Richard Matheson: I Am Legend

[Fenster]

I saw the movie on its opening night. It was good, not great. (Far from great, actually.) For those of you that haven't seen it, I won't give anything away but I will say it's not the more faithful adaptation (as compared to the first two film versions) that we fans of the novel were hoping for, and it seems particularly inspired by 28 Days/Weeks Later.

Will Smith isn't bad in it - if you're worried (as I was) that it was going to be like Men in Black with Smith throwing around one-liners, fear not. He can really act.

If nothing else, it made me want to read the novel again.

 

[Stewart]

I grew up with an interest in vampire stories, working my through the likes of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles but, despite forever hearing good things about it, I’d never got around to reading Richard Matheson’s contribution to the canon, I Am Legend (1954). However, with its third big screen adaptation currently in the cinema - and hearing word of a reworked ending - I wanted to go straight to the source before seeing the film in order that my first impressions remain faithful to the book, not to whatever liberties the film-makers have taken.

Talking of impressions, I sort of knew what to expect from the book, but only in a bare bones way: vampires, an element of science-fiction in some form or other, and character who is the last man on Earth. That the novel is held as a masterpiece of science fiction rather than horror interested me and it was to the pictured edition I turned, not wanting the film tie-in because a) these are tacky; and b) Will Smith is on it.

I Am Legend begins as just another ordinary day in the life of Robert Neville, a plant worker from California who would appear to be the sole survivor of an apocalypse seemingly caused by a bacteria that infects the hosts who then go on to show signs of vampirism: aversion to garlic, crucifixes, and daylight; death by wooden stake; a taste for blood:

…no one had believed in them, and how could they fight something they didn’t even believe in?
​

Neville’s days consist of foraging for food, keeping his generator running, staying sober, repairing structural damage to his home, and hunting out the vampires, who retreat to the darkness and slip into a form of coma. On a cloudy day, he stays in. But Neville’s drive to understand what has happened leads to his education in matters such as blood and microscopes:

But, of course, he knew nothing about microscopes, and he’d taken the first one he’d found. Three days later he hurled it against the wall with a strangled curse and stamped it into pieces with his heels.

Then, when he’d calmed down, he went to the library and got a book on microscopes.
​

At night the neighbourhood vampires gather round his house, the regular mantra of ‘Come out, Neville’, trying to entice him into their clutches, but this is nothing for Neville, who now takes it for granted:

…from a distance they’d thrown rocks until he’d been forced to cover the broken panes with plywood scraps. Finally one day he’d torn off the plywood and nailed up even rows of planks instead. It had made the house a gloomy sepulcher, but it was better than having rocks come flying into his rooms in a shower of splintered glass. And, once he had installed the three air-conditioning units, it wasn’t too bad. A man could get used to anything if he had to.
​

As the novel progress, his understanding of blood and bacteria grows, making him able to forms conclusions as to what has happened to the world. And if his science is sketchy - I wouldn’t know, though - then it’s only because he’s an amateur. Finally, after months of solitude, he spots a dog wandering in daylight and spends time trying to befriend it, only to discover the true nature of the bacteria, and from there events escalate to the shocking ending that, on reflection, is strangely optimistic.

Throughout I Am Legend Matheson explores the vampire myth from a scientific point of view. Neville reduces garlic, for example, to its chemical constituents to find what offends vampires so. And when tackling other conventions, of the more psychological ilk, questions are asked, such as “what would a Mohammedan vampire do if faced with a cross?” It’s to his credit that he doesn’t just accept such traits as staples of the genre and dares to question them, lifting his novel from more pulpy contemporaries.

But vampires aside, its the human angle that takes centre stage in I Am Legend, charting Neville’s passage from man to monster as he goes around by day killing the slumbering vampires. Where, in the Bible Jesus met a man possessed and, on asking his name, was told, “I am Legion, for we are many”, so Matheson inverts this notion where the many see in him a legend, a mythical beast that haunts their numbers.

The novel benefits from Matheson’s style, a straightforward, no frills prose, that is immensely readable, offering up page after page of horrific action coupled with a realistic - seriously! - study of loneliness. In the vampire canon it’s one of the better novels I’ve read, daring to be edgy by explaining a predominantly supernatural subject matter as science. Other vampire novels should be scared of this - it deserves its legend.

 

[Sybarite]

Having just read it, from a personal point of view, while it's an interesting read (for some of the reasons that Stewart has outlined), it doesn't scare, has little real tension and left me completely unmoved. Seeing what happened to Nevillle was like watching what happens to a rat in a maze – interesting, but not remotely emotionally engaging.

 

[eyez0nme]

But remember, this was written in the, what, 1930's?

Do you know how other authors were writing during that time?

 

[Sybarite]

But remember, this was written in the, what, 1930's?

Do you know how other authors were writing during that time?

It was first published in 1954. So for instance, it was written later than, say, John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, which is much more involving.

Matheson also deals rather peculiarly with the issue of sex in the novel. He makes the decision to tell the reader that Neville is, in the first part of the book, tormented by unsated sexual frustration, to the extent that he's actually half tempted to give in to the female vampires outside the house.

But then he goes on to tell us that Neville goes to bed and writhes against the covers in a kind of agony when this sort of frustration overtakes him, and that he has to fight it.

Self relief, anyone?

It seems to be a really odd puritanism – is Neville refusing even to masturbate, keeping himself 'pure', like some sort of priest going on a crusade against evil? Is that what we're supposed to read into it? Because Wyndham, writing a novel that was published in 1951, is much more frank about the issue of sex – and self relief. Which is extraordinary, considering the prudery of England, particularly at that time.

 

[pontalba]

Having just read it, from a personal point of view, while it's an interesting read (for some of the reasons that Stewart has outlined), it doesn't scare, has little real tension and left me completely unmoved. Seeing what happened to Nevillle was like watching what happens to a rat in a maze – interesting, but not remotely emotionally engaging.

Ditto. Didn't care a bit about it, him, them.

But the fact that he finally decided/realized that the vampirism was caused by a virus/germ has to be the basis for Anne Rice's vampire novels. I read the first, oh I guess 3 or 4 of them, and if finally came out....after much milking of the subject that it was a virus.