I Am Legend
by Richard Matheson
List Price:
Our Price: $2.53
You Save: $12.42 (83%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Richard MathesonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-10-30
ISBN: 0765318741
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Tor Books
Book Reviews of I Am Legend
Book Review: Great book and literature
Summary: 5 Stars
It is perhaps the greatest novel written on human loneliness. It far surpasses Daniel DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe in that regard. Its insights into what it is to be human go far beyond genre, and is all the more surprising because, having read his short stories- which range from competent but simplistic, to having classic Twilight Zone twists (he was a major contributor to the original tv series) there is nothing within those short stories that suggests the supreme majesty of the existential masterpiece I Am Legend was aborning.
Not only is it more than a horror or sci fi tale, it is more than just a post-apocalyptic work as well. It is (written in 1953, and published in 1954) a far more subtle allegory on the McCarthyism of the day, as well the rigid conformity of the 1950s leading to the cultural sterilization and death of the masses. Compared to such filmic fare from that decade, as On The Beach- or its written source, or even The World, The Flesh, The Devil, it stands even higher because criticism from either side of the spectrum, politically- the idle and gullible Left and the vicious and pandering Right- was generally heavy-handed and obvious. Even when compared to later works, some with direct debts, like George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead and Dawn Of The Dead, or those intriguing alternative visions to the end of the world- Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe Of Heaven (another great apocalyptic novel) or the 1985 New Zealand film The Quiet Earth, I Am Legend stands alone with its relentless focus on the self, and the relation to things exterior.
It deconstructs the vampire myth with modern methods, attempting to explain many of its legendary aspects with science- such as why non-Christian vampires would fear the cross- they don't, why a stake kills a vampire but not a bullet- a stake allows corrupting air into the bodily glue of a vampire (although the silver bullet myth is untouched), why vampires can metamorphose into bats or wolves- they can't, why some vampires turn to dust at death- their already long-dead bodies instantly decompose while living vampires' bodies don't, why mirrors repel them- psychological traumas, and a number of others....a mark of any enduring work of art is its continued, and renewable, relevance through time. A half a century on Neville himself emerges as another sort of figure of the Right- not as the Van Helsing-like McCarthy, but the solipsistic, indolent corporate fat cats and paranoid, self-pitying Goddists of the Bush era. Like the modern Right believes itself to be, he is besieged in a redoubt, fending off the mindless drones of blood and hedonism (the harlot vampires `posing like lewd puppets in the night'), even as he is anachronized. He joys in small victories. He loses himself in an idealized past, fortifies himself with the remnants of a lost glory (Classical music), lashes out at his enemies with no regard to differences, and that some of them are far more like him than he admits, and loses himself in fantasies of violence and sex, not unlike the Timothy McVeigh crowd.
Many questions remain at tale's end: Why did the New Breed have to wait so long to come and get Neville? Was Neville really the last man on earth, or just in LA, or his part of LA? Why were the dead and living vampires so dumb- even Neville queries why they didn't simply set his house on fire?
We'll never know, and why should we? Have we been enlightened, entertained? Yes. That's all that a work of art need do. Too many modern writers go overboard with masturbatory detail, thinking that good writing consists of the curlicues of minutia, squared! The idea being that detailed boredom is better than plain old boredom. My wife has complained of passages in the novel Cold Mountain where the author, Charles Frazier, spends pages describing the details of Civil War weaponry, yet his characters are utter stereotypes. He doesn't get it. Matheson did in I Am Legend. There are gaps in the science of I Am Legend- they were apparent in 1954, and some of the science is even more manifestly dated now. But, it's still plausible, if not as real science fiction, certainly as fantasy, and truly as allegory, and the book's real raison d'etré. Yet, a work can be wholly fantastical and succeed if its tale grips and its characters connect. Plausibility gives way to the motive- in both senses of what drives the tale and what the style accomplishes in doing so.
That all said, I have no hesitation claiming that I Am Legend is easily one of the ten best novels I have ever read- right up there with Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, or The Whale, Charles Johnson's Oxherding Tale, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, and a few arguments over a tale or two from William Kennedy and some others.
And yet, somehow, I am still drawn to the Vincent Price interpretation of the Robert Neville character (called Robert Morgan in The Last Man On Earth), and my sonnet Vincent Price In The Drapery Folds, for that is where our deepest terrors lie- in the mundane, in the human tendency to see a curtain rustle and expect some ghost or nosferatu to be its cause, rather than a stray breeze. This is why `the divine chaotics of wish and snowflake' is so essential to science fiction and horror. It is the within, admixed with the without, however briefly (for snowflakes are amongst the most ephemeral things in the macro-world), where horror spawns. Matheson knew it, and I Am Legend is a perfect snowflake, whose beautiful fears are forever frozen in words.
Summary of I Am Legend
Robert Neville may well be the last living man on Earth . . . but he is not alone.
An incurable plague has mutated every other man, woman, and child into bloodthirsty, nocturnal creatures who are determined to destroy him.
By day, he is a hunter, stalking the infected monstrosities through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn....
Richard Matheson's classic novel has now been transformed by Warner Bros. into a major motion picture starring Academy Award nominee Will Smith. Directed by Francis Lawrence ("Constantine"), the film opens nationwide in December 2007.
One of the most influential vampire novels of the 20th century, I Am Legend regularly appears on the "10 Best" lists of numerous critical studies of the horror genre. As Richard Matheson's third novel, it was first marketed as science fiction (for although written in 1954, the story takes place in a future 1976). A terrible plague has decimated the world, and those who were unfortunate enough to survive have been transformed into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. Except, that is, for Robert Neville. He alone appears to be immune to this disease, but the grim irony is that now he is the outsider. He is the legendary monster who must be destroyed because he is different from everyone else. Employing a stark, almost documentary style, Richard Matheson was one of the first writers to convince us that the undead can lurk in a local supermarket freezer as well as a remote Gothic castle. His influence on a generation of bestselling authors--including Stephen King and Dean Koontz--who first read him in their youth is, well, legendary. --Stanley Wiater
Horror Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Horror Books
Let the Right One In: A Novelby John Ajvide Lindqvist
St. Martin's Griffin; Published: 2008-10-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.99
Price in other shops:
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus: The 1818 Textby Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1982-03-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.00
Price in other shops:
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Oxford Bookworms S, Stage 4)by Robert Louis Stevenson
Oxford Univ Pr (Sd); Published: 1991-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.79
Price in other shops:
The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales (Oxford Books of Prose)Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2001-11-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $49.88
The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, Book 3)by Stephen King
Penguin Audio; Published: 2003-08-26; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $149.99
![Thinner [UNABRIDGED] Image](/images/Thinner-UNABRIDGED-0140862668-X.jpg){kind=small}
Thinner [UNABRIDGED]by Stephen King
Penguin Audio; Published: 1996-09-01; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
The Crow: Temple of Nightby S P. Somtow
Harper Paperbacks; Published: 1999-11-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops:
Brains: A Zombie Memoirby Robin Becker
Eos; Published: 2010-05-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.25
Price in other shops:
The Strain LP: Book One of The Strain Trilogyby Guillermo Del Toro, Chuck Hogan
HarperLuxe; Published: 2009-06-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.45
Price in other shops:
Prince of Darknessby Barbara Michaels
HarperTorch; Published: 2005-04-26; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.64
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Dracula (Norton Critical Editions)by Bram Stoker
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 1996-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.94
The Children of Menby P.D. James
Vintage; Published: 2006-05-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.11
Price in other shops:
The Haunting of Hill House (Penguin Classics)by Shirley Jackson
Penguin Classics; Published: 2006-11-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.74
Price in other shops:
A Canticle for Leibowitzby Walter M. Miller Jr.
Bantam Spectra; Published: 1984-06-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.97
Price in other shops:
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Warby Max Brooks
Three Rivers Press; Published: 2007-10-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.38
Price in other shops:
Oryx and Crakeby Margaret Atwood
Anchor; Published: 2004-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.80
Price in other shops:
Drain: A Novelby Davis Schneiderman
Triquarterly; Published: 2010-06-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $17.15
Price in other shops:
Separate Kingdoms: Stories (P.S.)by Valerie Laken
Harper Perennial; Published: 2011-03-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.79
Price in other shops:
Alas, Babylonby Pat Frank
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2005-07-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.67
Price in other shops:
Hell Houseby Richard Matheson
Tor Books; Published: 1999-10-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.90
Price in other shops: