Paperbacks from Hell [N.F. - Literature, Art]

Rice’s vampire trilogy is transparently autobiographical, allowing her to work through death, guilt, fear, and insecurity, emerging at the end as a fabulous superstar. Similarly, her vampires didn’t bring stench and disease like their literary predecessors; they brought beauty and culture. They were romantic gods, and nothing as tacky as a cross or a stake through the heart could kill them. Only sunlight and fire were dramatic enough to take them down.

A Bloody Legacy

Anne Rice’s vampires marked a significant transition for horror heroes. Before, the protagonists of horror fiction were blue-collar guys: Vietnam vets and salt of the earth types who staked first and asked questions later (if at all). Rice’s vampires were cultured and elegant, powerful and refined, slim hipped and long haired and given to velvet cloaks.

And they loved to talk. Before Rice’s books, vampires didn’t have much to say beyond “slurp,” but her stories are told from the undead’s point of view, using the language of confessional magazines and talk therapy. Rice’s vampires chat about their victimization, alienation, loneliness and suffering, because by talking through their feelings they can come to terms with them, and by coming to terms with them they can conquer them. These vampires cannot be monstrous or “other” because we hear their voices, and nothing that speaks to us about heartbreak, or pretty clothes, can truly be alien.

But the difference between the minor success of Interview with a Vampire and the mega success of Lestat and Queen is hard to account for. Anne Rice didn’t change how she wrote about vampires between 1976 and 1988; something bigger was going on in society. In Dracula, Renfield proclaimed, “The blood is the life!” By the time Rice published Lestat, the equation was blood = death.

Rarely has a disease engendered such fear and loathing as HIV. The term AIDS was first used in 1982, and by 1985 hundreds of parents would pull their children out of school based on rumors that an infected student might attend. Politicians proclaimed that children could “catch” the infection from a sneeze or a water fountain. Families abandoned the corpses of their dead sons in hospitals. The illness posited a future where human contact would be rare, bodily fluids poisonous.

Into the midst of this panic swooped Rice’s vampires, sexy and shimmering. Swapping blood was all the high they craved, and they humanized the notion of the other. Everything our parents were telling us was wrong: these vampires were scary but seductive, dangerous but delightful. Becoming one of them was described as receiving their “Dark Gift,” and the transfusion made them not only permanently stoned, but, as Lestat said, “more fully what we are.” You would become more fully yourself. And your real self was fabulous.

As vampires got chatty and romantic, even Dracula became a hero, both in John Shirley’s first novel and in Fred Saberhagen’s 10-volume series. Credit 119

Alienated, lonely, brooding, gothic, glam, good dancers—Rice’s vampires were everything we wanted to be. Other writers explored the possibilities, including Fred Saberhagen, who made the once-monstrous Dracula the hero of his novels. In John Shirley’s Dracula in Love (1979) that old Transylvania hillbilly was an inhuman fiend wielding a prehensile penis with glowing eyes, but he could still be tamed. In true sensitive-male fashion, he only had to meet the right lady. Halfway through the book, he falls in love with a woman who saves his life. At the climax it’s revealed that she is the living embodiment of Mother Earth and Dracula goes to her, crawling up inside her cavernous vagina while glowing like a 100-watt light bulb. Before Anne Rice, vampires killed humans. Now they got in touch with their sensitive sides while muffin-spelunking inside of them. They aren’t predators, they are, literally, a part of us.

The old-fashioned Vietnam vet, plus ’Salem’s Lot, still couldn’t create a formula capable of defeating emo vampires. Credit 120

Vampires in modern horror fiction became a powerful metaphor for our attitudes toward outsiders and the AIDS epidemic—except for Nightblood (1990), which was for people who thought ’Salem’s Lot needed more machine guns. Its protagonist, Chris Stiles, is a Vietnam vet and the ultimate divorced dad, constantly disappearing at crucial moments, leaving his woman and adopted children in peril, then reappearing at the last second with his silenced Uzi to save the day. Nightblood is so hardcore, you grow hair on your palms as you read. And it ends the only way possible: by giving Stiles a leather trench coat and a katana and reassuring us that he will continue to kill vampires forever.