A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-Five-Hundred-And-Nine

I have often discussed, in the past, the non-fiction work that I am doing, but I have been intentionally vague about it.  The subject for that piece is the anti-Semitic nature of Dracula and the vampire genre in general.  In truth, I have been afraid to be straightforward about this, though I cannot entirely explain that fear.  I recognize part of it is because the subject has the potential to provoke some truly undesirable responses, but that is not the whole thing.  I think that my bigger fear is the awareness of how many people won't be open to understanding what I am saying, no matter how legitimate.  Consider that for almost a millennium blood libel (the accusation that Jewish people consume blood) has been a central narrative intentionally proliferated to kill Jewish people and destroy our communities, and yet the idea that a monster who drinks blood might invoke anti-Semitism is not commonly considered, even when that attribute is coupled with ideas of conspiracy, hunger for power, manipulative control, and many other tropes connected to the hatred of Jews.  I could, to be honest, list many more of the qualities associated with vampires and make clear the ways that these correlate to specific anti-Semitic tropes (indeed, cataloging these connections is one aspect of the work that I have been engaged in).  It is quite an overt connection, but I know that many cannot and will not recognize this; that is the thing that scares me the most.

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