Wednesday, October 19, 2011

How quickly one accepts the incredible if only one sees it enough!

I've wanted to check out the book I Am Legend by Richard Matheson for awhile now. Well at least since the movie came out and I heard not only what the original ending was but the typical refrains of "The book is soooo much better." I was happy then, to see that an ecopy of this book was on sale through Amazon. Plus it fits in nicely with the horror theme of the month, so there's another win.

The premise is what intrigued me to both see the movie and read the book. The main character, Robert Neville, is the seemingly last man on Earth. A pandemic has swept the nation turning all those that are infected into these vampire/zombie hybrid things and for whatever reason Neville is immune. His days are spent on survival: repairing any damage to his home/fortress, stocking up on supplies, making stakes, peeling garlic, killing the vampires and looking for any signs of uninfected life. He is tormented by the vampires each night as they surround his house, taunting him to come out. He's in a deep depression, pretty understandably so, and has no joy, not even in disposing of the infected bodies, both those that are completely taken over by the disease, and those who are somewhat still alive but will succumb eventually.
*This part is a bit spoiler-y. Though I knew it before hand and I don't think it ruined anything. But decide for yourself*
After years of this solitary vampire slayer life he learns that those who are infected but still alive have figured out a way to live with the disease and they view him as a threat because he keeps spending his days killing everyone. That's when he realizes that he's actually the anomaly and he is the legend of their nightmares (hence the story's title).  So really, the spoiler is kind of right there in the title.
*Spoilers contained*

 Here's the thing, I wish the book was written by someone else. I love the idea of the book, I think it's a great story. I just hated the execution of it. You don't get a lot of insight into the characters. I suppose it makes sense you don't get too much about the vampires, including Ben Corman, Neville's old friend. But it would have been nice if Neville was a fully rounded out character. And then there's all the pseudo-science thrown in that does nothing to explain anything going on. It mostly felt like Matheson had come across a medical encyclopedia and decided to thrown lots of terms at his story. I can accept a lot of "realities" from a story, including one where zombie/vampires take of the world. But when you try to throw some jargon at me and explain that Neville is immune because a vampire bat bite him when he was in Panama, I loudly yell "bullshit" and start laughing. I don't mind pseudo-science in my horror/sci-fi stories. I expect there to be some. I just don't expect it to be so obviously bad.

Also Neville is constantly drinking. I don't have a problem with this, nor does it seem unusual that a very depressed person who is the last living man on earth, would spend a good amount of his time drunk. Or actually, he ends up drinking very little because he spends most of the time spilling it onto the floor or pouring it into a glass, only to then throw the glass at a wall. Somewhere in this desolate world is an unending supply of whiskey and bar glasses. I think the drinking was a shortcut to try to show depth of the character but unfortunately it didn't work. It could have worked, maybe with a different author.

There is one scene that worked. Or at least worked better than the others. One day Neville sees a dog wandering about during the daylight and over the next few weeks he slowly gains the dog's trust. It's so simple but you can feel Neville's desperation to connect with any living thing.

So there you go: interesting premise that I wish I could have seen a different author take on.

Title quote from location 910

Matheson, Richard. I Am Legend. RossettaBooks, 2011. Kindle copy. Originally published 1954.

Comments (12)

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Oh good, another book I don't have to read.

Yeah. I tried Hell House because I thought it looked interesting, but it was pretty much bottomlessly dark. And not in a these-are-well-developed-characters-though way. Which is weird, because this guy also wrote the super-girly Somewhere in Time and What Dreams May Come. I don't get him.
1 reply · active 699 weeks ago
Yeah don't bother. I was sad cos I thought "what a cool idea! oh, that's what you're doing with it huh? ok then".

Also I can't picture this guy writing girly stuff cos he didn't so much seem to like the ladies with this one, although I chalked it up to "well it was 1954"
Somewhere in this desolate world is an unending supply of whiskey and bar glasses. - ha!! I find drunken characters much more annoying in books than on TV/in movies.
1 reply · active 699 weeks ago
I feel like it could have worked but pretty much like everything else in the book it was a good idea that just got dropped.

Also it was 3 years of him constantly spilling whiskey, or throwing a glass of whiskey at walls, or sometimes drinking it and there was never mention of him going to some whiskey hoard to get more. That would have been way more interesting than what we got.
Yeah, I pretty much agree with your assessment, Red. I read it shortly after the movie came out a few years ago, and was less than impressed. It was a good premise, and in the hands of a good writer perhaps more could've been made of it. I think Justin Cronin's recent novel, The Passage, for example, takes the notion a whole lot further. Good review! Cheers! Chris
1 reply · active 699 weeks ago
I'll make sure to check out The Passage. I was so disappointed with how this turned out, since I had such high hopes for it. Especially with everyone talking about how much better the book was than the movie. Even with the different ending, I think I prefer the movie because you get a much better sense of Neville's isolation
Too bad this one didn't quite work out. The movie scared the crap out of me, but I never read the book. When I got to the point of your review that said "Here's the thing, I wish the book was written by someone else," I thought to myself man, if ever there was a one-liner that could bring an author to tears, I think that would be it. ;)
1 reply · active 699 weeks ago
I liked the movie (or at least I remember enjoying it but don't remember too much about it) and was very excited for the book. I did consider not putting that line in, but honestly I kept thinking it while reading it. It's such a cool idea, I wish it worked out better.
I haven't seen any of the movies, and didn't know the ending before I read this book.

I loved it.

I think it's an interesting spin on the vampire story, and I liked tracking the influences. The weird unpleasant vibe between the main character and the female vamps reminded me of Dracula, and as one of the earliest attempts to "scientifically explain" a mythological beastie I found most of the sciencey bits interesting for their time. Although, I will admit that while I did enjoy it as a novel, I was largely looking at it in its historical context. Most of what we now think of as "Zombies" comes back to this book, too.
1 reply · active 699 weeks ago
I agree that it's an interesting spin on the traditional vampire and current zombie story, and you can certainly see how the scientific explanations included are now a big part of what we're currently seeing in lit. I think the issue is all of the interesting ideas are there but the execution didn't pan out. There can be all of the cool ideas in the world crammed in a novel, but if the execution doesn't work, then overall I don't think the piece works. I'm glad it paved the way for other people to take these ideas and run with them though.
My nerdy scifi friend warned off this after she read it and was so disappointed -- she, too, wished someone else had written it. Too bad -- because the premise, and the twist, are fascinating!
1 reply · active 699 weeks ago
I really wanted to like this book and I think that probably hurt my experience even more. It really is such an interesting idea and the twist is great but the execution was just so bleh.

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