Readings in the Genre – Week 2 – The Funeral
More Vampires…
Sometimes Going Classic is better than being ‘different’
Another work with vampires as a major player, this one being
quite a bit different from the previous example, despite having the same
author. Richard Matheson gives us what I’ve
come to call ‘classic’ vampires in a rather bizarre situation, and once again I
have to think about some of the same things I’ve mentioned before, among them the
humanization of the monsters. Here we
have a rather interesting juxtaposition for the situation we’re given.
A Vampire is arranging his own funeral.
Let’s just think about that statement for a long moment. A vampire is arranging his own funeral,
getting a coffin and the works because it wasn’t ‘properly done’ the first time
around. The fact that he is a vampire
isn’t ever directly mentioned in the novel but who else would order a casket
and at the funeral be asked to ‘try it out’ and all the other rather… unusual
things that take place. The service
itself seems to be filled with archetypical examples of the classic
monsters. We have a hag with a black cat
talking about how tasty the narrator is, and a count administrating the
service.
Effectively, he’s moving… getting a new ‘bed’ (the coffin)
and getting buried somewhere else than he had once been. Which is a rather humanizing idea for a monstrous
figure like the typical vampire, he’s gone shopping for a bed.
It’s brilliant, absurd, and rather funny in a lot of ways. It also gives us a juxtaposition of an occult
and monstrous world alongside the everyday humdrum world of a man working at a
funeral home. That, is one of the things
I’ve often figured as a defining element of Urban Fantasy, but the vampire is
one of those monsters that likes to hop around genres, hybridize them and
create some bastardize offspring (like paranormal romances with vampires… or
Twilight).
It’s a great and rather fun piece of fiction to read, and an
excellent break from reality. It’s not a
gross-out piece of horror but one more based upon the psychological element of
such a bizarre and unnerving scenario playing out in this poor sap’s life.
You picked up on the juxtaposition of the two worlds: supernatural and mundane. And then you labeled it urban-fantasy. I have to admit, I didn't label it anything more than a humorous vampire story, but now you bring an interesting twist to my own analysis. As in "I Am Legend," Matheson really was ahead of his time. Today, we would classify his stories as urban fantasy or horror or dark fantasy, etc. For us, we have so many examples of where our own stories fit in the market and in the readers mind. Matheson did not. He really wasn't sure if there were readers for his stuff. Oh, there were a lot of pulp fiction magazines that carried this stuff, but for his stuff to be accepted as main stream--that was probably unheard of back then. Now Harry Potter and Twilight are the mainstream. Interesting evolution in the field. Matheson well deserves his status in the literary world.
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