Monday, 6 March 2017

Our Vampires, Ourselves by Nina Auerbach

I frequently complain about books being too heavy on theory, but it turns out that it's a million times worse when they have no theory at all. This study is written roughly on the level of a good undergraduate paper, and is basically just a very surface gloss of various vampire fictions, barely referencing any other studies and/or theories, and including excessively long quotes. It reads like the author's personal musings on the topic of vampires, influenced by things she had accidentally heard somewhere. I only made it through the first chapter because I threw it aside in disgust, but it's so cliche and predictable, the analysis is a sort of watered-down Freudian critique mixed with finding homosexuality everywhere without bother to situate it in a historical context. Some of the observations were slightly interesting but nothing groundbreaking. A really bad, scattered, unfocussed and weak study.

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