on the text. It feels strange to read “I liked it even if I didn’t agree with every single thing it says.” Like, duh, 2015 me, you don’t need to think a book is 100% right to be good!
For a book as short as On Immunity: An Inoculation—both in page length and in time spent with it—I received a disproportionate level of interest from strangers at the Think Coffee on Mercer, Washington Square Park, and the D train. I wasn’t sure whether this book carried some sort of connotation that I was inadvertently advertising—Paulo Coehlo’s coda on magical thinking The Alchemist comes to mind—but I knew I liked its lyricism right away. Once I recognized it as a treatise about vaccines, swirling with literary allusions and well-researched science, I stopped fretting over the spectre of contentious social anxieties I was fearful of projecting. I let myself be swept away by the collegiate presentation of the material.
When it took a turn into motherhood, I braced myself for special pleadings: I bristled when the talk shifted from the theoretical to the anecdotal, changed from erudite musings into tactile memoirs. My notes became more harsh as I looked for cracks in the arguments, ready to pounce on any glimmer of an anti-vaccination argument, no matter how veiled. Why, for example, was this book funded by the upscale discount retailer Target? What aspects of the author’s method could I pull down to make my own interpretations seem more poignant? And to end her extemporizing by touching on Candide’s non-ending—is she really comparing herself to Voltaire?
Paranoia, the theorist Eve Sedgwick observes, tends to be contagious. She calls it a “strong theory,” meaning a wide-ranging, reductive theory that displaces other ways of thinking. And paranoia very frequently passes for intelligence. As Sedgwick observes, “to theorize out of anything but a paranoid critical stance has come to seem naive, pious, or complaisant.”
This pulled me up short; yes, I was looking for things to pick apart. I didn’t want to hear about a child’s fearful face as his adenoids were being removed or a parent’s panic over fumes from mattress plastics; those things blur the hard line I have painted on the earth. I think vaccines are worthwhile. The author presents facts with such aplomb that an incautious or overzealous reader—and I admit that as I was sharpening my pitchfork I was guilty of being both—might forget that so does she:
In a section of The Vaccine Book titled “Is it your social responsibility to vaccinate your kids?” Dr. Bob asks, “Can we fault parents for putting their own child’s health ahead of that of the kids around him?” This is meant to be a rhetorical question, but Dr. Bob’s implied answer is not mine. In another section of the book, Dr. Book writes of his advice to parents who fear the MMR vaccine, “I also warn them not to share their fears with their neighbors, because if too many people avoid the MMR, we’ll likely see the disease increase significantly.”
There is nothing wrong with being skeptical or researching claims that strike you as odd or inflammatory. On Immunity proves itself with every page—and it shouldn’t have to.
Reviewing is not static regurgitation—it is not pumping out synopses but filtering words through one's self: speaking to whether I enjoyed or didn’t enjoy a book; whether the knowledge was worthwhile or worthless; whether the whole experience came together into something greater than ink on a page. I respect the books I choose to spend my time with, and I expect them to respect me. I never sit down with a book and cackle eagerly as I scheme to hoist the author by his or her own petard. I am open to the words—I want to hear them. That is why I am reading. Books, ideally, have my trust until they lose it; I try my best not to crack a cover with my view already askance, awaiting the narrative to conform to my expectations before I will accept what it says. On Immunity didn’t insult me. It isn’t trying to sell me something, isn’t trying to change my mind or shame anyone or garner more clicks with inflammatory rhetoric. It makes statements; it supports them with evidence. It conveys thoughts; it presents them as logical and introspective. It is a lovely book, honest to what it is; no polemic but a narrative absorbing and reforming the zeitgeist around vaccination.
It is worth the time—well, look. It is short. Short enough to read yourself, if you are reading reviews. To experience the words as they suffuse your mind with metaphor and allusion is the major strength of this work. As to whether it is worthwhile; much like life—or Candide—you’ll never know until it is over.