Saturday, October 31, 2009

BOOK REVIEW 'The Vampire Archives,'

From LA Times

"You have heard, no doubt, of the appalling superstition that prevails in Upper and Lower Styria, in Moravia, Silesia, in Turkish Serbia, in Poland, even in Russia; the superstition, so we must call it, of the vampire," wrote Sheridan Le Fanu in his classic "Carmilla," first serialized in London in 1871 and 1872. It's not just Le Fanu's language that feels antique but his ethos and geography.

Vampires no longer appall us or even stir superstitions; these days a vampire is much more likely to rise up in a high school corridor than from the graveyard mists of some decaying Eastern European pile. Audiences still want their vampires to inspire fear, but they also need them to be human, maybe better than human. Suddenly, and weirdly, vampires feel as integral to the culture as burger chains, except the undead don't chow down on Big Macs.

In "The Vampire Archives: The Most Complete Volume of Vampire Tales Ever Published," editor Otto Penzler assembles 80-plus stories that offer a survey of the genre from the early 1800s to the present day. Byron wrote a vampire poem, as did Samuel Taylor Coleridge (the wonderfully erotic and spooky "Christabel"), likewise John Keats, whose "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" Penzler includes

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