Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between

by Joseph Osmundson

Overview

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Literary Hub

A leading microbiologist tackles the scientific and sociopolitical impact of viruses in eleven striking essays.

Invisible in the food we eat, the people we kiss, and inside our own bodies, viruses flourish—with the power to shape not only our health, but our social, political, and economic systems. Drawing on his expertise in microbiology, Joseph Osmundson brings readers under the microscope to understand the structure and mechanics of viruses and to examine how viruses like HIV and COVID-19 have redefined daily life.

Osmundson’s buoyant prose builds on the work of the activists and thinkers at the forefront of the HIV/AIDS crisis and critical scholars like José Esteban Munoz to navigate the intricacies of risk reduction, draw parallels between queer theory and hard science, and define what it really means to “go viral.” This dazzling multidisciplinary collection offers novel insights on illness, sex, and collective responsibility. Virology is a critical warning, a necessary reflection, and a call for a better future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393881370
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/07/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	607 KB

About the Author

Joseph Osmundson is a professor of microbiology at New York University. His work has been published in leading biological journals including Cell and PNAS and in the Village Voice, Gawker, the Feminist Wire, and elsewhere. He lives and works in New York City.

Table of Contents

1 On Risk 1

2 On Replication 11

3 On Going Viral 33

4 On Private Writing 66

5 On HIV and Truvada 131

6 On War (with Patrick Nathan) 145

7 On Mentors 169

8 On Whiteness 181

9 On Activism and the Archives 213

10 On Endings 263

11 On Evolution 292

Acknowledgments 315

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/09/2022

Microbiologist Osmundson (Capsid) probes the relationship between humans and viruses in this superb essay collection. “On Replication” reminds that, while “there are 250 million viruses in every 0.001 liter of ocean water,” they can’t replicate on their own. In “On War,” Osmundson questions the use of martial rhetoric to describe outbreaks: “Wars are won through mass death. A virus will never be dominated,” he suggests, recommending an approach to quarantine and social distancing that’s based on care and community. “On Going Viral” is a sharp look at “viral” content online, in which Osmundson makes a case that “most viruses do nothing. How boring, how painfully banal.” “On Endings” is a moving reflection on the HIV epidemic, in which Osmundson considers how “queer people provide a model... for living rightly in a wrong world.” Indeed, throughout, he cannily interweaves queer theory and science: “Queer childhood is waiting for the possibility to be—to make—one’s full self. Quarantine is putting the full possibility of social relations—one way to make oneself with others—on hold out of respect for the desire of living beings to keep on living,” he writes in “On Risk.” Original and bubbling with curiosity, this is a masterful achievement. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"A collection that weaves together the raggedness of the personal with the chaos of the political, Virology will take its place next to Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor and Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals as a model for cultural criticism. Sparkling prose, glittering insights, lucid thinking and accessible writing about sometimes difficult topics makes Virology a must-read. It’s one of the best science and medicine books of the year."

Bookpage (starred review)

"Luckily, we have Joseph Osmundson—an actual virologist—who writes with elegance and insight about the intersection of the real and the metaphorical, moving through topics like the legacy of HIV/AIDS, the long-term impact of Covid variants, and the effects of a prolonged pandemic on our systems of power. This is very much a book of our times."

Literary Hub

"A unique and singular archive of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2), HIV/AIDS, queer theory, sociopolitical criticism, and a record of the viruses that are present in our guts, on our skin, and in our blood…Osmundson turns hard science into juicy, racy-queer reality accessible to anyone who decides to buy the book, read it, and live it."

Bay Area Reporter - Mark William Norby

"In this scrupulous and impassioned manifesto, Osmundson, a microbiologist and activist (and podcaster!), looks at the nature of disease—and its impact on individuals and communities—through a distinctly queer lens."

Electric Literature - Michelle Hart

"Inquisitive, bold, and lyrical, Virology offers a captivating and very queer look at our present moment through the lens of someone who knows more than most of us about the science behind our shared catastrophe."

Melissa Febos

"Osmundson writes with the disarming voice of that teacher who makes science cool, even radical. His thought is discursive, his questioning accretive. He contains — and covers — multitudes: How are white people to stop spreading the lethal disease of “whiteness”? How does capitalism limit the imagination? Is evolution quintessentially queer? The task of following his leaps and swerves, while occasionally challenging, is its own reward, a chance to collaborate with a mind at work."

New York Times Book Review - John Okrent

"Both [Joseph Osmundson’s] science and his writing chops are on full display in this stunner of an essay collection, which elegantly illustrates how microscopically tiny viruses like COVID-19 and HIV, which lead a simple existence, can have enormously complicated effects on the sociopolitical (and ultimately interpersonal) human worlds. The way Osmundson draws meaning from a queer experience of viruses is incredibly moving, ultimately resulting in a rage-filled call to action. Not to mention, it’s some of the most beautiful writing I’ve read in a long time."

them - Sarah Neilson

"I have absolutely no idea how Osmundson made a book this timely, this timeless, this packed with contents and styles we aren't supposed to experience in one text. Virology is devastating in its soulful brilliance. Rigor just became cool as **** and pleasurable again."

Kiese Laymon

"Virology is a brilliant book, both playful and serious, showing us all how viruses live with us, as we live with them. Drawing on queer theory, Osmundson offers a way of understanding care in the midst of anguish and anxiety as well as desire and hope. The viral world is the ordinary world of life and death, of caring for one another in our vulnerability and persistence. This book explains the science of virology for our times, offering a compassionate education for all of us disoriented in pandemic times. This book is queer pedagogy at its best: non-patronizing, thoroughly smart, and full of urgent and caring knowledge that beckons us to get closer again with caution and passion."

Judith Butler

"Joseph Osmundson's Virology made me gay for viruses. Seriously. Virology is a tour de force that uses queer theory to teach us about the science of viruses. Along the way, we are forced to reckon with the reality that far from being villainous little creatures, viruses are actually fascinating almost-life forms. Virology brilliantly revises the frameworks we use to talk about life in a world filled with viruses and reminds us that our relationship with science and scientific phenomena is always social."

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

"Virology is a powerhouse of a collection, the work of a colossal mind, and these essays about viruses, risk, science, life, safety, queerness, and more are as urgent as they will prove lasting. Hallelujah for this book and for Joseph Osmundson."

R.O. Kwon

"This wide-ranging collection of essays is a meditation on society’s complicated relationship with viruses. In pondering SARS-CoV-2, HIV and more, Osmundson calls for more equitable access to medical care."

Science News (a Top Book of 2022)

"Joseph Osmundson brings both his background in microbiology and a deft approach to language to a meditation on how viruses have affected — and continue to affect — even the smallest of quotidian moments."

InsideHook - Tobias Carroll

"Joe Osmundson’s Virology is an incisive look at our relationship to earth’s most plentiful life form — how we live with viruses and how viruses live in and through us. But more than this, it is a compelling examination of the tension between avoidance and exposure, safety and risk, preservation of the self and openness to evolution and change. This book is a potent medicine for our times."

Lacy M. Johnson

"Joseph Osmundson uses his training as a virologist to illustrate how viruses have shaped and will continue to shape our lives, with language that is gripping and straightforward. Scientifically sound and exceptionally perceptive"

Vulture - David Vogel

"Virology is an ambitious book that succeeds in its efforts to shed light on viruses with science writing, yes, but also to shed light on the messy realities of life with queer theory, journey entries, archival data, personal essays, and above all else, naked honesty…The lessons I need — the lessons we all need — exist in this book."

Autostraddle - Vanessa Friedman

"To read Joseph Osmundson’s mind at work is such a pleasure. The tendrils of Virology go deep: to the pandemic, queerness, memes, futurity, and what it means to hold both love and despair, to live awake to both the world’s beauty and its harm. This is a profoundly necessary, urgently of-the-moment collection, one I’ll keep thinking about for a long time to come."

Alex Marzano-Lesnevich

"The essays in Virology are beyond impressive. This is precision work, cutting and thoughtful, done with the deft hand of a wildly skilled writer. Joseph Osmundson has given us something precious with this important collection. It is a tribute to humanity. It is an ode to life."

Kristin Arnett

★ 06/01/2022

Osmundson (microbiology, New York Univ.; Inside/Out) writes with a raw and urgent fierceness in this unique collection of essays. The scientist, researcher, and HIV/AIDS advocate (he reveres early activists like the group ACT-UP) captures a moment in time—the first two years of the COVID pandemic—and situates it in a larger historical context of identity, disease, and medicine. Writing from the perspective of a queer, white microbiologist, Osmundson intersperses intensely personal diary entries with his knowledge of viruses and viral diseases (especially COVID and HIV). He examines how the medical establishment, a capitalist society, and the government, use a collective fear of disease to subjugate and discriminate against BIPOC and queer people and other marginalized groups. Osmundson references the work of many great writers and thinkers, including Audre Lorde, Susan Sontag, James Baldwin, Eula Biss, José Esteban Muñoz, and Octavia Butler, making this a rich reading experience. His forceful, honest reckoning with the medical establishment and its relationship to race and disease takes to task even allies within the science and LGBTQ+ communities. VERDICT Osmundson writes with hope for a world where racial inequities are addressed and people treat each other with love and kindness. Just as viruses change and mutate, so, too, can people, he suggests. Recommended.—Ragan O'Malley

Library Journal

The impact of viruses on human psycho/social/sexual development is the timely topic of this audiobook, narrated by the author, a biologist who loves the art form of writing. Light on actual science, the work sounds like a collection of diary entries, eulogies, and stream-of- consciousness musings. Osmundson excels at expressing his emotional connection to the subject matter, but he makes many rookie mistakes with his performance. He narrates an entire chapter on the verge of sobbing, something emotionally effective for a passage but uncomfortably unlistenable for any longer. The author/narrator chooses slow, deliberate pacing that savors the sound of each word. This decision would work for a collection of poetry, but not a lengthy collection of essays. J.T. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2023 - AudioFile

The impact of viruses on human psycho/social/sexual development is the timely topic of this audiobook, narrated by the author, a biologist who loves the art form of writing. Light on actual science, the work sounds like a collection of diary entries, eulogies, and stream-of- consciousness musings. Osmundson excels at expressing his emotional connection to the subject matter, but he makes many rookie mistakes with his performance. He narrates an entire chapter on the verge of sobbing, something emotionally effective for a passage but uncomfortably unlistenable for any longer. The author/narrator chooses slow, deliberate pacing that savors the sound of each word. This decision would work for a collection of poetry, but not a lengthy collection of essays. J.T. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2023 - AudioFile

★ 2022-03-22
A gay biologist looks at the Covid-19 pandemic through the lenses of queerness and social justice.

NYU microbiology professor Osmundson is a literary essayist—his models and polestars are writers like Joan Didion, Susan Sontag, and Eula Biss, though he also thoughtfully critiques their work—as well as a cleareyed science writer. His ability to explicate queer theory and epidemiology allows him to make thoughtful connections between the pandemic and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Then as now, he observes, racist responses to outbreaks led to scapegoating, demonization, and needless death; then as now, relationships are redefined by medications and shifting definitions of wellness. The author notes how war metaphors deployed during outbreaks—e.g., likening essential workers or the sick as “heroes”—have long been ethically fraught, giving people license to treat marginalized victims as acceptable losses. “Unexamined Whiteness” in medicine and media tends to make the virus deadlier for minority communities, and capitalism only exacerbates the problem. Osmundson humanizes this dynamic by thoughtfully shifting from his own personal experience—in relationships, at sex clubs, in an activist Covid-19 research group—to the bigger picture of the pandemic. His writing about viruses themselves can be technical, but he adds an emotional valence, approaching them as undiscriminating, common to all human beings. The author writes in various modes, from literary criticism to polemic (Andrew Sullivan comes in for particular scorn) to diarist, the last of which is a potent reminder of the uncertainty and fear that came with the arrival of Covid-19. Throughout, Osmundson exposes how a virus reveals societies’ connections and bigotries. "Where we place our bodies, and with whom, is a biological choice,” he writes, “and a moral and political one.”

A welcome, well-informed, queer-positive study of the blind spots a pandemic reveals.

Kirkus Reviews