Creature Double Feature: Vampires and 2nd Person Perspectives
How gothic novels like Christopher Buehlman's The Lesser Dead and Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire utilize interesting perspectives like Dracula to create suspense without delving into horror.
The last double feature was on “folklore,” this one is on “vampires.” In a previous article, I discussed the difficulties of pinning down what exactly separates works in the horror genre from things like gothic or splatterpunk. Despite Dracula’s role in the classic Universal Monster horror films, I would contend that vampires are gothic creatures first and foremost. There are notable exceptions: Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot undeniably belongs in the horror genre, as does the 2024 movie Nosferatu. Today, I want to explore where and why vampires exist on this dividing line, and I intend to do so by looking at two novels that utilize elements from both genres to tell their stories.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula tells its story through the format of an epistolary novel. The Lesser Dead is written in this weird 2nd person narrative, and Interview With the Vampire is driven by an interview. All of these elements generate suspense in different ways. Stoker presents the facts of the narrative through sequential journal entries, a few newspaper clippings and a transcript of a phonograph recording, giving the reader the same sensation as doing real research on the events as they unfold. Stoker writes at the beginning that he has abridged the materials so as best to relate the details of the story while omitting the mundanities, which allows it to feel like a coherent story without dragging on. Buehlman’s narrator writes in this very put-on New York cant that almost verges on sounding fake at times. Rice combines the best of both of these devices; Louis de Pointe du Lac uses archaicisms, while the interviewer gives off a very casual affect, and interrupts the narrative at points to ask personal questions and smoke, which sells both characters’ personalities. In the former case, the opening lines signify that the reader finds themselves in medias res pertaining to the setup of the conversation about whether the interviewer (called “the boy” in this novel, but later in the series he is named Daniel Molloy) is equipped to handle recording so many years of de Pointe du Lac’s life. This gives the reader the sensation that they are peeking in through a crack in a door to learn about de Pointe du Lac’s tale.
Dracula has never been faithfully adapted into a movie. Usually the directors syncretize characters, or leave out details to fit the runtime, or modernize certain aspects of the plot to engage modern viewers. Even if they kept all these attributes consistent, how could they recreate the feeling of pouring through someone else’s journals? The same goes for Interview With the Vampire. I’ve seen the 1994 adaptation starring Tom Cruise, but it fails to give this same sensation. Molloy is shown interviewing de Pointe du Lac at different points in the film, but the main narrative is told through flashback scenes that make up the majority of the runtime. If they had shot it like My Dinner With Andre it would have been more faithful but critically panned. That is to say that this is an understandable tradeoff, but it creates a different sensation. Nearly every line of the novel is set inside a set of quotation marks, and the ones that aren’t concern the interviewer and his subject. The titular interview is the focus of the plot, and not a vehicle to justify the existence of the story. The Lesser Dead does something similar, but I don’t think it’s possible to talk about it without spoiling the big twist at the end, so I will be presenting the story told by our unreliable narrator as true. To be honest it doesn’t change much in regards to the assessment of the themes, just know that there’s another layer of connection to epistolary novels and interesting narrative perspectives in vampire novels that I cannot talk about. The book charmed me too much to spoil it.
Anne Rice is considered by many to be a romance novelist first and foremost, and for good reason. This is a gothic vampire novel, but many actions in the story are thinly-veiled metaphors for sex. Lestat, the head vampire of New Orleans, treats turning a human like the defloration of a virgin. By-and-large he views humanity like an incel views women; it is a scourge on the planet that he insists he cares nothing for while also taking great pleasure in abusing them. He treats the hunt like an act of intimacy between two vampires, and even though he may subsist off less sentient creatures, he receives hedonic pleasure from taking life.There’s a mechanical element to the way he does the deed; much in the same way that there’s a difference between taking the time to marinate and roast a nice cut of steak, and boiling a pound of ground beef, Lestat goes through the motions of consumption to fill a hole. The reasons behind this dispassion come from a disdain from humanity brought on by his father’s disregard for the humanities, alluded to in his dying wishes for his son’s forgiveness. Vampires often get depicted as viewing themselves as superior to human beings, but Lestat’s particular contempt seems to have existed long before his transformation.
Louis, on the other hand, has all the composure of a newborn fawn. He stumbles through the world amazed by the new sensations brought on by his vampirism, and he finds a great deal of sympathy for humanity in his non-beating heart. He feeds on lesser beings like mice and rats to slake his thirst in order to avoid ending a sentient life. Louis is disgusted by Lestat’s callous rage, and repeatedly threatens to leave him to enjoy his immortality alone. Eventually his hesitance to act on his cravings leaves him in a position where he must take the life of a 5 year-old child or perish, and his hunger makes the decision for him. Lestat turns the girl, named Claudia, in order to continue to take advantage of Louis’s sympathy and avoid being alone.
Given that Claudia is cursed to perpetually remain 5 years old, she keeps the physical attributes of someone with Louis’ pathetic human emotions, while Lestat trains her to shun these feelings and desire killing. Even as they attempt to kill Lestat for being too controlling and flee New Orleans, this dichotomy strains Claudia’s relationship with Louis. She still wants to feed, but her diminutive stature makes hunting alone a difficulty and Louis refuses to go out with her. Inspired by these two factors and a further desire to learn more about their own kind, they travel to Europe in search of other vampires.
Where Interview With The Vampire was about the internal struggle of one nonconformist vampire to resist the urge to reject his humanity, The Lesser Dead has a group of vampires struggle to enforce their social mores on a group of nonconformists that jeopardize their existence. The character who acts as our narrator, Joey Peacock, is a half-Jewish vampire stuck in his teens, having been turned sometime in the ‘30s. The story he wishes to tell concerns the summer of 1978, when he discovered a band of vampire children in the subways of New York City. The vampires of this era have a very rigid social hierarchy. The one that Joey belongs to forbids members of the in-group from converting regular humans without the leader’s consent (at least, without risking a schism), and also forbids the taking of human life. The children have survived as street urchins for an indeterminate period of time, but their continued independence risks exposing the existence of vampires to the public. Therefore, Joey’s vampire faction must deliberate over what to do with these children, not only between themselves but with the adjoining neighborhoods. Some want to take them in, others want to expose them to sunlight and be rid of them, and others still are content to let them go wild on crime-ridden neighborhoods where their actions might go unnoticed anyway.
The orphans have a very Lord of the Flies quality to them, as if the children on the island were immortal and lived long enough to develop a more consistent, if still barbaric, social dynamic. A leader emerges once we get more clarity on the deal with their situation, but their collective hunger is their motivating drive, and the rate at which they feed doesn’t leave much time for a more complex hierarchy. In this way they contrast nicely with Joey’s group. Many members of his community share individual qualities with the orphans as a collective: Margaret has their ruthlessness, Billy Bang has their carefree attitude, and Cvetko is incredibly sympathetic and charming. Had any of them individually encountered the children, who’s to say that they’d be in conflict, rather than adopting the children’s law-of-the-jungle attitude?
Rice deals with the question of vampiric culture across different lands as well. Louis and Claudia see savage and solitary vampires in Eastern Europe, while those in Paris flaunt their status in larger groups as part of the public-facing entertainment industry. From this work alone we cannot glean the wider culture of how they generally behave in America because Lestat keeps his brood under his thumb. If the movie Queen of the Damned is anything like the book series, then London seems to be the major social hub, and all the vampires regardless of their origin at least adhere to keeping their existence secret. They have enough contact with each other to organize an effort to put an end to Lestat’s showboating. I’m sure these ideas are expanded on further in the series as well.
If one stripped a summary of these novels down to their most barebones elements, like “a family must flee from New Orleans to France to escape being charged for the murder they committed” or “a community must decide what to do with the strange orphans they found on their doorstep,” they would expect to find these descriptions to match a lost work of Wilde or Dickens or one of the Brontës before they wouldStephen King or Clive Barker. Even so, I think that most people would still associate vampires with the genre of horror first and foremost. I’m not under the impression that one cannot write a horror novel about vampires, but in the same way that aliens are primarily a hallmark of the sci-fi genre that authors write horror stories about, I think we should hold vampires to be associated primarily with the gothic genre. I know that this fight is one that few other people will ever care about, but I think words ought to have meaning, and these definitions are important to setting readers’ expectations for what they’re getting into.
Do I have ulterior motives? Yes, of course. I wanted to read something else by Buehlman to see how his other writing stood up against Between Two Fires, and Anne Rice also having a vampire series helped me pick this over The Blacktongue Thief, which I’ve also seen praised. I think out of the two I still prefer Between Two Fires because I find the imagery more interesting, but the prose is about equally as interesting. Maybe if I reread this to see how well telegraphed the twist ending actually is, it might change my assessment, but I still thought it was good. As for Anne Rice, I think Interview With The Vampire was significantly more interesting than Ramses the Damned. Both dealt with the problems of immortality in interesting ways, but Ramses felt a little too focused on action and romance to get deep into the plot. Interview balances this much better and also gives the reader more to think about in terms of the characters’ relationships. Louis and Claudia have this weird romance going on where he speaks about this child both as his daughter and tantamount to his lover in a way that ought to make the reader feel uncomfortable. The age gap between Julie and Ramses is technically much wider, but there’s much less of a focus on whether that’s weird or not. From what I remember Ramses just has innate sexual charisma because of his never-ending youthful vigor and his appearance means most people just gloss over this. If I had to pick a vampire novel between these two to recommend, Rice does more with the implications of immortality than Buehlman, so she wins out. It’s a little bit like comparing Coppola’s Dracula to Blade. The settings of New Orleans and Paris are much more interesting than New York City as well. It’s a pity because most of the subterranean environments are good but he just doesn’t do enough with the city proper. If you’re looking for some pulp-y vampire action then go for The Lesser Dead, but Interview is just all-around more interesting.