This concludes the interview. If you want to read the entire interview as it appeared in Cukmi (in Spanish) here’s the link:
www.cukmi.com/la-comida-de-los-vampiros/

(Why have fictional vampires become so popular in the last decade?)

I have to pause at this point and ask: Are these fictional characters vampires in name only? The complex, self-reflective ambiguity of today’s  vampires sets them apart from those of history who lived and died unaware of what fate had in store for them—that their corpses would be exhumed in a frantic attempt to halt consumption’s deadly onslaught.

-Why did you write this book?

To make lots of money  (ha, ha, joke). I think what I discovered was almost completely unknown. In some ways, it was New England’s “dirty little secret.” I wanted to share my discoveries for a variety of reasons, an important one being that it is a counterbalance to the stereotypical, constructed view of New England as a quaint place that was inhabited only by God-fearing Puritans who did exactly what the church instructed. There were many communities outside of this Puritan influence whose belief systems were eclectic, inclusive, and tolerant. In the end, I wanted to say something significant about what it means to be human. As I write in the new edition of my book—which will be available in October from Wesleyan University Press—“The vampire incidents of New England demonstrate that disease and death transcend time and place and that, despite the great accumulation of scientific knowledge since the nineteenth century, we still have our own ‘vampires’—our own mystifying, fatal diseases—to confront and defeat.”


-What does science (or academics) say about your studies?

I don’t know. I think you should ask them.


-Why did we invent the vampire myth?

People need answers. At a time of extreme crisis, such as an epidemic that is killing a large number of people—and the official, establishment culture cannot provide an answer that works to end the crisis—the community turns to the source that always has answer: folklore. Our folk traditions, which go back beyond any written tradition, have created ways to solve every problem. The solutions may not be the ones accepted by the establishment, but there are many times when any answer—any action—is better than just accepting certain death.

Below is the second part of the interview, which will be concluded in the next post.  If you want to read the entire interview as it appeared in Cukmi (in Spanish) here’s the link:
www.cukmi.com/la-comida-de-los-vampiros/

-Did tuberculosis and other diseases thrive the idea of the vampire that eats people's lives?

In the vampire folklore of Eastern Europe, any series of unexplained death could prompt the search for vampires in cemeteries. But in the cases from New England, tuberculosis is always the disease that is blamed on vampires. So, what do vampires and tuberculosis germs have to do with each other? I think the link between vampires and tuberculosis can be explained by how closely accounts of vampire attacks match up with the symptoms of consumption. Both consumptives and vampires are the living dead. Consumptives are walking corpses, waiting to die. Pale and wasted, they embody disease and death. Vampires are the embodiment of consumption, an evil that is unseen, but slowly drains away life.Victims of consumption suffer most at night. They wake up coughing and in pain; sometimes they describe a heavy feeling, like someone sitting on their chest. As the disease progresses, ulcers and cavities develop in the lungs and victims begin to cough up blood, which lingers at the corners of their mouth and stains their bedclothes. As they fade into death, others in the family begin to complain of the same symptoms. And so it goes, on and on.

-In last decade, vampires became popular again (Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Diaries, Twilight, True Blood, etc.) and with a new face: beautiful and pale youngs instead of sinister and repulsive Nosferatu. Why do you think this happend?

Well, it didn’t happen overnight. Even in the vampire literature from Europe in the 1700s and 1800s, vampires were attractive. Many of them had to be, so that they could attract their victims. But, of course, they had magical powers: they could shift their shapes and appear as any number of beings— beautiful woman or, perhaps, a butterfly that flits by without being given a second thought; or they might cast a spell on their intended victims who, as a consequence, see a handsome man instead of a partially decomposed, disgusting corpse. And, in folk tradition, that is just what vampires were.

From the German romantic poetry of the late eighteenth century through the Gothic interpretations that culminated in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, the fictional vampires have always reflected the society around them. Today’s vampires of film, television, and novels are no exception. I see the recent fascination with vampires as actually more of a revival than a completely novel event.

But however one interprets its historical context and connections, it does serve to bring into greater relief the growing gap between the undead heroes and antiheroes of novels, television and film and the restless dead who were perceived as an actual threat to their living relatives not so long ago. Contemporary fictional vampires are good as well as evil; they attempt to fit in by giving up real blood for a synthetic variety whose production harmed no actual human beings; and, like some of their contemporary teenage counterparts, they may take an oath of abstinence or become anorexic to avoid inflicting pain or to assert their self-control.

Below is the first part of the interview, which will be continued in the next post. If you want to read the entire interview as it appeared in Cukmi (in Spanish) here’s the link:
www.cukmi.com/la-comida-de-los-vampiros/

-How could synthesize your new definition of vampires (beyond the traditional one)?

There are many definitions of vampires. By the “traditional one” I will assume that you mean something like: “A corpse that comes back from the grave at night to maintain some semblance of a life by sucking the warm blood of people while they are asleep.” The vampires I’ve documented from the New England states in the U.S. apparently did not leave their graves, nor did they actually suck people’s blood. They were corpses of dead family members who were blamed for causing a mystifying, fatal disease that people during the seventeen and eighteen hundreds called “consumption.” We now called it tuberculosis and we know it is caused by a germ, not dead relatives. My definition is that these so-called vampires were scapegoats. To paraphrase vampire researcher Paul Barber, they were corpses who came to the attention of a community at a time of crisis and were regarded as the cause of the crisis.


-Why blood is the food of vampires?

I would make an educated guess that blood was sought by vampires because, for thousands of  years, blood was believed to be the “fountain of life,” where the vital forces that sustain life resided. The phrase “the blood is the life” appears in both the Bible and the novel Dracula.


-In fiction, is unknown how much blood a vampire needs to "live". ¿How much, one liter per day? Two? Ten?

I could not even make an educated guess regarding exactly how much blood vampires need. In folklore, vampires are categorized as “bloodthirsty revenants,” which seems to suggest that their appetite for blood is insatiable, that is, it can never be satisfied. So, any amount would never be enough. Since vampires are supposed to live forever, well, that’s a lot of blood, isn’t it?


-In literature, vampires seem to prefer women's blood. Why?

Hmmm . . . Do you think it might have something to do with sex? (And, I’m not talking about gender.) Most of the vampires from the Gothic novels are men. In cases where the vampires are women (such as eighteenth-century German romantic poetry, as well as some contemporary films), they often seem to prefer women, as well. There is more than a hint of lesbianism in the female-vampire/female-victim stories


-Further blood, what else feeds the vampires?

Some of the vampires of folklore were said to devour flesh and vital oragans as well as blood. Of course, there is no neat separation of flesh and blood.

Because the title of my book is Food for the Dead, I sometimes find that is has been placed into some amusing contexts. Some on-line booksellers, for example, have put it into the cooking or cookbook categories. I have joked about it at my talks, advising people that, if they were expecting some sort of macabre Julia Child presentation, they might be disappointed because my book is not a cookbook.

So, when I recently received the following e-mail request, I naturally assumed that sort of mix up: “As a journalist I write at Cukmi, a new media project on cooking and the Web based in Argentina, and connected with the newspaper La Nación. I was commissioned to interview you as the author of Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires. May I send you a brief questionnaire in a next messege?”

I’m sure you have guessed what my response was: “My book, Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires, is not a cookbook. It is about vampires consuming people (uncooked). Sorry about the confusion.”

But I was the one who was surprised by the interviewer’s reply: “Cukmi’s interest spectrum is very broad, going far beyond the kitchen—in fact, do not publish recipes or restaurant reviews—and the idea of the interview is “food” of vampires, blood as food. Please, let me send you a brief questionnaire and then you decide.”

I apologized and asked her to send the questionnaire, which contained the following questions:

-How could synthesize your new definition of vampires (beyond the traditional one)?

-Why blood is the food of vampires?

-In fiction, is unknown how much blood a vampire needs to "live". ¿How much, one liter per day? Two? Ten?

-In literature, vampires seem to prefer women's blood. Why?

-Further blood, what else feeds the vampires?

-Did tuberculosis and other diseases thrive the idea of the vampire that eats people's lives?

-In last decade, vampires became popular again (Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Diaries, Twilight, True Blood, etc.) and with a new face: beautiful and pale youngs instead of sinister and repulsive Nosferatu. Why do you think this happend?

-Why did you write this book?

-What does science (or academics) say about your studies?

-Why did we invent the vampire myth?

I thought most of the questions were very good. The translation into English has some odd points, but my Spanish is no better, so I can’t be too critical. In the next post, I’ll provide my answers.