I have to admit that after the first time I read Bram Stoker's Dracula it took me years to work up the nerve to re-read it. It was one of the most singly terrifying books I had read up until that time. In spite of its archaic language, and the almost absurd melodrama of the story, there was something about the way in which Stoker wrote the story that made my skin crawl and my mind ache like no other book had done before or has done since.
Perhaps it took a 19th century author's perceptions of good and evil, or it might have been the style, a mix of the old naturalism and the new realism, that allowed the evil incarnate of Dracula to come to life. I don't think it could have been the actual story, because I've read and seen variations on the story in a number of different guises, and only the silent movie version, Nosferatu, came close to capturing what Stoker managed, so it had to have been in the telling.
In the 21st century, vampires and other legions of the undead have taken to popping up all over the place. Zombies have shuffled off their mortal coil as either attempts at social commentary/horror with it being a disease or virus run amok in our plague-ridden society, or as outrageous comedy/satire where the characters don't notice anything wrong until the undead try to use them for appetizers. But it's the old standby, the vampire, who has made his mark on popular culture thanks to the long running television show Buffy The Vampire Slayer based loosely on the movie of the same name, and of course Anne Rice's Interview With A Vampire books and movie.
No matter what we think of any of the present incarnations of Bram Stoker's famous blood sucker, there can be no denying that the fiend from the pits of hell is here to stay in all his glory. While I must admit to having a rather jaundiced view of most of the modern versions - save Christopher Moore's Blood Sucking Fiends and its sequel You Suck - there was something about the new book by John Marks, Fangland, published by Penguin Canada, that caught my attention and piqued my interest.
Article comments