In Memoriam (Part 2-end)

The other hero who left this world I didn't find out until a full day after it had happened.

Around the same time as Michael's death, I enrolled myself into a mailing club that scored me five books for the price of one. (They were basically mass market paperback novels that were ballooned into hardcover versions.) The only catch was that, once enrolled, you had to buy another book at full price within 12 months or you would be charged for the "free" books.

While the selections in this mailer were pretty thin, I sighed and absent-mindedly checked the box next to I Am Legend | Hell House by Richard Matheson. The only thing I knew about I Am Legend was it was a movie that Will Smith was in, having never seen it. I might as well read the book right?
When I received the box in the mail, I kind of turned-up my nose as I pulled each book out of the box: Where was my mind at when I ordered these?

I skimmed the back cover of the Matheson novel and there was a blurb from Stephen King: "I think the author who influenced me the most as a writer was Richard Matheson."

Woah.

What high praise! The king of horror fiction lists this guy as his number one inspiration?
I couldn't wait to tear into it. And the opening lines struck me hard: "On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back."

Who are they? Why is sunset an important time? Why do I feel this creeping sense of dread with this opening paragraph? The story continues...creeping like an undetected intruder in your mind...sneaking up on you and launching itself into you when you least expect it. It drags you down through the harrowing account of Robert Neville's life as the last man on earth since a disease has turned the rest of the world into bloodthirsty monsters. He slowly loses his mind as he realizes he is truly alone in the world, alone against the vampire hordes that roam the earth when the sun goes down.

This book is the uncle of all vampire novels, partly inspired by Dracula by Bram Stoker, this book is the finest vampire novel I've ever read...Hell, it's THE finest novel I've ever read. It's not a vampire novel that deals with a whacked out teenaged girl falling in love with a handsome sparkling young man who is 10x her age and all that teenage-focused fluff that came with it.

It's a brutal, unapologetic novel, carrying a bleak message but also contains glimmers of hope. Humanity...A vampire novel with, no pun intended, a bleeding heart. The line is never drawn...who is the real monster? The man who is the only one left of his kind, surviving by hunting the members of a new race? Or the new race that thirsts for the last man's blood? Do we fear what we don't understand? Should we? ("Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.")

There is SO much to this novel and Robert Neville is a painful man to follow because you feel his utter isolation, you are stuck in his home, his painfully empty home, eating dinner with him as the vampires cry from outside his house, scratching at the walls night after night. ("Inside the record played. Outside the vampires waited.")

It's so tragic, his desire to connect with something from the world that existed before, he even reduces himself to begging a wild dog for companionship ("He had such a terrible yearning to love something again, and the dog was such a beautiful ugly dog.” )

He spends most of his time reading, learning anything that he can through what the thinkers had the foresight to leave behind before the world fell apart. Devouring science and philosophy with equal relish, he wonders about what his fate and the fate of the rest of the world would be/was like  ("To die... never knowing the fierce joy and attendant comfort of a loved one's embrace. To sink into that hideous coma, to sink then into death and, perhaps, return to sterile, awful wanderings. All without knowing what it was to love and be loved. That was a tragedy more terrible than becoming a vampire.")

The open ended scene of the novel is as equally frustrating as it is uplifting, and sneeringly cocky as we are forced to confront the Boogeyman in all his terrifying glory.

You can't really go anywhere without encountering something he has touched...from early episodes of Star Trek to Will Smith movies (I Am Legend) to Kevin Bacon films (Stir of Echoes) to Christopher Reeve (Somewhere in Time). As well as NUMEROUS episodes of Twilight Zone ("There's Something on the Wing!" ) The midnight scares of the Trilogy of Terror films which included his insane Zuni fetish doll from his story "Prey" whose antagonist has much more sinister plans in mind for whoever wakes his spirit.

His stories serve to shock and scare as "The Dress of White Silk" which I don't quite understand despite numerous readings, but Anne Rice has said it was this story that made her want to become a writer.

They also serve as nasty little morality tales. "Button Button" (filmed by Richard Kelly as THE BOX and also a classic Twilight Zone episode) deals with a family who receives a box with a button and are told that if they push a button, they will receive $10,000 and someone they don't know will die.

"A Fluorish of Strumpets" displays what can happen to a good marriage when you allow fantasies of other partners to grow in your mind.

Though I have not read everything he's written just yet, so far his crowning achievement for me has been his novel WHAT DREAMS MAY COME (Ignore the awful Robin Williams movie.) This novel was so strong and deeply written and felt that it managed to make me question everything I once believed about life after death, heaven and hell.

It's about a man and his wife that die in an accident and while the man discovers the joys of Heaven and the afterlife in general, the wife ends up in hell. Yet there love is strong, and the man braves hell to find his wife so that they can be reunited and prove whether or not, true love conquers all.

Once I finished reading WHAT DREAMS MAY COME. My entire body was shivering uncontrollably, everything was so beautifully written. The idea that Heaven being a place where all of your desires and dreams were fulfilled and satisfied. And hell being the place where you were forced to witness the negative affects that your decisions in life had on others, a place where you experienced no pleasure, only a sense of complete failure and depression. (“What condemnation could possibly be more harsh than one’s own, when self-pretense is no longer possible?”)

Mr. Matheson offers one of the greatest love stories ever written while tying it up in a frame through which he explains his personal beliefs about life after death in a way that doesn't hammer you over the head, that explains the world, the characters, the story, but at the same time makes you question everything you've ever heard about the afterlife.

I, like the great Stephen King, consider Richard Matheson to be  my biggest inspiration in terms of writing. The legacy he leaves behind on the literary world is indelible. And while I know that I will never be of the same caliber as him, I'm not going to give up my own mission. ("We've forgotten much. How to struggle, how to rise to dizzy heights and sink to unparalleled depths. We no longer aspire to anything. Even the finer shades of despair are lost to us. We've ceased to be runners. We plod from structure to conveyance to employment and back again. We live within the boundaries that science has determined for us. The measuring stick is short and sweet. The full gamut of life is a brief, shadowy continuum that runs from gray to more gray. The rainbow is bleached. We hardly know how to doubt anymore.")

I close this by saying, there are many people in this world. Having heroes is an important thing for it gives you something to strive for, fight for. For some of us it's our parents, politicians, teachers, celebrities...for me it was a much-beleaguered pop star and an 87-year-old writer.

I am thankful for the time they graced this earth to offer me the inspiration I needed to take steps toward becoming who I am. I will continue to strive to bring respect and honor to their legacies and spirits.

Rest in Peace, gentleman.

D2

“Thank you...for gracing my life with your lovely presence, for adding the sweet measure of your soul to my existence.”
― Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come