Metadata

• Author: [[Richard Matheson]]
• Full Title: I Am Legend
• Category: #books
• Date: 2022-03-14

Review

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read and re-read this book. Not because it’s a huge number, but because I find it so compelling that just reading the first few pages carries me along for the first couple of chapters until I’m a significant fraction through this, admittedly short, book. And then I put it down again, without even placing a bookmark, and read something else. This time, I read it right through.

I first read/heard this book on [[Radio 4]] about ten years ago when the BBC basically broadcast the extraordinary audio-book, emphatically read by [[Robertson Dean]] in his growling, sonorous tones. I listened to most of the episodes in one go, sitting in my suitably atmospherically lit tenement kitchen in [[Ibrox]]. I’ve loved it ever since.

My recent re-read in March 2022 came immediately after I’d finished reading [[Ulysses]] for the first time. As you’d expect, that was an extremely difficult read and I needed a palate cleanser from a book I barely understood. More importantly, it was the first time I’d read it since the beginning of the pandemic – the book which deals with the loneliness and isolation that comes as a result of a global pandemic. Of vampires.

The book deals with the fantastical concept of vampires (albeit in a modern, scientifically-focused style), but treats the emotional turmoil and trauma experienced by the protagonist as a result of his isolation with a straight bat. And I’m not going to deny that these parts struck a chord with me on this re-read.

Over the pandemic, I’ve been very lucky in a lot of ways. Despite being posted overseas for the last 4 years, there’s a strong culture of support in the team. However, there were still periods when, except for on screens, I didn’t have a conversation with another person for weeks on end. The “being trapped in your own head-edness” of the novel resonated with me a lot, and I suspect it does/would with a lot of other people too.

I think it’s right to treat a work of fantasy like this seriously – books like this and science-fiction such as [[E.M. Forster]]’s [[The Machine Stops]] are perfectly constructed pieces of art which bear examination after the world’s recent encounter with forced (but necessary) isolation. The fantasy element provides just that little bit of speculative distance to provide some mental room to maneuver.

I suspect, as restrictions are eased and people return more and more to their pre-pandemic ways, that many people would take a lot from this book to usefully examine their own experience of the past two years.

Highlights

Emotion was a difficult thing to summon from the dead, though. He had spent it all and felt hollow now, without feeling. (Location 1845)