Read our interview with Eric Nuzum, the author of THE DEAD TRAVEL FAST Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula.

Your first book was about music censorship. Your second is about vampires. How did that leap happen?

I don't think it's that much of a leap. The central premise of Parental Advisory is that music censorship is a crucial First Amendment /free speech issue because musicians and their fans use music as a means of expression--of stating who they are, what they believe in, and what they are about. In that sense, music becomes a social calling card or statement of self. For a different group of people, vampires are the same thing. When they look at vampire lore they see an archetype that makes sense to them--and makes the world make sense. It helps then deal with the world, just like the way a great song does.

Vampire stories often put forth the idea that vampires don't cast reflections. In reality, vampires are reflections—of what titillates and terrifies us, what keeps us awake at night, and the dark elements of life that we don't understand.

When you look at it that way, someone making a political or social statement through music isn't all that different than someone putting on pancake make-up, a set of plastic fangs and proclaiming, "I vant to suck your blood."

Vampire stories have been around for ages, but there seems to be a particular renaissance of late, especially in books. Why do you think that vampirism continues to fascinate people?

Because vampires are the perfect metaphor--an empty vessel that we can use to talk about the things we're afraid to admit turn us on or scare us. Interest in vampires tends to ebb and flow when, frankly, there is something that turns us on or scares us. Look at AIDS for example. Between 1980 and 1985, there were 43 vampire movies produced. That, even though it seems huge, is, historically, a fairly normal number of new titles.

Between 1985 and 1990, when the magnitude of the AIDS crisis was becoming apparent, that number almost doubled--to 89 movies. Between 1990 and 1992--the time when AIDS was one of the largest public health issues in the country--more than two-dozen new vampire films were made each year.

At a time when blood was becoming the ultimate taboo...that's a lot of vampire flicks.

Your efforts to get to the heart of the vampire phenomenon landed you in a lot of unusual circumstances. Was there any moment you found yourself asking, “How did I end up here?”

With my limited spelling and grammar skills, one of the few ways I have to distinguish myself as a writer is to put myself in odd and potentially dangerous situations to explore ideas. So, in that sense, if I'm not asking myself "How did I end up here?"--I'm not doing my job very well.

One thing that is important to understand about my writing is that I don't set out to get into ridiculous situations or to surround myself with odd characters--that just seems to happen to me, like, all the time. I just follow my curiosity. I don't try to be the typical dispassionate and objective journalist--I just jump right in.

When I was a bartender after college, I was fortunate enough to meet Shel Silverstein several times over the course of one summer. During those conversations, I talked him into reading some fiction I’d written. When he got back to me, he was very patient and kind…and honest. He told me that I was far too rigid and that my writing felt two-dimensional and flat--totally lacking in flavor and essence.

He told me, “If your characters want to go on a boat ride, forget the plot and let them go on a damn boat ride.”

I quit writing fiction, but applied his advice to my reporting and non-fiction. I often say that when I start a story or topic, I know where I'll end up, but I have no idea how I'm going to get there.

In some ways, your book seems to be as much about your reactions to the vampire effluvia as to the mythology and representations themselves. I wonder, how much did the project change from when you set out to write it until you finished?

I had to look up the word "effluvia" because I don't think I've ever seen or heard that word used before. At first I thought it was some kind of technical term for some part of the human anatomy that would gross me out/scar me for life if I heard my mother discussing hers.

Now that I understand the word, I think I can answer your question. The truth is that I picked this topic largely because it had such resonance and influence in contemporary life, so I kinda knew things would head in a variety of different unusual and unexpected directions.

Here is a fun fact that, well, nobody will really care about. Technically, vampire stories aren't mythology--they are lore. Mythology implies that (a) we think the stories are true and (b) we use these stories to explain why the world is the way it is. Lore, is the same as folklore--oral traditions and moral tales passed from person to person, aka traditional knowledge.

Who is more intense: Buffy fans or Dark Shadows fans?

Read our interview with Joseph Berger, the author of THE WORLD IN A CITY: Traveling the Globe Through the Neighborhoods of the New New York

Using the neighborhoods of New York City as a lens with which to view a variety of cultures is a fascinating idea.  What inspired you to write this book?

My last book, a  memoir, Displaced Persons: Growing Up American after the Holocaust, drew some very personal responses among readers and I realized what a large world there is out there of immigrants or children of immigrants out there who are touched by some of the same issues I faced. When a desire for an assignment switch came along about four years ago, I thought wouldn't it be nice to write about the new immigrants of the city and since we had a reporter who covered immigration issues and legalities I reasoned that a novel lens to look at immigrants would be through the changes they've created in the city's neighborhoods. It would also give me a way to get into their personal lives. But I've always enjoyed exploring the city and this assignment was ideal and led to my current book.  and that's what I've enjoyed best.


You discuss how much the city has changed since you were a child here.  What most surprises you about the ways in which the city is different now?

When I was growing up, the city was known as the melting pot, but whatever melting was taking place, and there wasn't really much, involved a half dozen ethnic groups, most of them European white. Today, the city has 25 ethnic groups of a size significant enough to occupy an entire neighborhood. The whole world can be found in this city and I can visit two dozen foreign countries for the cost of a Metro card.


Reading the book, the first thing that becomes clear is how deeply you love New York.  What are your favorite spots to bring out-of-town visitors to show them just what you love about it?

Just recently I took my brother-in-law to visit Brighton Beach and we felt as if we were walking in Moscow or Odessa. The language around you is Russian. The food, newspapers, manners, clothes are all Russian. The people line up at food counters as if they were lining up for ration stamps. We felt as if we in a foreign country, yet we were an hour's drive from home, The same is true of Guyanese Richmond Hill, Arab Astoria, Chinese and Korean Flushing, and Hasidic Williamsburg and Borough Park.

 
In which neighborhood is it most possible to just submerge oneself in a foreign culture and feel as if you’ve traveled far, far away?

There are all those I’ve mentioned, but you can do the same in Italian Bensonhurst, Dominician Washington Heights, Bukharan Rego Park and Forest Hills.
 
You write about how New York is more widely diverse than many other cities, because it isn’t dominated by a small number of ethnic backgrounds.  Do you think the situation in New York reflects anything about our greater “global society”?

What is happening to New York is coming soon to a theater near you. Louisiana just elected an Indian-American governor. Georgia is 10 percent immigrant. Lewiston, Maine, which 10 years ago was 98 percent white, now has a sizable population of Muslim Somalians who fled the hunger and violence in their African nation. There are now hundreds of communities with sizable immigrant populations that add new flavors, colors and cultural spices to their once homogenous communities.