I don't usually like cross-posting, but this one is kind of relevant to both sites and I want these two collections to be recommended everywhere because they're so much fun. So here goes...Let's kick off this Halloween season, shall we? Alas, no Halloween Movie Fest for me this year, as I don't happen to be living with T & SA anymore. But I've modified the October ritual to my personal liking, having decided to focus on a wide range of vampire stories from all different literary eras. Aiding me in this endeavor are two volumes of surprising merit (I say surprising because I haphazardly picked them up from the entrance display at B&N), both of which compliment one another in ways I failed to notice until coming home. More on that in a second, but I have to say that it reminded me that there are people who know and love books working at B&N--probably former English majors practicing daily guerrilla warfare on an unsuspecting public in the fight to make people actually think about what they read--and it's one such person who put these two volumes next to one another.
Volume #1:
Vampires, Wine, and Roses: Chilling Tales of Immortal PleasureI know, I know. It sounds like a schlocky romance novel, right? It's really, really not. It's just an incredibly cheesy title for an otherwise impressive collection. Edited by John Richard Stephens, this book has vampire stories from expected and very unexpected sources: Ann Rice, Voltaire, H.G. Wells, Edgar Allen Poe, John Keats, Thomas Hardy, Baudelaire, T.S. Elliot, Edith Wharton, Stephen King, Lord Byron, Ray Bradbury, Robert Louis Stevenson, and more. If you're anything like me, you're probably looking at this list and thinking "but _____ didn't write about vampires!" Yes, he/she did! This volume contains poetry, prose, song lyrics, and excerpts from longer novels. It's also--get this!--fully illustrated by Vince Locke. Check out the cover:
V, W, & R Cover.
Volume #2:
Women of the NightTo be perfectly honest, I bought this volume based solely on the fact that it included Neil Gaiman's "Snow, Glass, Apples" in a vampire compilation. Because that's exactly where it should be. The only thing that would be even better were if it showed up in a collection that included some Angela Carter stories as well. Anyway, WotN focuses specifically on female vampires. As John Helfers points out in the Introduction, many scholars treat the vampire myth as something that sprung up in the 18th/19th century with the rise of Gothic Revival. Certainly, Dracula made a huge impact on the literary world. But female vampires have been featured in texts for a couple thousand years and have developed different mythic characteristics than their male counterparts. This collection features contemporary authors telling female vampire stories--Neil Gaiman, Philip K. Dick, Nancy Holder, Jane Yolen, etc.
What I didn't realize until reading the introduction of
Women of the Night was that many of the stories referenced by Helfers and the writers featured in this book are included in
Vampires, Wine, and Roses. So when he claims that an author's story borrows from Keats'
Lamia, I can simply grab VW&R and--presto!--there's the poem (instead of having to drag out the book boxes and dig for my Norton Anthology, or try to track down what may or may not be a complete copy of the text on Google).
So the opening story in VW&R is a 1984 story by Ann Rice called "The Master of Rampling Gate." And it's everything a neo-gothic 20th century vampire story should be--sensual, melodramatic, a little bit ridiculous, and very, very sexy. You know...gothic. Here's an excerpt:
"He was walking with me under the gas lamps, his face all but shimmering with that same dark innocence, that same irresistible warmth. It seemed we were holding tight to each other in the very midst of a crowd. And the crowd was a living thing, a writhing thing, and everywhere there came a dark, rich aroma from it, the aroma of fresh blood.
....
"And I felt the warmth filling me, charging me, blurring my vision until we broke free again, light and invisible, it seemed, as we moved over the rooftops and down again through the rain-drenched streets. But the rain did not touch us; the falling snow did not chill us; we had within ourselves a great and indissoluble heat. And together in the carriage we talked to each other in low, exuberant rushes of language; we were lovers; we were contsant; we were immortal. We were as enduring as Rampling Gate."
I leave you with a macro made by someone far cooler than myself after a particularly fun viewing of
Interview with the Vampire:
Happy Halloween!
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