Critique of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Time magazine/CNN Excerpt:
Monday, Mar. 08, 2010
Critique of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
By Lev Grossman
In 2008, Jason Rekulak, an editor at a small Philadelphia publishing house, had the bright idea to combine classic works of literature with pop-culture tropes for fun and profit. He phoned Seth Grahame-Smith, a.k.a. the luckiest freelancer in the world, and told him to write Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Grahame-Smith did — in two months flat — and it sold more than a million copies. Now it's being made into a movie starring Natalie Portman.
The success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies kicked off a literary land grab, with publishers rushing spin-offs and clones of the quote-unquote original to press. (Note to self: Clone With the Wind? A Room of One's Clone? A-clone-ment?) As for Grahame-Smith, he turned around and sold a novel called Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter to a large New York City publisher for a sum rumored to be in the mid — six figures. Bennett Cerf, founder of Random House, once remarked that the most surefire best seller imaginable would be a book called . He was close.
But there are specific reasons Pride and Prejudice and Zombies worked that don't necessarily pertain to the knockoffs. It wasn't an arbitrary mashup. Austen's novel is about the comedy and pathos of people whose lives are shaped by monstrous realities that they're too polite to talk about, namely money and sex. Zombies are just another unspeakable thing to tiptoe around. There's a certain dream logic to it, but it doesn't follow that the trick will work twice.
The conceit of Abraham Lincoln is that Grahame-Smith — his very name is a mashup! — has come into possession of Lincoln's secret diaries detailing his life as a stalker of vampires. As a frontiersboy, Lincoln loses his mother to the undead and swears lifelong vengeance. A giant among men — he was 6 ft. 4 in. (1.9 m) tall — Lincoln adopts the ax, that most American of edged weapons, as the tool of his trade, hiding it inside his signature long black coat. (See pictures of Hollywood vampires.)
Monday, Mar. 08, 2010
Critique of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
By Lev Grossman
In 2008, Jason Rekulak, an editor at a small Philadelphia publishing house, had the bright idea to combine classic works of literature with pop-culture tropes for fun and profit. He phoned Seth Grahame-Smith, a.k.a. the luckiest freelancer in the world, and told him to write Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Grahame-Smith did — in two months flat — and it sold more than a million copies. Now it's being made into a movie starring Natalie Portman.
The success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies kicked off a literary land grab, with publishers rushing spin-offs and clones of the quote-unquote original to press. (Note to self: Clone With the Wind? A Room of One's Clone? A-clone-ment?) As for Grahame-Smith, he turned around and sold a novel called Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter to a large New York City publisher for a sum rumored to be in the mid — six figures. Bennett Cerf, founder of Random House, once remarked that the most surefire best seller imaginable would be a book called . He was close.
But there are specific reasons Pride and Prejudice and Zombies worked that don't necessarily pertain to the knockoffs. It wasn't an arbitrary mashup. Austen's novel is about the comedy and pathos of people whose lives are shaped by monstrous realities that they're too polite to talk about, namely money and sex. Zombies are just another unspeakable thing to tiptoe around. There's a certain dream logic to it, but it doesn't follow that the trick will work twice.
The conceit of Abraham Lincoln is that Grahame-Smith — his very name is a mashup! — has come into possession of Lincoln's secret diaries detailing his life as a stalker of vampires. As a frontiersboy, Lincoln loses his mother to the undead and swears lifelong vengeance. A giant among men — he was 6 ft. 4 in. (1.9 m) tall — Lincoln adopts the ax, that most American of edged weapons, as the tool of his trade, hiding it inside his signature long black coat. (See pictures of Hollywood vampires.)
