"The man who wrote this book, Montague Summers, is crazy."

A review of a book about vampires, plus some other odds and ends

I didn’t really intend to take such a long hiatus, but trust me, I’ve been busy writing.

To start with, a brief year-in-review:

• I got my Master’s in Education, but due to certain factors, did not get certified as a teacher. I’ve been scraping by with substitute teaching ever since, and am still looking for something more permanent and long-term.

• My short-short science fiction story “Plein Air” was published in Factor Four Magazine. Speaking of which, Hugo nominations are open.

• Also, my story “Predator Hunt,” set in the same world as Sweet Silius Island Honey, appeared in the Dragon Gems Summer 2024 anthology.

• I released Faire Exchange as an ebook and paperback, complete with updated illustrations. It’s available wherever ebooks are sold.

• I’m still rather proud of this item I wrote on what we can learn from shonen manga, especially in writing fiction for boys.¹ I keep wanting to write a follow-up focusing on kishoutenketsu, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

• And—not to get hopes up—I wound up liking both the Eggars and Herzog versions of Nosferatu so much that I’ve started work on a sequel to Feast of the Sisters. I’m actually having a lot of fun with it, too. It’s giving me a chance to explore some themes and implement some ideas I wanted to use for the original.

• I hope to get back to updating more often, particularly Bells of St. Anthony. Turns out slice-of-life fanfiction is pretty good practice for novel writing.

So what’s with that quote in the header?

That is an inscription left by my late grandmother in a copy of the book The Vampire: His Kith and Kin. I thought I’d read somewhere that Robert Eggers had drawn from the work of Montague Summers to create his take on Nosferatu. So I thought I’d see what Summers had to say as I prepare my new vampire novel.

[Edit: Apparently that’s not my grandmother’s handwriting? It could be my grandfather or great-grandmother. Hard to be sure.]

And hoo boy.

First off, I must have misread a quote where Eggers says he “had read Montague Summers as a teenager.” I’m going to trust that he did better research than this.

For one thing, there’s Summers himself. The introduction lays one of the bigger cards right on the table: Summers passed himself off as a Catholic priest, seemingly adding a layer of ecclesiastical legitimacy to his work, but there’s no evidence he was ever ordained or served in a parish. This is still something of a problem, and not just in Catholicism: my priest has told me he occasionally gets warnings from the Metropolis on fake Orthodox priests who turn up here and there. Summers’ Wikipedia entry brings up even more serious problems with his character, such as allegations of sexual abuse.

What about the book itself?

It’s Ancient Aliens for the undead.

What’s with all the funeral rites? Vampires. Taboos about blood? Vampires. Biblical descriptions of leeches? Vampires. Church authorities—Latin and Greek—who debunk vampires? Just afraid to admit the truth about vampires.

The impression Summers seems to be trying to give is that vampires are not only real, every culture has some ingrained memory of them that informs their rites around death. Whatever the aliens didn’t teach them, anyway.

As far as I can tell, there’s nothing that’s actually outright fabricated (though there is at least one case of mistranslation). But there are a number of irritations throughout the book. Summers pads it with more detail than necessary about various folk legends and lurid stories of bizarre deaths² until they start to lose relevance to the subject at hand. I had several passages where I seriously asked “Why is this in here?” Why does Summers spend a few pages talking about saints who glowed with blazing light? Why does he quote such a huge passage from the Iliad? Good question. Don’t know what to tell you.

Several passages are quoted from foreign-language books, and then not given a translation. Sure, I could use Google Translate, but a 1920’s or 1960’s reader couldn’t, and it’s a hassle to get the aim my phone anyway. Who knows if they’re actually relevant? In one chapter, he starts to talk about necrophilia with several passages in Latin and French, and one imagines him giggling, “Bet you’re wondering what this says, you pervo,” like he’s trying to see what he himself can get away with.

Then in the last chapter, “The Vampire in Literature,” a large chunk of the space is devoted to Summers geeking out about his favorite vampire plays. If nothing else, I wonder how much we needed the full cast lists for something that last ran in the 19th century. In fairness, he does mention some interesting productions, like “Le Vampire” by Alexandre Dumas, inspired by Polidori’s work; and another where the “vampire” is a living plagiarist trying to steal someone’s novel.³

The part that left the worst taste in my mouth is when he discusses stories of incorrupt corpses from Catholic and Orthodox tradition. The way he describes it, there are two versions: one in which the body refuses to decompose until an excommunication has been lifted; and the much better known version, where the body is preserved as proof that the deceased is a saint. He lists so many of them, focusing so much on them as supernatural curiosities, that it made me wonder just what he anticipates his readers (I would assume early 20th-c. British rationalists, occultists, and Anglicans) to think of these stories? Is he showing us Christ’s conquest and dominion over death? Or is he casting pearls before swine, calling people to gawk at those superstitious Papists and Greeks, like some weird religious sideshow?

In the end, I’m glad I read it, but less for its informative value, and more for its level of camp. It’s a “so bad it’s good” book—the flaws, and the flaws in the author are exactly the most interesting part. I started reading to learn about vampires, and kept reading more to learn how far he was willing to take all of this. So if you’re interested, feel free to give it a try, but don’t be surprised if you wind up agreeing with my [grandparent or great-grandparent].

1. Incidentally, if any editors are reading this and have run across a manuscript called “A Brace for Grendyl Syndrome,” that’s the story I talk about at the end.

2. In one example, he describes a wave of mass suicides that began sweeping across Russia in 1666, when people made the obvious association with the Number of the Beast. What he doesn’t seem to be aware of is how this was directly related to the Old Believer schism. And no, I do not know what this has to do with vampires.

3. The final chapter ends with a rather cool “Before they made it” passage, naming the cast of a 1920’s stage production of Dracula, whose players would later adapt it into a particular movie for Universal. But there’s a typo, so the star is listed as “Bela Lugoni.”