The End of Days

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic did not, contrary to some early doom-laden prognostications, herald the biblical end of days. But for those fortunate not to have to travel in to work, the onset of the pandemic marked, for a time, the end of the day as a meaningful unit. Taking cues from E. P. Thompson, Jonathan Crary, Philip Larkin, Ben Bateman, and others, this essay calls for renewed attention to the unit of the day — and asks what happens when the parameters organizing day-to-day life collapse. Hanya Yanagihara’s novel To Paradise (2022) superimposes pandemics past, present, and future, including the AIDS crisis and the COVID pandemic. By suggesting new ways of thinking about living, choice, and pleasure, even amid precarity and death, Yanagihara’s novel allows us to take seriously Larkin’s question: “Where can we live but days?”