Everybody lies

After watching the movie (which, even though I had some problems with parts of it, I liked a lot, mostly because of Will Smith) I wanted very much to read the book as well, if only to see how much the movie version differed from the original story. So when I found the book on Bookmooch I snatched it up right away.

When I had the actual book in my hands I was happy to see that it contains not only the eponymous story, but a total of 10 stories by the same author. So to get a feel for his writing style I decided to read the other ones first, keeping the one I already knew for last.

Written, as far as I can tell, between 1951 and 1987 some of the stories feel quite dated and the ’science’ in them is accordingly ludicrous, which for me takes away quite a bit of the reading pleasure. Also, some of them were a bit disturbing (especially “The Dance of the Dead” comes to mind). Most of them were ok, but nothing to write home about. And certainly nothing that will stay with me for any amount of time.

Thus it was with considerately lowered expectations I went ahead to finally read ‘I Am Legend’. Considering it is counted among the science fiction classics (and even Stephen King cites it as “an inspiration”), this was probably a good thing. To make a long story short: this might be one of the very few instances in which I actually prefer the movie version to the book. I ended up not actually hating the book version, but not too far from it either.

The first surprise for me was that the Robert Neville in the novel is described as a blond, blue-eyed arian type of guy. *blech* Considering the book was written in the fifties I should have seen that coming, but nevertheless it bugged me the whole time. And not only is the guy Whitey White, he also came through as a complete asshole. I can’t even put my finger on why exactly I felt this way, but I didn’t connect to him at all. I tried to ignore the descriptions of him and picture Will Smith in my mind, but it didn’t work in the least. So it was hard to feel for him in any way.

The story itself has been, not surprisingly, considerably altered for the movie, especially the end. The ending of the book made a lot more sense to me and, had the book-Neville been an even slightly likeable charcter, would have been much more poignant and moved me to tears than the movie’s. As it is I couldn’t wait for Neville to die, so the whole story was wasted on me. Shame, really.

All in all I am afraid I have read this book way too late to understand its supposed classic status in the least. Maybe in the fifties, or even in the seventies, this was a new idea and maybe back then the ’scientific’ parts of it might have seemed at least partly plausible to the average reader. But today, not only are there loads of better vampire stories out there, also lots of the supposedly ’scientific’ and ‘logic’ explanations for the myths surrounding vampirism are just plain ridiculous. Like, the vampirism is caused by a kind of bacteria, which makes them sensitive to light and therefore you can kill them with a wooden stake, because by stabbing them you open up their bodies to let the light in and the bacteria die instantly. Or something like that. In any case it didn’t make any sense at all and annoyed the hell out of me. Definitely a book I won’t ever read again.