Although I’ve never been drawn to vampires myself, those tales that have enthralled millions from Bram Stoker’s 1897 classic, Dracula, to Ann Rice’s popular series, The Vampire Chronicles, the fact that vampires continue to capture the public imagination is truly fascinating. What is it about these ghoulish bloodsuckers? After reading this Robert Coover flash fiction, I think I now get it. Count me in as a new fan! However, since I’m not at all familiar with the conventions of the genre, I’ll have to ask readers the following questions:

• Is the main character a legitimate vampire, since, after all, in this Robert Coover tale he is wearing a golf shirt and colorful Bermuda shorts?

• When he smiles, showing his teeth, the villagers shriek, shrink back and cross themselves theatrically. Shouldn’t the villagers turn on their heels and run for their lives?

• He enters a castle at night. Wolves howl. Is there a close connection between vampires and wolves?

• And the castle is cold and smells of unwashed laundry. The cold I can understand but what’s with the smell of unwashed laundry?

• Once in his living room, the TV is on. We read: “Seems to be a sitcom with comic monsters playing a ball game of some sort with human heads. He laughs along with the canned laughter on the TV and about as sincerely.” Does this program sound familiar to anyone?

• We are given more detail on his family life: “The children are swinging from the fixtures overhead, squealing, squabbling, pissing drollishly upside down, the big ones biting the little ones and making them cry; like children everywhere, he supposes, though in truth he’s never paid much attention to the noisome little pests.” Can vampires have children? I was under the distinct impression vampires have always been genetically incapable of producing offspring.

• There is a direct reference of how his hemorrhoids flare up. Is this the first recorded account in literature of a vampire having hemorrhoids?

Robert Coover's Vampire can be read via this link courtesy of GRANTA: https://granta.com/vampire/




American author Robert Coover, Born 1932