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ninety6tearsOne of these days I'm gonna figure out how to write short reviews, but it's not today. This post concerns the book, not the movie. I have yet to see the film but from what I've read the two are so drastically different that if you've only seen the movie and want to read the book you should be advised to avoid spoilers (and vice versa). But there are no big spoilers here.
I have been noticing and resenting the common attitude among media consumers that one of the biggest crimes a story can commit is "taking itself too seriously." I can hardly claim not to have ever said this, but I think it's a lazy way to dismiss the quality of something. This type of preference I'm sure partly makes The Avengers the most popular of the Marvel films because it can't go three minutes without trying to make us laugh (at least it succeeds very well at doing so), but it makes me feel increasingly like I'm trying to watch a movie in a classroom where there's always that one guy who can't let a dramatic moment go without making some crack about it.
Don't get me wrong: Finding unexpected or unintentional humor in something is a great thing. I've had readers of my own writing say they were amused in places where I hadn't really intended it to be funny, but it didn't bother me that people came away with something I didn't put into it. It's the implication that certain topics or genres don't merit much drama that has a feel of laughing at the material rather than with it. It projects one's own inability to be invested in the story (because of its failures or their own preferences or a low amount of sympathy for fictional people or for whatever reason) as this unacceptability for anything to be unusual without automatically being comical. What I would rather people be praising about stories that "don't take themselves too seriously" is instead that they manage some levity without compromising our compassion for the characters. There are some humorous moments in Seth Grahame-Smith's Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter and it flirts well with the expectations we bring to a vampire story, but the first thing you need to know is that it's not a parody. It is Abe Lincoln's heroic and tragic life, played straight, with vampires on the side. And I don't want to build it up, dammit, but I was not prepared for good it is.
I grew up in Illinois and fairly close to Springfield, so my childhood got served its local dose of Lincoln history, but I have only so much idea what his personality was supposedly like. Grahame-Smith's portrayal made him very likable, with a surprisingly gentle disposition I imagine is true to life (It's known he was an exceptionally affectionate father, especially for his time), and his secret nature as a vampire hunter is also virtuous but far more angst-ridden and reckless. Some people are fairly offended that the motives behind his anti-slavery politics were played around with, but I've grown cynical of how much the school book version of abolitionist Abe is true and if he cared nearly as much about freeing slaves as he did about unifying the nation, and I honestly was convinced that this Abe Lincoln was devoted to human rights more than I am with the actual historical figure. :/
My favorite of the novel's stronger points is the longstanding rapport between Abe and Henry Sturges. Henry's place in Abraham's life is strained, given that his mentoring is a ubiquitous counterpoint to the beloved family Abe eventually attempts to favor over the need to extinguish supernatural evil, but it's more than that; Henry doesn't appear half as often as his brief letters do but the intimate companionship between the two is so subtly and poignantly drawn in a way that makes him seem like the only reliable constant for forty years of Lincoln's life. Sturges, by the way, is a vampire; the bromance seems to be wrought with a minor chord even at their warmest times.
There could have been a bit more action, but that may only be a disappointment because what action there was is so deftly written. I often feel mentally out-of-step when reading rather than watching fights, but here the blood baths were easy to visualize. Grahame-Smith's vampires are, I think, pretty unique; capable of looking normal and being out in the sunlight with only discomfort, but possessing a true form that I pictured as some kind of H.R. Gigeresque humanoid piranha. One scene describes their strength as being so dangerous that a human can get mortally chopped up just by being too close to two of them fighting each other. My biggest complaint worth mentioning is the weakness of the explanation given for Henry never committing to being a hunter himself. Something is off when it actually feels like a plot hole for two of the main protagonists to be less of a team than they could be.
The book being a mishmash of history and horror without accuracy or much action, some might think this novel begs too much of a question of just who it was written for, but illogically enough I think that's kind of the point. Part of the author's job is to believe with enough of a pinch of insanity that the story they're telling did actually occur, and the novel is lovingly researched for the purpose of trying to trap us in it too. We're supposed to care simply because it happened, even though it didn't happen, and the verisimilitude will obviously vary from reader to reader. One of my family's unimpressive proximities to fame is that my great-great-grandmother on my mom's side once often played with Lincoln's children when her family lived close to the White House. There's a heartwarming detail about a day that Abe allows a gaggle of his children and their schoolmates to wrestle him to the floor of the oval office, and for me it was deliciously grim that this immediately precedes a pretty horrific event.
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I have been noticing and resenting the common attitude among media consumers that one of the biggest crimes a story can commit is "taking itself too seriously." I can hardly claim not to have ever said this, but I think it's a lazy way to dismiss the quality of something. This type of preference I'm sure partly makes The Avengers the most popular of the Marvel films because it can't go three minutes without trying to make us laugh (at least it succeeds very well at doing so), but it makes me feel increasingly like I'm trying to watch a movie in a classroom where there's always that one guy who can't let a dramatic moment go without making some crack about it.
Don't get me wrong: Finding unexpected or unintentional humor in something is a great thing. I've had readers of my own writing say they were amused in places where I hadn't really intended it to be funny, but it didn't bother me that people came away with something I didn't put into it. It's the implication that certain topics or genres don't merit much drama that has a feel of laughing at the material rather than with it. It projects one's own inability to be invested in the story (because of its failures or their own preferences or a low amount of sympathy for fictional people or for whatever reason) as this unacceptability for anything to be unusual without automatically being comical. What I would rather people be praising about stories that "don't take themselves too seriously" is instead that they manage some levity without compromising our compassion for the characters. There are some humorous moments in Seth Grahame-Smith's Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter and it flirts well with the expectations we bring to a vampire story, but the first thing you need to know is that it's not a parody. It is Abe Lincoln's heroic and tragic life, played straight, with vampires on the side. And I don't want to build it up, dammit, but I was not prepared for good it is.
I grew up in Illinois and fairly close to Springfield, so my childhood got served its local dose of Lincoln history, but I have only so much idea what his personality was supposedly like. Grahame-Smith's portrayal made him very likable, with a surprisingly gentle disposition I imagine is true to life (It's known he was an exceptionally affectionate father, especially for his time), and his secret nature as a vampire hunter is also virtuous but far more angst-ridden and reckless. Some people are fairly offended that the motives behind his anti-slavery politics were played around with, but I've grown cynical of how much the school book version of abolitionist Abe is true and if he cared nearly as much about freeing slaves as he did about unifying the nation, and I honestly was convinced that this Abe Lincoln was devoted to human rights more than I am with the actual historical figure. :/
My favorite of the novel's stronger points is the longstanding rapport between Abe and Henry Sturges. Henry's place in Abraham's life is strained, given that his mentoring is a ubiquitous counterpoint to the beloved family Abe eventually attempts to favor over the need to extinguish supernatural evil, but it's more than that; Henry doesn't appear half as often as his brief letters do but the intimate companionship between the two is so subtly and poignantly drawn in a way that makes him seem like the only reliable constant for forty years of Lincoln's life. Sturges, by the way, is a vampire; the bromance seems to be wrought with a minor chord even at their warmest times.
There could have been a bit more action, but that may only be a disappointment because what action there was is so deftly written. I often feel mentally out-of-step when reading rather than watching fights, but here the blood baths were easy to visualize. Grahame-Smith's vampires are, I think, pretty unique; capable of looking normal and being out in the sunlight with only discomfort, but possessing a true form that I pictured as some kind of H.R. Gigeresque humanoid piranha. One scene describes their strength as being so dangerous that a human can get mortally chopped up just by being too close to two of them fighting each other. My biggest complaint worth mentioning is the weakness of the explanation given for Henry never committing to being a hunter himself. Something is off when it actually feels like a plot hole for two of the main protagonists to be less of a team than they could be.
The book being a mishmash of history and horror without accuracy or much action, some might think this novel begs too much of a question of just who it was written for, but illogically enough I think that's kind of the point. Part of the author's job is to believe with enough of a pinch of insanity that the story they're telling did actually occur, and the novel is lovingly researched for the purpose of trying to trap us in it too. We're supposed to care simply because it happened, even though it didn't happen, and the verisimilitude will obviously vary from reader to reader. One of my family's unimpressive proximities to fame is that my great-great-grandmother on my mom's side once often played with Lincoln's children when her family lived close to the White House. There's a heartwarming detail about a day that Abe allows a gaggle of his children and their schoolmates to wrestle him to the floor of the oval office, and for me it was deliciously grim that this immediately precedes a pretty horrific event.
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