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On the phone with my friend A. this evening, from Minneapolis. Trying to figure out what vampire books would be appropriate to teenagers. This is a harder question than it should be, because my partner and I and all of my friends read many "inappropriate" books as teenagers. I don't recall being interested in "young adult" fiction at all. I read kids fantasy, and kids chapter books like Laura Ingalls Wilder, and then I started reading adult fantasy and biographies and folklore. Young adult books all seemed to deal with situations very remote from my life. How interesting could dating teenage boys (bleh) be compared to the great love of my heroes, Aragorn and Arwen?
The problem is, the whole vampire mythos is about two things: sex and death. And what two things do we feel a huge cultural need to protect children from? Sex and death. The horror books that play the vampire mythology straight up and are full of death don't appeal to me. And I wouldn't want young kids reading 'em because I think that stuff is scarring and gives you nightmares. But that's just me. On the other hand, most of the more lighthearted takes on the vampire mythos are fairly sexual. Which I don't mind recommending to teens if they look fairly mature and it's not disgustingly explicit. But, but, but. Recommending a book to someone standing right in front of you who you can evaluate is different than handing a book to someone through an intermediary like a parent. Or a webpage.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a great show because it used metaphorical language really richly to talk about regular human and high school stuff. It's not just that no one notices you because you're lame - you've actually become invisible because of it! It's not just that teenagers form mean cliques and pick on each other - they've been possessed by hyena-spirits!
I think personally that the whole vampire mythos became so attractive to readers in roughly my generation because it spoke to the deepseated fear that AIDS gave us that sex and death were intrinsically tied. That being open to sexual relationships meant running the risk of death. I know that some erotica editors (Susie Bright?) noted that AIDS stuff coincided with an increase of blood-play showing up in erotica submissions.
Even going back as far as Dracula, the story has always been about social and sexual boundaries and how desire transgresses them and how this threatens the social fabric. This is a story with a lot of meaning for some teenagers, as they struggle to reconcile their private sexual feelings with the family and school world they've always known. These feelings seem dark, scary, and complex to a lot of people. But it's a threatening narrative because it's transgressive. So once you're on the other side of that experience, how comfortable are you talking about it to people still going throug it?
I dunno, that's probably way too much philosophizing to pour over books like, umm, well, "Sex and the Single Vampire" or "Seize the Night". That was always the somewhat laughable side of Anne Rice - that she took all that psychological stuff so seriously, and so did her characters. Gave the whole thing the feeling of a meta-narrative. Now I'm meta-narrating myself. Bleh. G'night.
The problem is, the whole vampire mythos is about two things: sex and death. And what two things do we feel a huge cultural need to protect children from? Sex and death. The horror books that play the vampire mythology straight up and are full of death don't appeal to me. And I wouldn't want young kids reading 'em because I think that stuff is scarring and gives you nightmares. But that's just me. On the other hand, most of the more lighthearted takes on the vampire mythos are fairly sexual. Which I don't mind recommending to teens if they look fairly mature and it's not disgustingly explicit. But, but, but. Recommending a book to someone standing right in front of you who you can evaluate is different than handing a book to someone through an intermediary like a parent. Or a webpage.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a great show because it used metaphorical language really richly to talk about regular human and high school stuff. It's not just that no one notices you because you're lame - you've actually become invisible because of it! It's not just that teenagers form mean cliques and pick on each other - they've been possessed by hyena-spirits!
I think personally that the whole vampire mythos became so attractive to readers in roughly my generation because it spoke to the deepseated fear that AIDS gave us that sex and death were intrinsically tied. That being open to sexual relationships meant running the risk of death. I know that some erotica editors (Susie Bright?) noted that AIDS stuff coincided with an increase of blood-play showing up in erotica submissions.
Even going back as far as Dracula, the story has always been about social and sexual boundaries and how desire transgresses them and how this threatens the social fabric. This is a story with a lot of meaning for some teenagers, as they struggle to reconcile their private sexual feelings with the family and school world they've always known. These feelings seem dark, scary, and complex to a lot of people. But it's a threatening narrative because it's transgressive. So once you're on the other side of that experience, how comfortable are you talking about it to people still going throug it?
I dunno, that's probably way too much philosophizing to pour over books like, umm, well, "Sex and the Single Vampire" or "Seize the Night". That was always the somewhat laughable side of Anne Rice - that she took all that psychological stuff so seriously, and so did her characters. Gave the whole thing the feeling of a meta-narrative. Now I'm meta-narrating myself. Bleh. G'night.
