via Tom Alderman at Huffington Post
If fiction often reflects a nation’s culture, why, oh-why-oh, do we have so many vampires, in so many places, sucking up so many entertainment dollars with such blazing success today? Feature writers tend to tie the current blood draining craze to two wars, terrorism and financial hard times.
“There’s much more narrative opportunities if vampires can be evil monsters as well as romantic heroes,” he continues. Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire was the pivot point. Thompson calls it, “ground zero of the modern iteration of the vampire and expands the mythology into its modern iteration.” Before Rice, the vampire story was a costume drama with limited literary scope. Rice, followed-up by Stephanie Meyer, “…modernized and domesticated the vampire, ripping away the traditional narrative from the black-caped, thickly Euro-accented, terror guy you run from, to the handsome, seductive bad-boy next door you want to sleep with,” says Thompson.
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Vampires have had times of being in vogue before, but nothing like they are now. They really have exploded, and it used to be really was hard to find good vampire lit before now.
What do you think of the explosion in popularity? What book made you interested in vampires?
