Margot Adler on Vampire Fiction

NPR correspondent and author Margot Adler read 75 vampire novels during a long nine months spent by the bedside of an ill loved one. After reading an account of this at NPR.ORG, I thought I’d speak with her a little bit about her experience. Happily, Adler obliged.
SUVUDU: I know that you’ve had a longstanding interest in imaginative literature, but what about horror specifically? Is this recent, or have you always had a taste for the darker stuff?
ADLER: I was never interested in horror, particularly. I have always been interested in the persecuted other, in the stranger in a strange land, in the person with certain abilities, like The X-Men, but who are feared, like telepaths, etc. So I started reading vampire novels because my husband was dying of cancer and I needed an escape, and I loved the fantasy of immortality; it seemed really relevant to my situation where I was facing death in a loved one. So I had read The Hunger and knew Whitley Strieber personally, and had seen the movie, and had read some Anne Rice in the past, but I had never really gotten into the genre, except I will say that I created several personal fantasies after seeing the movie version of The Hunger. Oddly, my mother took in a roommate in the 1960s, who was actor, but later ended up directing the broadway production of Dracula…but I wasn’t really taken with the idea of the vampire.
So last May, I was on a plane and bought the first Twilight book just to read for fun, and got kind of into it as a fantasy, just the way people do in fan fiction. I took the idea and mutated it and created my own characters. At one point I took one of the Cullens who doesn’t have a huge part, Alice, and created a fantasy based on her. At another point I created some fantasies based on a version where one of the Cullen types becomes an environmental activist, weird I know. Anyway, after that I was also obsessed with True Blood, and the Sookie Stackhouse novels, and the Tanya Huff novels; then I read Whitley’s two subsequent vampire novels that most people don’t know about, which was The Last Vampire and Lilith’s Dream. Whitley told me to run, not walk, to find Michael Talbot’s The Delicate Dependency, he said many consider one of the best vampire novels every written, so I got a used copy.
I was also becoming interested in the teen vampire phenomenon, so I found myself very intrigued by the House of Night novels, which are clearly influenced by Wicca and Goddess spirituality, although the authors won’t say that. I was fascinated by this notion of a Hogwarts for vamps, as in the House of Night and the Vampire Academy Novels.
Then I started looking for what would be real literature in the genre and was amazed by The Vampire Tapestry, the Susan Hubbard novels, on and on, and one thing just led to another.
I have never had a taste for the darker stuff. I have been recently fascinated by Laurell K. Hamilton, but it is too porn-like for me, and after reading a bunch, I just had to quit. Similarly I confess there is a bit too much kinky stuff for my taste in the HBO True Blood series; I like the relationships more than the fringe stuff, the interactions between Sookie and the vamps and Sam and so forth. I hated Maryanne. I couldn’t wait until they killed her off.

SUVUDU: I know that you must have come across some recurring situations in these books. Was the repetition comforting or irritating? Are there any in particular that stood out?
ADLER: I don’t know about recurring situations. But as I said in my piece I am fascinated by the reluctant vamps, the Bill Comptons, the Mick St John’s, Stafan, Edward Cullen on and on and on. I think they say something very interesting about our time.
SUVUDU: Some readers may know you for your seminal book on paganism in America: Drawing Down the Moon. Any thoughts on writing a book about people who live the vampire lifestyle, or about vampire fandom in general?
ADLER: I haven’t really gotten into the people who are into the vampire lifestyle, and several people, including horror writers, have told me to be careful…not to get to involved, something about some book about a journalist who got killed or something.
SUVUDU: Did you find your perceptions of your everyday life colored in any way by the subject matter you were reading?
ADLER: When I was a teenager I spent hours in fantasy, something I stopped doing, creating as I told you, mutating characters from books into my own worlds and fantasies, and the illness of my husband made me do this again for the first time in years, so I am still finding myself doing it, does that mean I will write some vamp fiction ever? don’t know, or fan fiction? Don’t know.
SUVUDU: Say I’m new to vampire fiction, but I’d like to give it a try. What would you recommend?
ADLER: If you’re a teen and want something rather funny, Sucks to be Me is my absolute favorite. From a Goddess and Wiccan point of view, clearly the House of Night novels. From a literary point of view, probably The Historian, The Society of S, and A Delicate Dependency. On my list now are PN Elrod, I have six novels of hers that I haven’t even begun, and on the television side, I missed the whole Buffy phenomenon when it happened, so I am just beginning the second season and clearly have lots to go. Also I loved Moonlight. And am finding the BBC show Becoming Human quite intriguing. And I am always open to suggestions.
Well, Suvudu readers, Margot wants suggestions. Can you help? Go read her full list at NPR, and leave your recommendations here. I’ll start things off with a couple of my own suggestions: Charlie Huston’s Joe Pit Casebooks and Bob Fingerman’s Bottomfeeder. Now it’s your turn!