Finished With The Dead

I finished reading my decidedly rare hardcover edition of Dawn of the Dead by George Romero and Susanna Sparrow.  The movie, as many of you realize, is a classic.  How well does the book hold up?  I am loathe to say this, but in this case the movie was actually better than the book.

The book stays fairly true to the movie.  To find all the differences, I'd have to back and watch the film again.  I last saw it about four years ago, but I've watched it about a dozen times.  Any differences in the book didn't seem to matter.  What did matter was that I had no emotional connection with the characters and all the social critiques of the movie which were laid out in images were laid out in the book in words (obviously), and that is where it failed.  Instead of letting readers draw their own conclusions about consumerism and zombies in the mall, as well as our protagonists actions while holed up in such a place, it spelled them out.  Black and white.  All on the page. 

I like zombie fiction probably a little less than the average zombie fan.  I find that the movies work better as the visuals are what cinch the deal for me.  Zombies are, no pun intended, too lifeless to hold my attention on the page.  The scope of their terror is lacking, but can be well-displayed on a film screen where their stages of rot take over for their personality.  For myself, zombie fiction has to have strong living characters.  Dawn of the Dead, the film version, made the living and dead equally matched in various ways.  It worked to captivate viewers like few other zombie films have.  The book version of the same story simply accentuated the flaws.  Both the zombies and living came across as flat, with the exception of Peter, whom we still never really get to know.  Usually that is a flaw of a film since a film can't go into the background like a book.  Here the book never tried to get too deep into Peter's backstory, and that was a damn shame.

Books and movies are two different mediums that do different things.  They each tell their story in their own way.  A movie done as a book doesn't work, and, as we can plainly see here, a book written as a movie leads to nothing but disappointment.


Mandatory FTC Disclaimer:  Clicking on the Dawn of the Dead affiliate link and buying the movie will earn me a commission.  You would be buying the original and not the remake, which has its own strengths, but is nowhere near as good as the classic film.  I did not provide a link to the book, and I'm sure as hell not selling mine.  I may never read it again, but when the zombie invasion comes, I can barter it for safety from all those FTC ghouls.  Also, that book was not a review copy.  It came straight from my extensive library ... now approaching 1,000 books.

Dead With Envy

What's pretty damn rare and has George Romero's name on the cover?  The hardcover Dawn of the Dead book.  I bought my copy around 1980, I believe.  Never even cracked it open until this week.  (I also have a paperback copy of Night of the Living Dead which I have yet to read.) 

When I moved to CA I actually feared this book was lost, and never having ever seen another copy for sale anywhere, I pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I would never get to read it.  As to why I never read it when I bought it, that I can't speak to.  I have plenty of books I haven't gotten around to yet.  Those fears were put to rest, however, when I received a shipment of my stuff that had been in storage back East, and this was on it.  Oh joyous day.

I'm not very far into the book yet, but the opening chapters which detail the chaos surrounding the television station (if you remember the movie, you remember that opening scene quite well) and projects is done remarkably well and adds a lot of light to the characters in Romero's classic film. 

George Romero's name, obviously, is the draw on the cover, but he co-wrote the book with Susanna Sparrow.  Honestly, I can see Sparrow being the one who did most of the work based off Romero's ideas.  I haven't delved into a history of the book, but I'd be surprised if it were the opposite way around.  The book is too tightly focused to be from the mind of a director.

It's too early to tell if the book will hold up as well as the movie does.  I can say that at the time it was written (1978), zombies were not all the rage and I don't think they were all that used in horror fiction.  Romero, as is well documented, changed the way our culture views these walking undead.  Countless people have taken inspiration from him and his creations.  The book can't take that credit, but so far it's turning out to be one hell of a read.

(And for all you horror fans eager to get your hands on this -- no, I'm not selling my copy.)