With the third year of the pandemic looming, David Moscrop went searching desperately for a hobby – a search that ended when he started looking at his bookshelves in a new way. This launches a new recurring column in which he pulls together reading lists built around specific themes and then drags them into the real world through food, drink, video games and film. For this spooky season, a certain bloodsucking creature has caught his attention.
Vampires drift in and out of cultural prominence, reflecting and shaping the time in which they feature, but they’re never too far beyond our consciousness. As an object of fear and fascination, the undead predators have been given literary treatment since the 18th century, long before the Irish novelist Bram Stoker guaranteed a long future for the undead with Dracula in 1897. Since then, countless iterations of the vampire story have been written, filmed, staged, animated, sketched, painted and played on console and computer.
October offers the cover of season as an opportunity to revisit the iconic lore of vampires. And a wide range of cultural output gives readers a chance to find their preferred manifestation. Still, there is no better place to start than Dracula. In his introduction to the Penguin edition (2003), Maurice Hindle finds the fabric of the book to be “anxiety-ridden.” Issues of gender and evil are prominent, reflecting a society processing its many hang-ups through its literature. Sexuality, too, pervades. As Hindle writes, “sex was the monster which troubled Stoker the most,” anticipating and perhaps suggesting future cultural treatments of vampires that would pick up on the motif – if not the Victorian hang-ups that accompanied earlier literary efforts.
Dracula, by Bram StokerSupplied
Written as a series of journal and diary entries, Dracula continues to read fresh, even if contemporary sensibilities process the sexuality and gothic atmosphere in different ways. Still, the visceral and psychological horror of the novel stands up across time. For instance, we read Harker’s account of his time trapped in Count Dracula’s castle, trying to escape, and realizing time is running out. “I know now the span of my life. Gold help me!” he laments, capturing an anxiety that exceeds the walls of that Transylvanian edifice. The pace and weight of that terror keep up throughout the novel and stay with the reader long after the final page has been turned.
Stoker did not invent vampires, whose stories existed long before him and his writing. For Dracula, he was himself influenced by fellow Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu, a pioneer of horror writing. Le Fanu’s 1872 serialized novella Carmilla precedes Dracula by the better part of three decades. It is also steeped in sexuality, particularly lesbianism. It tells the story of a family visited by a young woman vampire who seduces Laura, the narrator of the tale, as illness and death begin to creep throughout the forested region of Styria.
Carmilla, by Sheridan Le FanuSupplied
Carmilla is atmospheric but also a study of longing and repression. Thus we find Laura speaking of Carmilla, who has come to stay with her family, “Now the truth is, I felt rather unaccountably towards the beautiful stranger. I did feel, as she said, ‘drawn towards her,’ but there was also something of repulsion. In this ambiguous feeling, however, the sense of attraction immensely prevailed.” The psychological tension and pace of the novella is reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House – itself a gothic horror – as characters try to process the fantastic and grapple with the limits of empirical credulity. Reading Carmilla ahead of Dracula makes for a welcome tour of the Victorian era, with all its hang-ups, fascinations, fears and subtle resistances – or at least ambiguities.
Beyond the classics lies a range of recent and not-so-recent short stories, novellas, novels, comics and more, shaped by the long history of vampire folklore. In the gothic tradition, Mexican-Canadian novelist Silvia Moreno-Garcia offers Certain Dark Things (Tor Nightfire, 2021). The book has, she notes, become “alive again” after having been “quietly put in its coffin and packed away,” after going out of print in 2016. Moreno-Garcia calls the book a “neon-noir” that is “set in an alternate Mexico City.” In this world, vampires roam about in clans alongside humans, who have in recent decades caught on to their existence and set about controlling or eliminating them.
The novel tells the story of Domingo, a poor scavenger teen, who meets Atl, a young woman from a family gang of drug-runner vampires who is on the run from a rival clan seeking to kill her. Meanwhile, a local detective, Ana Aguirre, also takes up the trail as she tries to solve a related murder, which puts her at odds with the clan hunting Atl – and in grave danger. As the rival gang searches for Atl in Mexico City, Domingo and Atl play their own game of cat and mouse by way of a simmering love story.
Reminiscent of Twilight and heavy with youthful angst, Certain Dark Things is an early offering from a novelist whose later efforts, Mexican Gothic and The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, are more refined. The tale of Domingo, Atl and those drawn into their orbit is overstuffed with description and backstory of vampire history, physiology, nomenclature and mythology. Nonetheless, the book’s premise and setting – vampire clans behaving badly and battling out gang rivalries in a Mexico City capped with a dose of cyberpunk flair – makes it worth a read. It is tough to write a new and interesting variation on the vampire genre, but Moreno-Garcia did just that.
More scary fun to revamp your Halloween party
Television
Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire is back as AMC gives the story of vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac in early 20th century New Orleans a television revival. Nick Allen, critic and senior editor at RogerEbert.com, gets it right when he summarizes the effort as “a package that includes some cheesy writing and drawn-out storytelling” that “might still have enough positives for this series to leave its mark on the long legacy of Rice’s text.” It’s melodramatic and over the top, but that’s not unusual for the genre. It’s worth a try.
Sam Reid plays Lestat De Lioncourt in 'Interview with a Vampire'.Alfonso Bresciani/AMC via AP
Video gaming
The Castlevania video game series goes back to 1986′s eponymous title and features several sequels and spinoffs. In 2019, Konami released the Castlevania Anniversary Collection across consoles and on Steam. The compendium features eight entries in the platformer franchise, including the hit Super Castlevania IV. The series is worth revisiting – perhaps alongside Netflix’s acclaimed anime program based on the games.
Konami's Castlevania Anniversary Collection traces the origins of the historic vampire franchise. Included is a unique eBook with details provided by developers, artists and others inspired by the Castlevania legacy which sheds a fresh light into the world of Castlevania.Konami
Puzzles
The market is chock-full of vampire-themed diversions, but sometimes nothing beats an old-fashioned puzzle. Laurence King Publishing’s The World of Dracula, illustrated by Adam Simpson in vivid detail, depicts several scenes from Stoker’s novel. It comes with a helpful poster and a text by literature professor Roger Luckhurst explaining the scenes and characters featured in the puzzle. It pairs well with a vampire audiobook in the background if you’re the kind of puzzler who likes some company.
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