When is a Vampire not a Vampire?

[darryl]

A little bit of fun.

What on earth has happened to the traditional vampire? Which writers today are continuing in the great tradition of Stoker, Le Fanu, Rymer and the like. Yes, Anne Rice writes some excellent and entertaining stories, as does Stephanie Myers. But their creations are not vampires in the traditional sense. Nor does the plethora of mainly young adult "vampire" stories feature real vampires. Bacause the element of real evil has gone. Many stories have no supernatural element at all, let alone the presence of real evil. Stephen King, in his wonderful Salem's Lot, describes Father Callahan's state of mind as follows:

The exultation had faded away like a bad echo of pride. Terror struck him around the heart like a blow. Not terror for his life or his honor or that his housekeeper might find out about his drinking. It was a terror he had never dreamed of, not even in the tortured days of his adolescence.
The terror he felt was for his immortal soul.

How can the terror in your average YA so-called "Vampire" novel even compare with this. The true vampire is evil, a demon. The soul of a person is damned, held in bondage whilst the vampire's unnatural life continues. And when it ends, what? Salvation? Eternal life? Or perhaps simply an end to suffering. I will again quote from Salem's Lot, and if you haven't read it, you should buy it now and do so. Ben has just driven a stake through Susan's dead heart:

Blood suddenly boiled from her mouth and nose in a tide… and something else. In the faint light it was only a suggestion, a shadow, of something leaping up and out, cheated and ruined. It merged with the darkness and was gone.
She settled back, her mouth relaxing, closing. The mangled lips parted in a last, susurating pulse of air. For a moment the eyelids fluttered and Ben saw, or fancied he saw, the Susan he had met in the park, reading his book.
It was done.

No. I'm not sorry that Anne Rice wrote her books, nor am I sorry to have read and enjoyed many of them. Nor do I begrudge the writing of the whole Twilight series, or the many other vampire books which depart from the tradition. I am not the arbiter of what is and is not a Vampire, nor should I or anyone else be. There is room for all sorts of interpretations of the Vampire myth. But we do seem to be bringing up a generation that doesn't know what a real vampire is! From what I can see the traditional vampire story is currently missing in action.

And so to the question. Is anyone aware of any more traditional vampire stories published recently? Are any authors writing them anymore? And if there are any, are they good enough to recommend?

[Pablo]

The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova (2005)

That said, I'm really not a fan of vampire literature. In fact, the only vampire books I read are the above and, of course, Dracula.

[Witty Username]

James Lovegrove's Redlaw?

amazon.co.uk link

[NNolan]

Tim Powers' The Stress of Her Regard and Hide Me Among the Graves are excellent, and right up your alley.

Justin Cronin's The Passage trilogy is pretty good so far, two books in. I didn't like Del Toro's The Strain books as much as Powers or Cronin, and I didn't really buy into how it ended.

[Nancy Fulda]

But we do seem to be bringing up a generation that doesn't know what a real vampire is!

It's not just vampires. Witches, dragons, werewolves, the fae folk, and even mermaids (which mostly evolved from the tale of the Sirens) have pretty much left their unholy origins behind. Pirates have also been extremely romanticized.

I'm not convinced that's a bad thing. I'm not convinced it's good, either. In fact, I'm not willing to pin any kind of moral judgement on it at all. It's just what happens as literature evolves.

I do agree that there's historical value in remembering the roots of the modern tropes, though.

[Catlady]

When vampires become romantic heroes who drink artificial blood, something's gone kerflooey.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by Catlady

When vampires become romantic heroes who drink artificial blood, something's gone kerflooey.

Like George R.R. Martin's Fevre Dream, where Joshua York and his clan of vampires are trying to control their thirst with some sort of blood and other additives back in the 1850s (on a steamship crusing the mighty Mississippi)?

I'm also partial to Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Count St. Germain, who doesn't drink artificial blood, but he doesn't really seem to drink much blood, period. He's a romantic figure, and she's been writing St. Germain stories since the 1970s.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by Nancy Fulda

It's not just vampires. Witches, dragons, werewolves, the fae folk, and even mermaids (which mostly evolved from the tale of the Sirens) have pretty much left their unholy origins behind. Pirates have also been extremely romanticized.

I'm not convinced that's a bad thing. I'm not convinced it's good, either. In fact, I'm not willing to pin any kind of moral judgement on it at all. It's just what happens as literature evolves.

I do agree that there's historical value in remembering the roots of the modern tropes, though.

I don't think in this case it is so much a matter of literature evolving as of going through phases. Perhaps the old-style vampire will come back into fashion at some stage in the future. There was recently some discussion on another thread about what is and is not encompassed by the term science fiction. In my view a rather pointless discussion. We are dealing with the world of the imagination, which is not concerned with such artificial limits. Literature is richer for having both the old and the new style vampires. After all, if we don't like something, we are not forced to read it.

[Phogg]

I blame the Groovie Goolies cartoon series, which launched in 1970 and inspired Count Chocula breakfast cereal the following year.

Bobby Pickett ' s hit song Monster Mash from 1962 might bear some of the blame.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by darryl

I don't think in this case it is so much a matter of literature evolving as of going through phases. Perhaps the old-style vampire will come back into fashion at some stage in the future. There was recently some discussion on another thread about what is and is not encompassed by the term science fiction. In my view a rather pointless discussion. We are dealing with the world of the imagination, which is not concerned with such artificial limits. Literature is richer for having both the old and the new style vampires. After all, if we don't like something, we are not forced to read it.

+1. If zombies can go from undead slaves to slow moving flesh eating undead to fast moving flesh eating undead, then vampires can morph as well. I think that Jim Himes commented on the various type of vampires in one of his Libriomancer books.

[Catlady]

I think the very stylish and elegant Broadway revival of Dracula starring Frank Langella in the mid-1970s had a lot to do with the romantic image. That Dracula was still a vampire, though, albeit an extremely seductive one.

[pwalker8]

There has always been a level of seduction in the Dracula story. Bela Lugosi, who played Dracula in 1931 movie (and in the theater version starting in 1927), was quite the lady's man in real life.

Love at First Bite

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

There has always been a level of seduction in the Dracula story. Bela Lugosi, who played Dracula in 1931 movie (and in the theater version starting in 1927), was quite the lady's man in real life.

Oh, absolutely. But, generally speaking, the long series of Dracula films with Lugosi, Christopher Lee, etc., pretty much emphasized the horror aspects of the story and not the seduction. Then in the mid-70s there were reinterpretations of the vampire that swung toward the seductive--Frank Langella and Louis Jourdan, e.g., were both enormously attractive actors and romantic figures who played the noble count with a lot of sex appeal. And of course at the same time you had Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire.

But these still didn't disregard the underlying evil; they just made the evil seductive.

[hildea]

I just finished Holly Black's The Coldest Girl in Coldtown and liked it a lot. YA, but definitively not sparkly or harmless vampires. It starts with the protagonist waking up in the bathroom after a party. At first she's worried that her friends have taken embarrassing pictures of her while she was blacked out. Then...

The tan carpet was stiff and black with stripes of dried blood, spattered like a Jackson Pollock canvas. The walls were streaked with it, handprints smearing the dingy beige surfaces. And the bodies. Dozens of bodies. People she'd seen every day since kindergarten, people whom she'd played tag with and cried over and kissed, were lying at odd angles, their bodies pale and cold, their eyes staring like rows of dolls in a shop window.
...
Otta's, Ilaina's, and Jon's bodies were piled together. They'd just gotten back from summer cheer camp and had started the party off with a series of backflips in the yard just before sunset, as mosquitoes buzzed through the warm breeze. Now dried blood crusted on their clothing like rust, tinting their hair, dotting their skin like freckles. Their eyes were locked open, their pupils gone cloudy.