I Am Legend - the book

[SmellyDawg]

Just finished reading I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. I also saw the movie last year but I definitely prefer the book.

Any thoughts on

- the title which is also the last sentence of the book?
- the relationship between Robert Neville and Ben Courtman?
- Robert Neville's relationship with alcohol?
- Robert Neville's relationship with women? (slutty image of vampire women)
- Ruth's "gang" trying to build a new society?
- the vampire virus theories presented in the book?

Any other thoughts?

 

[BAYLOR]

The 1964 The Last Man on Earth film staring Vincent Price was AN adaptation of Matheson's novel. iI's closer to the book than the Omega Man 1971 with Charlton Heston and than the 2007 Will Smith film.

 

[Foxbat]

It’s been a long time but I do remember really enjoying the book. Definitely better than the films. I’d agree with @BAYLOR that the Vincent Price version is closest and best.

I think it’s time to read it again

 

[BAYLOR]

It’s been a long time but I do remember really enjoying the book. Definitely better than the films. I’d agree with @BAYLOR that the Vincent Price version is closest and best.

I think it’s time to read it again

I read it a long time ago, Superb.

 

[Rodders]

Still on my TBR pile. Maybe I should address that in 2022. I haven't seen The Last Man on Earth, but I did watch the Omega Man and Will Smith's I Am Legend. Both of which I enjoyed. The first half to Smith's version with really well done, but the ending was a little too Hollywood.

 

[BAYLOR]

Still on my TBR pile. Maybe I should address that in 2022. I haven't seen The Last Man on Earth, but I did watch the Omega Man and Will Smith's I Am Legend. Both of which I enjoyed. The first half to Smith's version with really well done, but the ending was a little too Hollywood.

The Will Smith film has an alternate ending .

 

[Foxbat]

I like Charlton Heston in SF movies but, overall, I thought the best thing about The Omega Man was the soundtrack. I felt it added just the right audio atmosphere (with a very typical 70s vibe). It’s a movie I’ll happily watch for the music as much as anything else.

 

[KGeo777]

The Omega Man could have been really good--the soundtrack IS great. They could have made Mathias the leader of the Ruth group--but they loaded it with so much BS. Matheson felt Heston was the ideal casting for the part. I thought of him when reading the book--and supposedly Heston felt they dropped the ball on it-and it could have been better. Supposedly Orson Welles and him discussed the book when they making Touch of Evil.
Hammer was going to make it but they would have changed the ending. The ending is problematic because it goes against all the normal endings in a story--it's a complete defeat of the normal.



The title which is also the last sentence of the book?



**I think it is the brilliance of the idea--that the normal man becomes a legendary monster. It really is the perfect maybe best example of "who is the real monster?" And he said he had to fight his publisher over the title because they felt it was bad English. They wanted it to be: "I Am A Legend."


- the relationship between Robert Neville and Ben Courtman?


*Interesting--especially since Neville comes to sympathize with him near the end. He is so used to him as a foil he is not happy to see him gone--he represents a reliable dependable element of his new life in isolation.


- Robert Neville's relationship with alcohol?

*I cant remember that well but yes he was drinking a lot. Like a vampire maybe?


- Robert Neville's relationship with women? (slutty image of vampire women)

*that is one thing I remember from the book--how he said the zombie-like women vampires were trying to seduce him-- that is one of the most lasting horrific images in the book-(that and the dog hiding as the vampires attack outside)-I think he described it as comical--and that felt realistic--that one would find the humor in something so awful and repetitive.
He was using the women vampires for experiments--I remember that-but it was logical because he had to be able to overpower them. And it also fit the legend aspect in the ending.

- Ruth's "gang" trying to build a new society?

*
That is the sinister existential surprise in it. That it is kind of evolutionary force at work--the common theme in Matheson stories is the supernatural menace becomes something positive or accepted. What would Lovecraft think? I think he would find the idea brilliant. He would recognize the exoticism of the concept--Dracula in reverse--because the trend in the 20th century--and even Dracula has a bit of that too--Dracula the historical figure repelled the Muslim invasion and it sounds like he was eventually demonized for that. How did Dracula go from being a Romanian hero for Christianity to being identified with the Devil and why?
In the book, the normal man and the warrior concept--the Beowulf type---is now defeated. He cannot defend his society against the foreign invasion or monster. Even worse, he has become the monster to those who defeated him--and you sort of sympathize with them--realizing that he was a monster to the new society. He's accepting that and amused by the irony. I love that phrase "the unassailable fortress of forever."
This is the germ of the concept in the book. Fighting against the inevitable failure.


- the vampire virus theories presented in the book?

*I wasn't intrigued by all the scientific mumbo-jumbo. It felt like page-filler. Since Neville was not a scientist.

I think the stuff about the fear of mirrors was interesting. They were repulsed by their image.

 

[Rodders]

Bumping this conversation, so apologies. After reading so much about this book over the last few years (decades), i finally got around to reading it this week. At only 166 pages, it was a quick read. I loved the directness and simplicity of the story.

I enjoyed the depiction of loneliness in the first half of the book, (which i thought was replicated quite well in Smith's film). The part where he befriends the dog was pretty well done and ended up being quite a gut punch. I wasn't quite sure what to make of Neville's preoccupation with the female vampires. I appreciate that much of it was simple frustration, but I found it interesting as it was easy to read something perhaps a little more sinister into that aspect of the story.

I wasn't really sure what to make of Ben Courtman. I kinda felt that was a bit of a wasted element to the story that fizzled out somewhat for me. All the other vampires came across as a bit animalistic, yet Ben would call out to taunt Robert. I wondered whether the whole "Come Out, Robert Neville" was a holdover from when Ben was alive and these were, perhaps the his final words. I may have missed something, but i didn't get the impression that Ben was part of Ruth's "evolved" vampire crew.

 

[KGeo777]

No he wasn't part of the new society vampires. That was why Neville felt sympathy for him when he was killed. It was partly because he had come to accept Courtman as a fixture in his life. He identified more with him than the more intelligent vampires. Courtman had become like him-an underdog against a mob.

Something I realized--Matheson never wrote stories about heroes.
None of his protagonists are heroic.
There was a Men's Fiction blog which talked about the book vs the movie and they said they liked the Omega Man because Neville is going around shooting vampires and more pro-active than he is in the book.
I think they also wondered why he didn't use dynamite to get the vampires.
There may have been a sexual element to him targeting female vampires but maybe it was simply due to them being easier to handle? Especially for his experiments.

Plus, male vampires were often depicted as targeting female victims so this is a parallel in reverse since Nevile is in the end, a Dracula counterpart.

 

[Dave]

I've just begum reading this, so I'll be back again later to answer some questions.

Regarding the films - I don't think I've seen the Will Smith version (just excerpts) - seen the Charlton Heston version several times - seen the Vincent Price version, but a long time ago. I've never read the book before (but the first few chapters have been a very easy read) but so unable to to compare book to films yet.

Just to say that being a book rather than a film, you are obviously going to be more inside Neville's "head" and reading his thoughts than you ever can with a film screenplay. I remember that Charlton Heston seemed more focused, and his day was very structured. In the book, Neville is already wondering what the point of it all is, and anesthetising his pain with whisky sours, and I've only read a few chapters.

 

[paeng]

I've the yellow 50th anniversary edition from Gollancz, but for some reason could not remember much about what I read. I think the first 1964 film version was closer to it, and for some reason enjoyed the one with Heston.

 

[Rodders]

I saw The Omega Man and I think it’s the best version, although I’ve not seen the Vincent Price version.

I really enjoyed the first half of the Will Smith one as it conveyed the sense of loneliness that I associated with the book. I wasn’t enamoured with the second half though and thought the monster element was silly and the ending a little too happy.

 

[Dave]

Robert Neville's relationship with alcohol?

It is clear that Neville had an alcohol problem long before the plague and the death of his family. At the start of the book, his drinking was partly out of boredom, partly to forget what he had seen during that day. However, by the end he says that he didn't need to drink any longer, so he wasn't an alcoholic.

the vampire virus theories presented in the book?

The book tried to give scientific, or at least, realistic reasons for the Vampire myths and lore than we all know, and that was written by Bram Stoker. I respect the idea, but I don't think it really works. The "Cross" is one example where he says that a Jewish Vampire has the same reaction to the Torah, but sorry, that isn't the way Vampire lore is written elsewhere. Vampires are mythological or Satanic creatures that cannot be explained by science. The Walking Dead franchise has very similar problems when explaining the "undead" with a virus and it doesn't work. If the body has begun to decompose, then it will not function. No amount of fresh blood is going to cure a decomposed body even if it 'satisfies' a virus.

Ruth's people were living with the virus by taking a pill made of blood and some drugs, and not turning into full vampires. I think I can just about accept this if I accept that vampirism is caused by a bacillus. The Walking Dead also tried to do this by doing a big reveal that everyone had the virus within them at one point, but back-tracked on that later because it was much more exciting if people who got bitten turned while still alive.

None of his protagonists are heroic.

His protagonists are unwilling and reluctant, and they have faults, make mistakes, and are human. I think we need to really ask here what is heroic and who are heroes. People who have no scruples about killing others are lauded in wars as heroes, and we rarely question that. However, frightened individuals who find the courage to save others without much thought to their own lives, are much closer to what we expect from our "heroes", and they make better role models for heroic action. Most heroic medals, on the other hand, are awarded to war heroes, but there are some civilian medals awarded to people who never killed anyone - firemen, lifeboatmen, police officers and also ordinary people - ordinary people who were probably unwilling and reluctant but still jumped into a river to save someone from drowning in any case.

There may have been a sexual element to him targeting female vampires

He said that when picking up bodies in the morning that it was always female vampires. I think the females just came closer to he house and were easier targets for him. His sexual attraction to them wore off as the book progressed.

male vampires were often depicted as targeting female victims so this is a parallel in reverse since Nevile is in the end, a Dracula counterpart.

This is what I took from it too, that there is a male dominance in this vampire lore.

 

[KGeo777]

His protagonists are unwilling and reluctant, and they have faults, make mistakes, and are human. I think we need to really ask here what is heroic and who are heroes. People who have no scruples about killing others are lauded in wars as heroes, and we rarely question that. However, frightened individuals who find the courage to save others without much thought to their own lives, are much closer to what we expect from our "heroes", and they make better role models for heroic action.

I mean heroic in the sense of success not vulnerabilities or killing score.
His protagonists do not succeed (most of the time). They always seem to succumb to a supernatural force and must accept it as a good thing.
"Prey," the Zuni fetish doll short story--the character or the reader comes to see the possession as something desirable because it can solve her problems with her mother. In that case she did succeed in destroying the physical threat but it's not exactly a victory in a traditional sense.

Carl Kolchak is not a Matheson creation--he does succeed in destroying the vampire but he is not rewarded for it. He is banished for it because the message of the story is really "who is the real monster?" It is the establishment in Las Vegas. But Darren McGavin described him as a hero character because he sought to find the truth.
The fact that he was vulnerable made his courage and commitment more impressive and admirable than if he was a superman or someone with a lot of authority. He does succeed in the sense that he overcomes a threat to himself and society, yet he is banished from that same society as if he was himself a monster. It's not quite the Matheson theme, but it's not so far removed from one. It's compatible.

 

[Dave]

I mean heroic in the sense of success not vulnerabilities or killing score.