Three Vampire Novels: Dracula, Sunshine, and Twilight
April 20th, 2009“What has become clearer and clearer…is that the novel’s power has its source in the sexual implications of the blood exchange between the vampire and his victims. Those blood exhanges and the extraordinary eroticism that comes off the pages on which they are described are what make Dracula such an amazing book.”
Normally my eyes start glazing over when literary types start writing like this, but I’m thinking this time the author is spot-on. I also think those same sexual implications are what drive the other two, much more recent novels. Nothing ever really happens, but one keeps waiting with a fascination that is at times horrified, at times delighted- exactly the way Jonathan Harker awaited the touch of Dracula’s female vampire friends.
Should anyone be alarmed at the speed with which you have left the “City of God” and are careening toward the flames of hell?
Come on…this was a much more interesting post than CG!
Seriously, I believe that the author of Twilight is a graduate of Brigham Young University, along with a couple other of well-known contemporary authors. That alone intrigues me enough to pay attention to what they write.
Beyond that, Twilight is something of a cultural phenomenon among females. A good chunk of my motivations were similar to those that brought me to see HM. Sunshine had more to do with the author, and Dracula was a natural outgrowth- I wanted to see the roots that led to two similar, yet very different books.
My current opinion is that this stuff is ok in small doses. I am thinking of Ecclesiastes and all the things that Solomon did, his mind “still guiding [him] with wisdom”. But then, I have always thought of that verse as one of the most arrogant sounding verses in the Bible.
How about this for another chunk of motivations: I crave stories far more than I crave chocolate. Reading them in books is far less risky than making them up in my head.
Finally, I think that all of what I have written regarding my motivations is all true, yet all of it is probably not all of the truth. If it is so hard to untangle a human being’s motivations for such a simple act, no wonder it is so hard for theologians to figure out how to describe something like God’s will.
You are being entirely too open with your readership and they may not be able to handle it.