I Am Legend - Richard Matheson

I AM LEGEND - RICHARD MATHESON

The last man alive in a world of vampires, and what could this be a metaphor for, I wonder? 'The strength of the vampire is that no-one will believe in him' as Dr Van Helsing said in regard to Dracula. So what is it in our modern age that we refuse to believe in? That we refuse to believe is real until finally once its swallowed us whole and it's too late? Well, the possible choices are manifold really, aren't they? The horses are on the track.

I'm late coming to the show in reading Richard Matheson's I Am Legend but in being so it's very easy and possibly much easier to see the influence this book - written in 1954 - has had upon culture. For a start, it's obviously the genesis for the whole vampire genre being reimagined along with the idea of the modern-day zombie, right up to Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later saga. In fact, I'd say practically every book or film I can think of post-1960 that involves infection or the living dead owes a debt to Richard Matheson.

As Stephen King, one of the most famous horror writers in the world says in I Am Legend's afterword: without Matheson, he wouldn't be around; or to put it another way: Richard Matheson is as much Stephen King's father as Bessie Smith was Elvis Presley's mother.

Because of all this you might be inclined to think I Am Legend is old hat nowadays? That you've seen and read it all before? A book, however, is never labelled as being a classic for no reason and I Am Legend is indeed a classic and for very good reason. What makes it so is not only in how well-written and composed it is but in its perpetual forward motion, with each set-piece in the story upping the ante and expounding its own inner-world until the completion of a whole universe unto itself. The last page - the ending - being the final coup de grace.

I Am Legend is an excellent book.

John Serpico