I’ve become a big fan of the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mystery series written by Charlaine Harris; I’ve read five of them, including the most recent All Together Dead I appreciate the down-homeliness of them. They are set in small town Louisiana (Shreveport is the nearby big town they talk about, and NewOrleans is the nearby big city most of the characters have been to). At the center of the novels is Sookie herself, a young, idealistic telepath who works in a bar, Merlotts. Bright but uneducated, she has the mixture of primness and sexual longing, self-sufficiency and boyfriend-centicity, curiosity and lack of education that seems very familiar. Whether or not I know anyone very much like Sookie in these respects, Harris makes me believe I do, because Sookie is real. Her brother Jason, a sulky, headstrong, adult stuck in adolescence (he goes through brief meaningless affairs throughout most of the novels, then abruptly marries at the start of All Together Dead) also has a mixture of traits which make him familiar.
As an telepath working in a bar, Sookie has a less than idealized view of her fellow man. When she meets the vampire Bill Compton, she finds that she can’t read the minds of vampires, and that alone provides reason for her to fall for him. A civil war veteran who became a vampire shortly after the war, her attraction to him is initially explained because she finds his silent mind to be such a relief, but it seems to be more than that: here at last is a man whose inner life isn’t completely open to her, who she can wonder about and even fantasize about Bill’s local "sheriff," Eric, a centuries old viking warrior who still looks like a young man. They both are subjects of the Queen of Louisiana.
The way the two are developed in the early books, we’re invited to like Bill and distrust Eric, and for the most part I do. It has bothered me over the course of the series to see Eric playing a larger role in the novels and in Sookie’s life than Bill, but I understand the reasons why, I think. Bill was created against type, as a down to earth southern guy who happens to be a vampire. Take away all that brooding from Anne Rice’s Louis (a ridiculous thought, I know, but bear with me), and you’d have someone close to Bill, in that his take on the world is essentially humanistic. Such characters are hard to develop over the course of a series. Eric, by contrast, is a Nordic Lestat, someone who has a sense of honor about dealing with humans, but whose view of the world is basically vampire-centric.
Nonetheless, at their core, these novels are the bildungsroman of a twenty-something woman discovering herself and the world. Sookie time and again resists the lure of the vampire world, hates it even, but keeps getting drawn into it.
The southern setting works for this series in part because Harris slowly unfolds meaningful analogs between her "supes" (as vampires, werewolves, werepanthers, and fairies are collectively know) and the social landscape of the south. Aren’t the old vampires, with their pomp, self-importance, and fierce defense of the same, more than a bit like the old money which still controls much of the land, and remains ridiculously caste-conscious in its worldview?
The weres, with their pack mentality, are based loosely on biker culture; they have their own bars, their own packs, tight social rules, and once a month, they go roaming together.
For my specific concerns, looking at the "post-human,"there are several interesting things. By focusing on these alternative forms of social definition, her vampires and weres provide a mirror which implicitly (though never directly) calls into question the usefulness and universality of the existing class, race divisions in the south–this against a social setting that has spilled untold money and blood toward the end of presenting its stratifications as right and good and natural. –This ain’t nothing.
Then there’s the case of Sookie herself. Early in the series, she sees her telepathy as a kind of disability; that’s the force it has had in her life (in terms of her inability to enjoy easy socialization) and in the way people treat her. She’s considered a bit of a freak. Even as she learns to control it, he power of telepathy moves her away from mainstream society and deeper into small, rigid subcultures with their own rules and mores, none of whom fully welcome her. This is interesting stuff.
The character Quinn is a late addition who has played a major role in the last two novels, and though he’s an interesting character, he’s a bit too much like a traditional romantic hero in a romance novel. Strong, assertive, physically perfect, Quinn is a were with a dark past as (we learn in All Together Dead) a gladiator of sorts in games the supes used to sponsor.
Creating a character who offers an alternative to the Bill / Sookie / Eric triangle (her boss and a few others have also expressed interest), that’s good. But, jimini!, did she have to create a part for Fabio?
###
Speaking of which, the Southern Vampire series is being adapted as "True Blood" for cable by Alan Ball, the man behind "Six-Feet Under." I’ll follow on DVD. Already cast is Anna Paquin as Sookie. She is probably best known as Rogue from the X-Men movies, but in fact, thought she is still in her twenties, she has been an Oscar Winner for half her life, thanks to a supporting part in "The Piano."
As an telepath working in a bar, Sookie has a less than idealized view of her fellow man. When she meets the vampire Bill Compton, she finds that she can’t read the minds of vampires, and that alone provides reason for her to fall for him. A civil war veteran who became a vampire shortly after the war, her attraction to him is initially explained because she finds his silent mind to be such a relief, but it seems to be more than that: here at last is a man whose inner life isn’t completely open to her, who she can wonder about and even fantasize about Bill’s local "sheriff," Eric, a centuries old viking warrior who still looks like a young man. They both are subjects of the Queen of Louisiana.
The way the two are developed in the early books, we’re invited to like Bill and distrust Eric, and for the most part I do. It has bothered me over the course of the series to see Eric playing a larger role in the novels and in Sookie’s life than Bill, but I understand the reasons why, I think. Bill was created against type, as a down to earth southern guy who happens to be a vampire. Take away all that brooding from Anne Rice’s Louis (a ridiculous thought, I know, but bear with me), and you’d have someone close to Bill, in that his take on the world is essentially humanistic. Such characters are hard to develop over the course of a series. Eric, by contrast, is a Nordic Lestat, someone who has a sense of honor about dealing with humans, but whose view of the world is basically vampire-centric.
Nonetheless, at their core, these novels are the bildungsroman of a twenty-something woman discovering herself and the world. Sookie time and again resists the lure of the vampire world, hates it even, but keeps getting drawn into it.
The southern setting works for this series in part because Harris slowly unfolds meaningful analogs between her "supes" (as vampires, werewolves, werepanthers, and fairies are collectively know) and the social landscape of the south. Aren’t the old vampires, with their pomp, self-importance, and fierce defense of the same, more than a bit like the old money which still controls much of the land, and remains ridiculously caste-conscious in its worldview?
The weres, with their pack mentality, are based loosely on biker culture; they have their own bars, their own packs, tight social rules, and once a month, they go roaming together.
For my specific concerns, looking at the "post-human,"there are several interesting things. By focusing on these alternative forms of social definition, her vampires and weres provide a mirror which implicitly (though never directly) calls into question the usefulness and universality of the existing class, race divisions in the south–this against a social setting that has spilled untold money and blood toward the end of presenting its stratifications as right and good and natural. –This ain’t nothing.
Then there’s the case of Sookie herself. Early in the series, she sees her telepathy as a kind of disability; that’s the force it has had in her life (in terms of her inability to enjoy easy socialization) and in the way people treat her. She’s considered a bit of a freak. Even as she learns to control it, he power of telepathy moves her away from mainstream society and deeper into small, rigid subcultures with their own rules and mores, none of whom fully welcome her. This is interesting stuff.
The character Quinn is a late addition who has played a major role in the last two novels, and though he’s an interesting character, he’s a bit too much like a traditional romantic hero in a romance novel. Strong, assertive, physically perfect, Quinn is a were with a dark past as (we learn in All Together Dead) a gladiator of sorts in games the supes used to sponsor.
Creating a character who offers an alternative to the Bill / Sookie / Eric triangle (her boss and a few others have also expressed interest), that’s good. But, jimini!, did she have to create a part for Fabio?
###
Speaking of which, the Southern Vampire series is being adapted as "True Blood" for cable by Alan Ball, the man behind "Six-Feet Under." I’ll follow on DVD. Already cast is Anna Paquin as Sookie. She is probably best known as Rogue from the X-Men movies, but in fact, thought she is still in her twenties, she has been an Oscar Winner for half her life, thanks to a supporting part in "The Piano."
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