Zombies vs. Vampires

Last week I finished two books, each a hallmark of the vampire or zombie craze.  The vampire book was Breaking Dawn (book 4/4 in the Twilight series) by Stephanie Meyer.  Zombies were represented by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith (although Jane Austen gets first billing).

I've already discussed my thoughts on the Twilight series, and I don't want to give any spoilers.  I'll limit myself to saying that Breaking Dawn shared many of the same strengths and weaknesses as the first three books in the series, except that Book 4 did no tip-toeing around adult issues.  If anything, protagonist Bella grew up at lightning speed over the course of the final book in the series.  I was shocked that Meyer didn't spread Bella's journey to adulthood over a few more best-selling books.

As for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the idea of the sister warriors was comical, but entirely unbelievable.  Grahame-Smith made no attempt to offer readers a reason these young ladies had the raw material to be so suddenly transformed into effective zombie-killers.  But with a healthy dose of suspended disbelief, their training scenes were amusing.  The narrative was at its best when it was the most gruesome and gross.   Any time the storyline veered away from rotting carcasses it reminded me entirely too much of the original.  I think I might prefer having my brains eaten to spending an afternoon with Mary and Kitty.

Of the two books which did I prefer?  It's hardly fair for me to choose based on the merit of the books.  I'm all about vampires.  Zombie stories are okay, but they just don't hold the same appeal for me as vampires.

Vampire stories are psychological.  They touch on emotion, instinct, desire, hope, fear.  They touch on what it means to be human, but more than that, speculate on what it would be like to be more than human, to have great power, strength, and longevity, to see what man might be capable of if he were more. Zombie stories also explore the human condition.  Zombies show us what it is like to be dead, what it is like to be nothing more than a body, a shell, without any spark of consciousness.  Zombies get into the nitty gritty of mortality: rot, decomposing, loss of body parts.  Zombies often lose thumbs, shed limbs, eat their own tongues.  They shamble on, asking us how much we can lose and still claim to be ourselves.

Vampires let us experience immortality, zombies rub our noses in the reality of our mortality.  I guess between eternal life and putrid death, I find eternal life more fun.

Breaking Dawn ranks #59 in Books on Amazon.com.  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies ranks #540.  Both books are available in Kindle format.

Tinkers

On the rare occasions that Paul Harding tries to state in plain language the theme of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Tinkers, the sentences become complex, requiring the reader to wade through parentheses and vague pronouns to grasp at its elusive meaning.  Fortunately Harding has lots of other methods in his literary toolkit to help us understand what he is saying: metaphor, motif, character, description, mythology, plot.  His use of language as he employs these tools is mesmerizing.

Tinkers doesn't question the meaning of life; it asks, what is life and how does life feel?  The novel addresses how we experience our existence as human beings: how we perceive life in our own skin, how we sense a link to something greater than ourselves, and how we relate to that link.  It is a novel of direct experience, beautifully written so that the reader shares the experiences of the characters in a very visceral way.

In one of my favorite passages of the book, one of Harding's characters describes how the blind eat:

"That's how the blind know where the food is on their plates, like a clock, ham at six-thirty! biscuit at four! just like that, that's how Helen Keller did it, I bet, just like that, potatoes at high noon!"

Not only does this passage tie in with the clockwork motif that runs throughout the book, its chatty text defines the heart of the novel.  We all come into the world blind, told by religion, local culture, and the experience of those who come before us, to expect ham at six-thirty, biscuit at four.  The father and son protagonists of Tinkers are blind men engaged in direct experience of life.  They rely on no road maps, assumptions, or conventions.  Not only don't they know where the ham is on the plate, they aren't taking anyone's word on what ham is.  Their knowledge of ham comes from their groping contact with it- the smell, the slippery grease on their fingers, the salty taste, the resistance of the meat on their teeth.

For me this rendering of direct experience makes Tinkers more than worthy of the Pulitzer Prize it was awarded in April.  Literature is a rendering through the art of language of how we experience the human condition.  Solid grounding in the reality of our condition is the ironic ignition to transcendence, allowing us to touch something ethereal and magical that defines new planes of reality.

Tinkers is ranked #13 in Amazon's print literary category, and ranks #228 on the Kindle best seller list.