Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
by Seth Grahame-Smith
Did I really just read this oh God and did I really just dislike it even though the Elizabethan stuff I write is exactly like this?
Please help
First:
The slavery thing.
So according to this book, when Abe said, "A house divided cannot stand," he was actually talking about vampires. I know we're not supposed to take this novel seriously, but is the author really going to pin the entire "slavery" thing on vampires? Yes.
People have defended this in all sorts of ways. Most just say, "don't take it seriously; he's being a provocateur, as usual". But more curiously, Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer claims replacing human slaveholders with vampires (effectively clearing them of guilt) is justifiable. "Vampirism is a metaphor for slavery...He had a metaphorical objective."
But professional though Mr. Holzer is, I really can't agree with him. This book didn't use vampires as a metaphor for slavery. This book used slavery as an excuse for vampires.
This might have been moderated by the inclusion of strong black main characters, or even supporting characters, or even like cameo appearances from a black person, or even like a black person that has like a line of dialogue maybe? The only quote from a black person in theENTIRETY of the book ENITRETY of the book except for the epilogue comes from Mary Todd's dressmaker Elizabeth Keckley's memoirs, and it has nothing to do with the plot. It only serves as embellishment for Lincoln's character development after his son Willie dies of a vampire. "Genius and greatness, weeping over love's idol lost" (284).(worth checking out because she's a beautiful writer too. She's also a character in Stephen Spielberg's Lincoln )
I couldn't find an overall word count for the book, but I counted the words on a random page (280) and multiplied by 336 to get a rough estimate. I got 94,080 words, and subtracted the 4,080 just to be conservative (allowing for shorter pages when chapters ended and began, white space, etc.) If there were roughly 90,000 words in the book, andonlyeight 135 (I forgot the MLK epilogue) are spoken by a black person, that's 0.0008%. .0016%
As it stands, there are no black characters in 335 pages of a novel about the Civil War. On page 335, MLK comes in, but apparently his "I Have a Dream" speech is also about vampires (And I guess that brings it up to .0016%). Go figure. You know, if you're going to coopt and twist human rights movements into your vampire mythos, how about notpretty much only doing that to African American history?
It's actually pretty bad, the more I think about it. At least the movie version decided to include Will Johnson, Abe's valet. He came across as a bit of a token, but they had him landing some pretty sick kills, taking out vampires, and impacting the plot. They also included Harriet Tubman, which is a long story.
A still from the movie, because this one awesome Will Johnson fanart just wouldn't load
The movie version did a much better job of presenting black characters who actually qualified as characters. So that makes me wonder why the book could not. These people - Will Johnson and Elizabeth Keckley, not to mention others, like Frederick Douglass - associated closely with Lincoln, and, in Douglass' case, upbraided him for his concessions to the South, racist policies, and overall thumb-twiddling in regards to equal rights. And Douglass, at least, is considered to be crucial not just to Lincoln's domestic life, but the US as a whole. So if the book includes all matter of white Union historical figures, from Stanton to Seward to Lincoln's bodyguards to McClellan to Salmon Chase to people who didn't even know Lincoln, like (view spoiler), why was absolutely no thought given to including anyone who wasn't white?
It's even worse because this is a horror novel, so black victims of slavery are used mainly as an excuse to amp up the body count. I want to phrase it with more kindness to Mr. Grahame-Smith (who probably didn't intend this, even though he should have known better), but the slaves in this book basically function as props. They are served at a banquet (114), and even play gospel music for Lincoln and Speed to kill vampires to (182). Urgh.
If you think that including minority characters is overblown, and amounts to the overly-sensitive fictional equivalent of affirmative action, let me pose it to you in a different light. Historical fiction books, even those about vampires, must be grounded in historical facts for them to be believable, no?Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter includes transcripts, speeches, statistics, diaries, poems, and tons of other details to make a reader believe "This is the 1860s." So where are the minority characters? In 1860, 14.1% of the United States population was African-American. So why are 0.000% of the book's characters? It's not just exclusive and whitewashed, it's the definition of historically inaccurate .
link to map
And even if the figures were different, and it would take historical liberties to incorporate non-white characters, what's the problem with that if YOUR BOOK INCLUDES VAMPIRES?! Vampires aren't considered historically improbable enough to omit, but people of color are?
The bottom line is, creating a historical world with diverse characters is not "revisionist history." The only "revisionist history" here is the one that portrays everyone as white, and operates on the assumption that only white people were capable of impacting history in the past (even when that history involves fucking vampires).
Anyway, the Rest of the Book:
Aside from the moral qualms of it all, the book was well-written and well-researched. Lincoln wasn't the most interesting of head-lopping assassins, but it's worth reading for the supporting characters. The greatest scenes of the book don't involve him at all, but there's an awesome battle with his friend, Joshua Speed, and a very compelling backstory on John Wilkes Booth. They would almost work better as short stories.
Lots of missed opportunities:
-Towards the Civil War section, Abe goes down on a mission to the South to assassinate none other than (view spoiler). When (view spoiler) sets the house on fire and steps out of the darkness with an army of vampires, I laughed so hard because I thought the climax of the book was going to be an epic battle royale between Abe, (view spoiler), and the vampires. I wanted it to happen so much. But the sequence only lasted a few pages, and then the rest of the book was bogged down in the realm of trying-to-be-plausible. At least the movie had the sense to end with a giant train on fire with explosions.
- William Seward is mentioned as being a vampire hunter. I wished we could have seen more of him kicking ass, especially since he survived the assassination attempt, but he only gets a few mentions.
- The Caning of Senator Charles Sumner You can't include a sequence depicting the brawl, where Brooks beat up Sumner on the Senate floor, in a camp horror novel and have it notbe about vampires.
Look at all that inherent violence! Look at it!
LOOK AT CHARLES SUMNER
DAMN
From a critical standpoint, I guess it's strange to say that a genre-spliced novel called Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunterwas just too confused about what it wanted to be. It's like Luke Skywalker agonizing over which genre is really its father. Camp thriller? Or cerebral period-accurate horror?
The author would probably say, "It's both!", but throughout the book, the two opposing sides played constant tug-of-war against each other. Some parts actually suspended my disbelief, and other parts shattered it. Often within a few pages, I was deeply absorbed, and then frustrated.
For example, the degree to which I was intrigued depended on how believable a phrase was in the context of the vampires. Some of it was beautiful and thought-provoking. On page 106, (view spoiler) describes to Abe the orgiastic future that must lie in wait for vampires:
This is good. It's eloquent (The "library/harem" part especially), and it's believable in the context of vampires. It relates directly to vampires, it's original, and it evokes this sort of dark, seductive vampire quintessence that readers love.
On the other hand, maybe you're supposed to laugh at all the cheesy parts. The idea of Abe Lincoln and (view spoiler)hunting vampires together is on crack and hilarious and so over-the-top it's glorious.
Basically, I'm trying to say that this book could have gone (tone-wise) full Anne Rice, or full Thankskilling . Both would have been satisfying in their own ways. But this book tries to be gore-splosions and laughs while also being immersive and deep, and it just can't sustain two moods simultaneously.
So, yeah. A house divided cannot stand applies well to slavery. Not vampires. But actually a pretty good description of this book.
Please help
First:
The slavery thing.
So according to this book, when Abe said, "A house divided cannot stand," he was actually talking about vampires. I know we're not supposed to take this novel seriously, but is the author really going to pin the entire "slavery" thing on vampires? Yes.
People have defended this in all sorts of ways. Most just say, "don't take it seriously; he's being a provocateur, as usual". But more curiously, Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer claims replacing human slaveholders with vampires (effectively clearing them of guilt) is justifiable. "Vampirism is a metaphor for slavery...He had a metaphorical objective."
But professional though Mr. Holzer is, I really can't agree with him. This book didn't use vampires as a metaphor for slavery. This book used slavery as an excuse for vampires.
This might have been moderated by the inclusion of strong black main characters, or even supporting characters, or even like cameo appearances from a black person, or even like a black person that has like a line of dialogue maybe? The only quote from a black person in the
I couldn't find an overall word count for the book, but I counted the words on a random page (280) and multiplied by 336 to get a rough estimate. I got 94,080 words, and subtracted the 4,080 just to be conservative (allowing for shorter pages when chapters ended and began, white space, etc.) If there were roughly 90,000 words in the book, andonly
As it stands, there are no black characters in 335 pages of a novel about the Civil War. On page 335, MLK comes in, but apparently his "I Have a Dream" speech is also about vampires (And I guess that brings it up to .0016%). Go figure. You know, if you're going to coopt and twist human rights movements into your vampire mythos, how about notpretty much only doing that to African American history?
It's actually pretty bad, the more I think about it. At least the movie version decided to include Will Johnson, Abe's valet. He came across as a bit of a token, but they had him landing some pretty sick kills, taking out vampires, and impacting the plot. They also included Harriet Tubman, which is a long story.
A still from the movie, because this one awesome Will Johnson fanart just wouldn't load
The movie version did a much better job of presenting black characters who actually qualified as characters. So that makes me wonder why the book could not. These people - Will Johnson and Elizabeth Keckley, not to mention others, like Frederick Douglass - associated closely with Lincoln, and, in Douglass' case, upbraided him for his concessions to the South, racist policies, and overall thumb-twiddling in regards to equal rights. And Douglass, at least, is considered to be crucial not just to Lincoln's domestic life, but the US as a whole. So if the book includes all matter of white Union historical figures, from Stanton to Seward to Lincoln's bodyguards to McClellan to Salmon Chase to people who didn't even know Lincoln, like (view spoiler), why was absolutely no thought given to including anyone who wasn't white?
It's even worse because this is a horror novel, so black victims of slavery are used mainly as an excuse to amp up the body count. I want to phrase it with more kindness to Mr. Grahame-Smith (who probably didn't intend this, even though he should have known better), but the slaves in this book basically function as props. They are served at a banquet (114), and even play gospel music for Lincoln and Speed to kill vampires to (182). Urgh.
If you think that including minority characters is overblown, and amounts to the overly-sensitive fictional equivalent of affirmative action, let me pose it to you in a different light. Historical fiction books, even those about vampires, must be grounded in historical facts for them to be believable, no?Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter includes transcripts, speeches, statistics, diaries, poems, and tons of other details to make a reader believe "This is the 1860s." So where are the minority characters? In 1860, 14.1% of the United States population was African-American. So why are 0.000% of the book's characters? It's not just exclusive and whitewashed, it's the definition of historically inaccurate .
link to map
And even if the figures were different, and it would take historical liberties to incorporate non-white characters, what's the problem with that if YOUR BOOK INCLUDES VAMPIRES?! Vampires aren't considered historically improbable enough to omit, but people of color are?
The bottom line is, creating a historical world with diverse characters is not "revisionist history." The only "revisionist history" here is the one that portrays everyone as white, and operates on the assumption that only white people were capable of impacting history in the past (even when that history involves fucking vampires).
Anyway, the Rest of the Book:
Aside from the moral qualms of it all, the book was well-written and well-researched. Lincoln wasn't the most interesting of head-lopping assassins, but it's worth reading for the supporting characters. The greatest scenes of the book don't involve him at all, but there's an awesome battle with his friend, Joshua Speed, and a very compelling backstory on John Wilkes Booth. They would almost work better as short stories.
Lots of missed opportunities:
-Towards the Civil War section, Abe goes down on a mission to the South to assassinate none other than (view spoiler). When (view spoiler) sets the house on fire and steps out of the darkness with an army of vampires, I laughed so hard because I thought the climax of the book was going to be an epic battle royale between Abe, (view spoiler), and the vampires. I wanted it to happen so much. But the sequence only lasted a few pages, and then the rest of the book was bogged down in the realm of trying-to-be-plausible. At least the movie had the sense to end with a giant train on fire with explosions.
- William Seward is mentioned as being a vampire hunter. I wished we could have seen more of him kicking ass, especially since he survived the assassination attempt, but he only gets a few mentions.
- The Caning of Senator Charles Sumner You can't include a sequence depicting the brawl, where Brooks beat up Sumner on the Senate floor, in a camp horror novel and have it notbe about vampires.
Look at all that inherent violence! Look at it!
LOOK AT CHARLES SUMNER
DAMN
From a critical standpoint, I guess it's strange to say that a genre-spliced novel called Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunterwas just too confused about what it wanted to be. It's like Luke Skywalker agonizing over which genre is really its father. Camp thriller? Or cerebral period-accurate horror?
The author would probably say, "It's both!", but throughout the book, the two opposing sides played constant tug-of-war against each other. Some parts actually suspended my disbelief, and other parts shattered it. Often within a few pages, I was deeply absorbed, and then frustrated.
For example, the degree to which I was intrigued depended on how believable a phrase was in the context of the vampires. Some of it was beautiful and thought-provoking. On page 106, (view spoiler) describes to Abe the orgiastic future that must lie in wait for vampires:
Can you imagine seeing the universe through such eyes? Laughing in the face of time and death - the world your Garden of Eden? Your library? Your harem?
This is good. It's eloquent (The "library/harem" part especially), and it's believable in the context of vampires. It relates directly to vampires, it's original, and it evokes this sort of dark, seductive vampire quintessence that readers love.
On the other hand, maybe you're supposed to laugh at all the cheesy parts. The idea of Abe Lincoln and (view spoiler)hunting vampires together is on crack and hilarious and so over-the-top it's glorious.
Basically, I'm trying to say that this book could have gone (tone-wise) full Anne Rice, or full Thankskilling . Both would have been satisfying in their own ways. But this book tries to be gore-splosions and laughs while also being immersive and deep, and it just can't sustain two moods simultaneously.
So, yeah. A house divided cannot stand applies well to slavery. Not vampires. But actually a pretty good description of this book.
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