Vampires

I realize I'm posting this something like a day or two before the new Twilight movie comes out.

For the record, although I'm fairly certain anyone who frequents this blog would be able to guess this on their own, but the whole Twilight phenomena? A love triangle between a teenager, a vampire, and a werewolf? Fine. Whatever. Let the story be the story. There are so many books in the world that the laws of probability dictate that was going to happen sooner or later. And if people like reading the books? Great. Hard to complain about that. But to become so culturally defining that this stuff makes it into Burger King cups? I'm skeptical. And no -- I haven't read any of the books. But. I have seen several of my students reading them, and there have been a few times I've picked up a copy from one of their desks while they weren't in the room and browsed a few pages. I'm going to leave it at this: I've done enough random sampling of the "saga" (Really? It merits being referred to as a saga?) to know they aren't for me. So why bother with the movies? Chances are pretty good the author didn't write these stories with someone like me in mind as her target audience, so I think I can guess the same case could be made for the movies.

I read a different vampire book a few years ago, a cinder block of a novel called "The Historian." I call it a cinder block for two reasons: (1) It was so long and heavy that it's size approximated that of an actual cinder block, and (2) the writing was kind of heavy. I have only abandoned maybe four or five books in my adult life, and this was one of them. That thing actually could have benefited from some teenagers taking themselves way too seriously.

When it comes to vampires, well, of course it all began with Bram Stoker's "Dracula." Which I will never read because it's a classic, and the time I spent earning my English minor and the books I was force-fed during this time (and the papers I had to write about them) has completely beaten away any inclination I will ever have to read any book considered a classic for the rest of my life. Seriously. I had to take a class called "Survey of 18th Century British Literature - Part 2." Because there was so much boring it couldn't all be contained in just one class.

Anyway. So Dracula is never going to pop up on my radar, although I did kind of like the freaky Gary Oldman version of it at the movies not long ago. And as far as Twilight goes -- come on. Teenagers. Vampires. Werewolves. Supernatural wars. It was much better the first time, when it was really funny and called BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. That show was on for something like six of seven years, and it was hilarious.

So if you want to talk vampire books -- to say nothing of the TV shows and movies, and please, other than Buffy, let's say nothing about them -- you're really left with "Salem's Lot." When it comes to scary, old school Uncle Stevie knows what he's doing better than anyone.

BUT. Believe it or not, there is a brand new, and I mean so brand new it was only released this month, vampire book out. And it is truly, truly amazing. It's called "The Passage," by Justin Cronin, an award-winning author of literary fiction and an English professor, who is easily the best writer I've come across in many years. He's one of those guys who writes so fluidly and perfectly that several times I've pulled myself out of the story to re-read how crafted a paragraph, or a sentence, or even just a metaphor, was, and then I sit there and shake my head and wonder how he can do that and do it so often.

I read an anecdote he told about "The Passage" in some interview before the release date. He said that his daughter once commented that the other books he had written were probably boring, and he should write a book about a girl who saves the world. Which he said he went and did. Now, I think that's going to be a conditional saving the world thing, because the world as we know it pretty much came to an end within the first 200 pages, and in a spectacular fashion. If you ever read Stephen King's "The Stand," you were probably creeped out by how plausible the end of the world seemed. Same deal here, in many ways. But instead of camps of good vs. evil, you see the population break down into surviving humans and the virals hunting them. The virals are essentially the vampires here and are even apologetically referred to as such earlier in the book, though instead of walking around in satin capes or moping around in fashionably distressed clothing while listening to Death Cab for Cutie and The Bravery, these things are frighteningly animalistic. And while I'm only about halfway through the book at this point, I can say the few hints given about this girl who saves the world have been tantalizingly few and unpredictable. It's been a long time since I've had a crush on a book like I do on this one. If you like reading scary, or are ready for a more grown-up vampire story, go get this one. Walk into Borders, and I'm fairly sure you'll see a huge display set up right by the entrance. This dude can WRITE.

So now I'm wondering why I'm still here writing about this thing instead of actually reading more of it... excuse me.....