Gothics, vampires, and and l'écriture-femme

The Vampire Tapestry

by Suzy McKee Charnas

In December 2001 a group of us on Litalk-l began a reading and discussion of Suzy McKee Charnas's The Vampire Tapestry (1980). We were very lucky as she joined us for our conversation, and she has given me permission to put all the postings we wrote about her novel on the Net.

Contributors included: Bryan Alexander, Ines Barg, Laura Jean Carroll, Elvira Casal, Suzy McKee Charnas, Judy Geater, Susan Hoyle, Penny Klein, Ellen Moody, Bethany Nowviski, Allison O, Penny Richards, Angela Richardson, Mario Rups

• Introduction: Vampire and Ghost Stories Defined and Distinguished, Allusions in Vampire Tapestry, What some of us have read.
• Dec 9th: Part 1: 'The Ancient Mind at Work'; Katje; Anne Cranny Francis, "On The Vampire Tapestry"; Vampire Tapestry and The Great Divorce: Why the American South or Southwest?; An Old Hawk; Katja de Groot and Jessica Lange as Rob Roy's woman; The Racism Angle; Why Read Gothic?; Weyland; Katje; South Africa.
• Dec 16th: Part 2: 'The Land of Lost Content'; Kinky Reversals; A.E. Housman poem; 'The Land of Lost Content'; Homosexuality, The Vampire and the Boy; Unicorn Tapestries.
• Dec 23rd: Part 3: 'Unicorn Tapestry'; Cluny; The Lady and the Unicorn; General Commentary (from Class Lecture, English 202: Gothics and Ghosts, Romance and the Supernatural").
• Dec 30th: Part 4: 'A Musical Interlude'; Art as Vampire/mediation; East/West; Landscape, War, Jacobean Revenge Tragedy; Academic Satire; Christopher Frayling's Vampyres.
• Jan 6th: Part 5: 'The Last of Dr Weyland'; Pre-AIDS; Local and Contemporary Politics; Our natural business lies in escaping; Weyland a Survival-Self; "the lure of the great outlaw; Little Explicit Violence (a remarkably repressed vampire; could even make it through a Jane Austen novel without attracting undue attention to himself, without disturbing it); Brown and Americana; Against Critical Reading; Negative Comments and "daring to get dirty"; Gothic Fiction Reactionary.