The New York Times Coronavirus Notebook: “…In this time of crisis, we are reminded that literature provides historical empathy and perspective, breaking through the isolation we feel hunkered down in our homes to connect us, across time zones and centuries, with others who once lived through not dissimilar events. It conjures our worst nightmares (Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” Katherine Anne Porter’s “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”). And it highlights what we have in common with people in distant cultures and eras, prompting us to remember that others have not only grappled with traumatic events that slammed home the precariousness of life, but have also experienced some of the same things we are dealing with today. Writers, chronicling the plagues that repeatedly afflicted London in the 17th century, remarked on the silence that descended upon the city (Pepys noted in a letter that “little noise” was to be heard “day or night but tolling of bells” for burials); the shuttering of businesses, theater and sport events; and nervous efforts to use weekly death counts to try to ascertain whether the disease curve was flattening or ascending…”