Review Reviewed

Andrew's awesome review of Mark Collins Jenkins' Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend (2010) makes some very valid points about my own take on the book:

Friend of the blog, Anthony Hogg, has mentioned this book at his blog and, whilst his opinion of it improved, at first he lamented the fact that the book seems to stroll through the same old areas of investigation. However, the difference between myself and Anthony is that my study of the genre has been more media orientated, whilst he has a strong background in examining the folklore/traditional aspects of the genre. As such I found the opening of the book to be a well written refresher on things I had read before and certainly a useful source for those starting their exploration of the myths behind the media.

I freely admit to being more into the folklore/historical angle of vampires. That's one of the reasons I get a big kick out of Niels' blog. Andrew's comment highlights the different approaches/levels of interest found in the field. In terms I vampirology, I've covered different approaches elsewhere.

The beauty of vampire study, is that they're so damn varied. As I've previously pointed out (byway of David Lavery) Buffy Studies, alone, has about fifty "disciplines, methods, and/or approaches". That's right: fifty. I can never get over that figure.

So, even though I'll occasionally lament that there just aren't enough books written on the historical/folkloric angle, I'll never say that they're the only angle that should be taken. We all have our own biases, after all. And the vampire, as a figure of study, exists beyond such a narrow template.

That said, I still stand by my comments on Jenkins' book. The majority of books on vampires take the expansive backdrop of the Vampire and paint on the same canvas. Yes, we Count Dracula was (partly) based on Vlad. Yeah, Polidori satirised Byron for The Vampyre. The Paole case kick-started interest in vampires in Western Europe? Ok, we got it. And gee whiz, aren't certain spirits, gods and monsters of other cultures awfully similar to vampires? Heard it before.

Give me something new. Something different. Discuss areas not usually covered by the multitude of other writers out there! That's why I find myself increasingly drawn to the obscure stuff.

When I pick up a book like Vampire Forensics, I expect it to do what it says on the tin: give me a detailed analysis of the vampire myth. Concentrate on the specific writings, places, belief systems where this manifested. I don't need a transcendent stroll through the mythologies and burial practices of other cultures. If I wanted that, I could read Summers. And have.

Give me vampires!

Keep in mind, I'm not saying Jenkins wrote a bad book. It's actually quite good in its own right. My frustration stems from being waylaid by its title. Maybe my bias is too strong. Regardless, I don't think there's much justification in giving such minor coverage to the actual vampire itself. And by "actual", yes, I mean the one of folklore and history. I know this flies in the face of the what-is-a-vampire question I left open-ended, but come on, give me a break.

Without the vampire of these dark regions, there would be none of the fictional literature and flicks lapped up by so many. There would be no vampire subculture. No fandom. Nothing. All I ask is that it be given a little more prominence; especially in a book examining "forensics". End rant.

Not Quite Dormant

Bruce A. McClelland, author of Slayers and Their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead (2006) is next in line for my Q & A series, so stay tuned for that.

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In the meantime, here's a little something I came across not long ago: a call for papers to an upcoming conference on vampires, called "Open Graves, Open Minds: Vampires and the Undead in Modern Culture":

The aim of the conference is to relate the undead in literature, art, and other media to questions concerning gender, technology, consumption, and social change. It will provide an interdisciplinary forum for the development of innovative and creative research and examine these creatures in all their various manifestations and cultural meaning.

It'll be held at the University of Hertfordshire, in the UK, on April 16-18.

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Yesterday, I finished reading Mark Collins Jenkins' Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2010), which I briefly discussed here.

With hindsight, I may have been a little hard on the book in my first assessment. For starters, I wasn't aware, at the time, that it had a notes section (277-287) to cover the source material of the chapters. This was because there are no footnotes throughout in the primary the text. I presume they weren't included to make the narrative flow more smoothly. But, of course, for the scholar, this can frustrating for cross-referencing purposes.

Interestingly, the coverage given to vampires proper, is relatively slim. The majority of the book seems to concern itself with funerary rites, burial practices and scraps of folklore from around the world, to give broader context for the vampire belief.

The range of sources (288-296) consulted for the book is fairly diverse and interesting, but also means that the book tends to lose sight of its vampire focus. I would've preferred the Slavic angle to be given much bigger scope than the treatment it got. For this aspect, I simply need to revert to the works of Perkowski, Barber and McClelland, which made the book a little redundant for me.

That's not to say it's not well-written, mind you. It certainly is. Collins has a rich prose and unites seemingly divergent threads under a single banner, but that doesn't cut it for me. Not when it comes to the undead. Especially with a book called Vampire Forensics.

Book Purchase Round-Up

Yesterday, two Amazon purchases arrived. Namely, Mark Collins Jenkins' Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2010) and Claude Lecouteux's The Secret History of Vampires: Their Multiple Forms and Hidden Purposes (Rochester, Vermont/Toronto, Canada: Inner Traditions, 2010).

I've had 'em both on my Wish List for a while. Michele's review of Jenkins' book partly spurred me into finally buying it, and when I saw Lecouteux's book as its Amazonian "Frequently Bought Together" item, I thought "Oh, hell yeah!" and went ahead with the purchase.

Now, I wasn't expecting too much out of Jenkins' book, after all, it looks a little too glossy, for something of a scholarly nature. Well, at least, its cover does.

I thought it was gonna be a shiny, glossy thing, filled with lots of disturbing pics of dessicated corpses and whatnot, in light of its National Geographic pedigree. What it lacked in content, it'd make up for in visual "appeal".

Well, dear reader, I can tell you that it has bugger all pictures and I'm not overly thrilled about the content thus far, either. As of this writing, I'm up to page 76 and I haven't encountered much that I wouldn't find in other mainstream, run-of-the-mill works on the subject. It's the usual stroll through the same old, same old vampire stuff you've encountered a million times before (Vlad Ţepeş, Count Dracula, Arnold Paole, Polidori's "The Vampyre"), told in a narrative style.

At most, I'd say this book would be a passable, cursory introduction into the genre. It's also a pretty breezy read, so you'll work your way through it, quickly enough. But, from my reading thus far, there are waaay better books out there. Unless it turns a sharp corner into some meaty, scholarly stuff, can't say I'd really recommend this one.

I haven't started on Lecouteux's book, yet, but Niels' post on the possible inaccuracies of its translation, has given me cause for concern. I did point out, however, that he was working off a German translation of the original French book. As I mentioned, I actually own a copy of the original French version, but since I can't speak the language, I can hardly make comparisons of my own, heh heh.

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Today, I received Hagen Schaub's Blutspuren: Die Geschichte der Vampire (Graz: Leykam, 2008) in the post. I bought it from eBay after re-reading Niels' appraisal of it.

Again, I can't comment too much on its content, as I don't know the language, but it's surprising to see that a book covering the "magia posthuma" era, would only have fleeting mentions of Peter Plogojowitz (90) and Arnold Paole (91).

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Last Tuesday, I received another eBay purchase, that is, Tim Kane's The Changing Vampire of Film and Television: A Critical Study of the Growth of a Genre (Jefferson, North Carolina/London: McFarland & Comany, Inc., Publishers, 2006).

This one turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Its scope is admittedly narrow, as it focuses on the supernatural vampire variant in movies and only covers about 19 of 'em in total, but its application of genre "semantics" and "syntax" in correspondence with the evolution of the vampire's appearance, attributes and wards, in these mediums, is quite a fascinating concept.

Kane divides these films into eras: the Malignant Cycle (1931-1948), the Erotic Cycle (1957-1985) and the Sympathetic Cycle (1987- ). He even includes a Semantic-Syntactic Timeline (192-218), which is to die for.

Sure, a lot of what Kane covers has been said before, but never has it been boiled down, taken apart and articulated so well. Definitely recommended.