The Summoning, Bentley Little

11/01/04

Because this novel is about the Chinese conception of the vampire, Western ideas about nosferatu don't work.  The cup hu girngsi is immune to crosses, garlic, and holy water because it isn't a Christian, and it isn't even human. No one knows where it came from, or why it must drink the blood (or fluids) from all living things.

Unlike other, older vampire tales, the nosferatu isn't contained within a particular cultural mythology. It's not even contained within any Chinese mythologies.  Instead, it feeds on the human need to impose order on what it doesn't understand, and thus appears as something different to every person. For Reverend Wheeler and his fellow believers, the cup hu girngsi is Christ come back to earth, and they're able to bend Christianity to accommodate the creature's existence. For others, the creature takes on the form of other things believed to have died but capable of resurrection: the Phoenix, Elvis, the Laughing Man, La Verona, a long dead child molester convicted of attacking someone's daughter, and thus living in her consciousness forever.. Perhaps even the term cup hu girngsi is inadequate to describe this creature. Not every thing May-Ling knows about it is correct. She isn't so much working from any superior cultural knowledge, but from her own trial and error developed years ago when she confronted a similar creature in China.

Why would a vampire want to set up shop in a small town? There's less chance of being discovered since a small town doesn't have the resources to fight anything as much as a big town would. Also, the remote setting allows the creature to avoid detection. Big city investigations aren't going to happen here. Also, readers can more easily suspend disbelief in a small town setting. On the one hand, small towns are supposed to be idyllic settings for life, where no one locks doors at night and everyone knows his or her neighbors. On the other hand, they can operate outside of the law (think about all of those small town speed traps where it's futile to appeal any speeding ticket you might get), and because they're so remote, it's more difficult to document the strange things that go on there.  There's a reason the federal government, according to popular cultural myth, chose to keep those alien bodies in Roswell, New Mexico.

This novel is a validation of knowledge from Other cultures and from American popular culture. Knowledge from these sources proves more helpful in fighting the vampire than is official, academic Knowledge. Ancient Chinese wisdom and American popular culture combine to rid Rio Verde of the vampire. When various characters consult the library (where Knowledge is stored) for books on vampires, they find mostly academic tomes concerned with interpreting the vampire as it is found in literature.  May-Ling's past experiences and information gleaned from vampire films prove much more helpful. Also useful is Di Lo Ling Gum, May-Ling's and Sue's second sense or special intuition. It's not too surprising that Di Lo Ling Gum is possessed only by women in this novel. This sort of knowledge is generally associated with the feminine, and seen in opposition to more masculine, scientific, rational Knowledge. In horror, people get in trouble when they fail to heed their own intuition, whether or not they possess Di Lo Ling Gum.  When Corrie attends services at Wheeler's church, she feels fearful, but ignores these feelings because 1) they don't make rational sense and 2) the vampire is able to make people ignore their gut feelings.

Anti-patriarchal ways of knowing are what save people in horror because they are dealing with something outside of their own experience, and if they are to survive, they must develop new ways of understanding the world. To survive the monster, one must move from the received to the constructed knowledge stage of development. Received knowledge operates on a top down model, where a certain learned few disseminate Knowledge to the many who are supposed to accept it unquestioningly. Unfortunately, most public schools operate on this model. Learning is equated with the ability to memorize facts. To develop as an individual, one must move to the constructed knowledge stage, which requires the learner to incorporate the received knowledge with what s/he has observed. This is when one is able to form and support opinions with confidence, and doesn't necessarily feel intimidated by the ideas of others. Alas, patriarchal culture tends to encourage women to remain in the received knowledge stage, making their voices less authoritative (old wives' tales, women's intuition). Often, the knowledge of non-western cultures is also seen as being exotic and less authoritative.

The vampire encourages people to revert to this received knowledge stage with its dependence on hierarchy.  The vampire's presence makes the town's residents increasingly more racist, and their anti-Asian sentiments serve its own ends. The Asians possess knowledge which can destroy the vampire, so it is in this creature's best interests to discredit the messenger.  The townspeople also become increasingly more religious in such a way that requires them to see themselves as part of an elite group with the right to control everyone else. This too serves the vampire's ends. Now the vampire can get people to make sacrifices to it rather than having to go out and hunt food.

Other web sites of interest:

Asian Vampire Folklore and its Influence on the Summoning