June 25 1828 -- So long as this country is cursed with slavery, so too will it be cursed with vampires.
Thus reads one line from one of Abraham Lincoln's supposedly secret journals. For Abraham Lincoln is a vampire hunter.
At least, he is in the novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith. It is a novel I find very hard to put down. It is a breath of fresh air from what vampires have become in our contemporary popular culture.
What has become of the vampire?
Deconstruction has made us view old things in new ways, but it has also made us question, even go against, the very truth of absolute good and evil so much so that everything is now blurred.
Such is what happened with vampires.
Up to the mid-twentieth century, vampires are considered evil, spawns of "an evil alchemy of the blood." The very concept of creatures feeding exclusively on blood is abominable biblically speaking (See Genesis 9:6; Leviticus 17:14; Deuteronomy 12:23. I'm guessing this is the basis for Bram Stoker's concept of "Dracula."). Then there came those who, bored by the status quo and enamored by the dark and seductive beauty of such gothic creatures, embraced a more gothic and vampiric lifestyle.
