I Am Legend

But are his needs more shocking than the needs of other animals and men? Are his deeds more outrageous than the deeds of the parent who drained the spirit from his child? The vampire may foster quickened heartbeats and levitated hair. But, is he worse than the parent who gave to society a neurotic child who became a politician? Is he worse than the manufacturer who set up a foundations with the money he made by handling bombs and guns to suicidal nationalists? Is he worse than the distiller who gave bastardized grain juice to stultify further the brains of those who, sober, were incapable of a progressive thought?... Really, now, search your soul, lovie - is the vampire so bad?

All he does is drink blood.

What fun! It hasn't been too long since we watched the movie- and the first thing Kevin did after we finished the film was to request a copy of the book from the library for me. Thank you, Kevin.

I got a little bored with Robert's obsession with sex - not having sex and being tormented by lust inspired by the female vampires - and his drinking. Part of that was possibly the inertia of my prior identification of Will Smith as Robert. Part of it is that it is completely outside of my range of experience... unlike confronting the undead. In contrast with the Will Smith movie version of Robert Neville, the novel Neville is a blue collar factory man who has to learn biology from scratch in order to understand the vampires. As a consequence, the reader has a greater understanding of the makings of these ghouls than the movie viewer. I liked that. Most importantly, the end of the book was very, very different from that of the movie. And, while I enjoyed the movie - especially the dog and the dog vampires - the conclusion of the novel (novelette?) was far superior. "I am legend."

Reminded me a bit of Bradbury's "The Million-Year Picnic"