New on Religion Dispatches: an interview with Joseph Laycock, a scholar who's interested in real-life vampires as a new religious movement. His book, Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern Vampires, comes out tomorrow from Praeger, and it sounds far, far more scholarly and respectable than one might expect a book on real-life vampires could ever be. But it's not quite so serious that the interview can't still include great lines like this:
While it may be comforting to think that we are totally different from vampires, this is not the case.
Plus the bit about how all the good vampire book titles are taken—priceless.
I mention this first of all because it's a fascinating project, and secondly because I can personally vouch for Mr. Laycock's intelligence, having been his classmate at not one but two institutions of higher learning (namely, Hampshire College and Harvard Divinity School).* He's a great guy in addition to being a scholar of singular intelligence and most interesting interests. So check out his book, OK? Good.
Read the interview at Religion Dispatches here. Order a copy of Vampires Today here.
*Strictly speaking, we weren't technically "classmates" at HDS, since he entered the fall after I graduated. But it's close enough to count, right?
Comments