Blood, Bodies, Books: Kim Newman and the Vampire as Cultural Text

Abstract

Human beings are the storytelling species who make sense of the world around us by articulating experience through forms and frameworks of accepted narrative structure. The ability to relate stories gives us a connection with each other through the agreed framework of narrative; we accept and understand the difference, for instance, between a joke and a eulogy within our culture and we respond accordingly. Narrative is not, however, merely a verbal or written form of connecting tissue between humans but it has the power to change opinions and, from that, to change the power and organization of society. John D. Niles terms this ‘cosmoplastic power’ and, referring to the American philosopher Richard Rorty, observes that ‘[w]hat we call reality, in his view, is the effect of metaphors and stories that have become so successful, in competition with rival metaphors and stories, that “we try to make them candidates for belief, for literal truth”’ (Niles, 1999, p. 3). So why do apparently sane, rational and intelligent academics spend their time earnestly discussing and debating the minutiae of things which do not exist?

‘Every body is a book of blood: wherever we’re opened, we’re read.’

(Barker, 1998, p. 2)