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lee_foust 's review for:
Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality
by Paul Barber
Ah, this perfectly reasonable and quite interesting scholarly look at vampiric folklore and possible explanations for the persistance of vampire lore from an actual scholar was the perfect antidote to the Montague Summer's (decadent Catholic-wannabe dandy who tries to convince us with his two books about vampires to be ever vigilant against Satan) book on vampires that I read just before this. It was particularly pertinent as both authors use a lot of the same source material and come to wildly different conclusions--one rather reasonable who's methodology teaches how to read pre-literate folklore better, the other batshit crazy and pulling us back toward the credulity that's always let shysters control us, dominate us, and steal a lot of our wealth by selling us one god or another.
Besides the reasonable approach and apparently valid conclusions Barber gets points for readability and a few nice zingers--he has a rather dry and winning wit on occasion. Even so he did repeat himself a bit and that made the book drag toward the end. I believe this is an expansion of his Ph.D. dissertation and that shows, as managing one's materials is easily the hardest part of writing one's first book-length study. I sympathize as I'm sure my dissertation suffers from similar flaws. Still, a good read and it gave me much fodder for my own teaching of Gothic literature in the future. I recommend it.
Besides the reasonable approach and apparently valid conclusions Barber gets points for readability and a few nice zingers--he has a rather dry and winning wit on occasion. Even so he did repeat himself a bit and that made the book drag toward the end. I believe this is an expansion of his Ph.D. dissertation and that shows, as managing one's materials is easily the hardest part of writing one's first book-length study. I sympathize as I'm sure my dissertation suffers from similar flaws. Still, a good read and it gave me much fodder for my own teaching of Gothic literature in the future. I recommend it.