American Library Association | Musings of the Monster Librarian

Vampires: The New All American Hero?

I was excited to see that the American Library Association had published a new readers advisory guide, Fang-tastic Fiction, with the subtitle “Twenty-First Century Paranormal Fiction”. It’s not often that a professional readers advisory guide appears that supports the librarians and readers who use our site (kind of- the author, Patricia O’Brien-Matthews, attempts immediately to remove the horror genre from her definition of paranormal fiction- but that’s not as easy as it sounds).

I’ll try to do a complete review of the book soon, but something she said in her introduction really jarred me. She wrote that vampires have “all the traits of the all-American hero”. What?

To put it in context, she’s writing about the transition of vampires from monsters to sympathetic leading characters. She attributes the change to the Twilight books and Anita Blake series, but I think that’s a stretch. Would you really pair Edward or Jean-Claude with Mom and apple pie? Deborah Wilson Overstreet was writing about this evolution before Twilight was even published, in her book Not Your Mother’s Vampire (Twilight came out in the fall of 2005, and Overstreet’s book was published shortly afterwards, in 2006, so it doesn’t mention Twilight), and she described the new, more sympathetic vampire as the “postmodern vampire”, which I think is a more accurate description. The postmodern vampire owes a lot to the media and literary franchise created by Joss Whedon, called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He (usually he) is more angsty, more likely to land a human soulmate, and may be a little more public- heck, he may be working towards redemption- but he isn’t any less a monster. A sympathetic character, perhaps, but what makes them sexy is the danger. Not the sparkles.

Of course, there are differences between the scholarly book Overstreet produced in the pre-Twilight days and O’Brien-Matthews’ guide to readers’ advisory for practicing librarians looking for immediate references. O’Brien-Matthews isn’t doing critical literary analysis- that would be WAY outside the scope of her book, which still has to cover an extremely broad field of literature for some very busy people. But all-American hero? Isn’t it enough to be a sympathetic protagonist in the world of the book?

Neil Gaiman wants you to spread the word- Libraries are awesome!

Maybe you’ve heard of Neil Gaiman. He’s the author of graphic novels, fantastic novels, amazing short stories, and children’s books that are frightening, funny, and sometimes enchanting. He’s also won numerous awards, including the Newbery Award for outstanding children’s fiction, for his novel The Graveyard Book. If you haven’t read anything by him, I highly recommend that you do.

I am so pleased that he is participating in the “Our Authors, Our Advocates” initiative of the American Library Association, and as part of that, he’s filmed this PSA. I’d love it if you’d share this with other readers and library supporters- now is a difficult time for libraries, and the more people who stand up for them the better.

I had the privilege of hearing him speak last year, and he talked a lot about the library he grew up in. So many writers really do grow up surrounded by books, not because they had them at home, but because of their library.

And the right librarian can be so important in your life. I personally was incredibly lucky in that my elementary school librarian was there to meet me in the high school library when I finally made it through the doors, and the children’s librarian at my public library(there were no YA librarians) drew together a bunch of middle schoolers to read William Sleator and teach us the power of story. But we’re not supposed to be talking about me, although I share something with Mr. Gaiman here.

We both are passionate about keeping libraries alive and growing. And we want you you to pass it on.