like its kind of frustrating to me how people will talk about italians history of being racialized in america as if it was like. this quirky oddity we stumbled into. how strange! how unnatural! that WASP americans wouldn't consider europeans white! its used as proof that whiteness is a construct, and it is proof of that, but when the takeaway is more "old timey racism was so absurd people were racist towards europeans, instead of only the obviously nonwhite people!" you end up decontextualizing everything in a way i. do not like.
like racist criminology was fathered by a northern italian who specifically applied his theories to southern italians. if you read the shit people wrote during the unification of italy, it was straight up racist imperialism, with the explicit goal of "civilizing" the "primitive" southerners:
As the northern bourgeoisie crafted a national identity from its history of medieval city-states, the Renaissance, and the “glory” of the Roman Empire, it sought to discipline the insurrectionary and “barbarous” South. Many of the government officials who traveled throughout the South following national unification commented on southern Italians’ supposed racial inferiority. The senator Eugenio Faina, for example, noted that Sicily was unlike other regions in that it was “inhabited by rough people with primitive instincts.” As a result, the Italian state confronted southern resistance movements with martial law, violence, and by stigmatizing peasants “as criminal members of a racially inferior people who preferred the superstitions of religion to civiltà italiana.” As one government official wrote in 1861, “What barbarism! Some Italy! This is Africa: the Bedouin are the flower of civil virtue compared to these peasants.” Civilization, northern officials believed, would have to be imposed on southern peasants at gunpoint— “otherwise the tumour represented by the Southerners’ behavior would grow and infect the rest of the nation.”
Government officials found support for these views from the new school of positivist anthropologists, including Cesare Lombroso (1841–1936), Guglielmo Ferrero (1871–1942), Alfredo Niceforo (1876–1960), Giuseppe Sergi (1841–1936), and Enrico Ferri (1856–1929). Together these men founded the field of criminology, providing “scientific proof” to support the ruling elite’s beliefs in biological evolution and racial determinism. In particular, they advanced an argument that supported what many northern political leaders suspected: the darker “Mediterranean” southerners were not only racially distinct from the lighter “Aryan” northerners; they possessed “inferior African blood” and demonstrated “a moral and social structure reminiscent of primitive and even quasibarbarian times, a civilization quite inferior.” Southern Italy’s history of Greek, Roman, Norman, African, and Arab invasions, and its location as a crossroads between Africa, Europe, and the East, they argued, had given shape to “a region that is a priori condemned to perpetual inferiority.” [...]
By the late nineteenth century, Lombroso and his colleagues in Italy produced hundreds of studies to support this ideology, arguing that the pathology of the “savage woman” was located in her anatomy. Their publications often included elaborate drawings that compared the “sexual anomalies” in the “primitive genitalia” of Italian prostitutes to African women. In popular culture, these connections were often extended to all southern Italian peasant women. Travel writers routinely argued, for example, that southern Italian women “seem to favour that ideal of the Hottentot Venus which you may study in the Jardin des Plantes; they are decidedly centripetal.” The Italian ruling classes also drew these kinds of connections between Africans and southern Italians to justify two simultaneous military invasions—one in southern Italy and the other in Africa. In 1890, the same year that the North launched a brutal campaign to suppress antinationalist sentiment among peasants, Italy prepared to conquer Eritrea and join Europe in the colonization of Africa. One contemporary observer noted, “They [southern Italian rebels] kill and rape like beasts thirsty for blood and booty and not men created in the image of God.” Similarly, a government official conducting an inquiry into the southern resistance movement noted that, “in short, this is a country which ought to be destroyed or at least depopulated and its inhabitants sent to Africa to get themselves civilized!”
The elite considered the anarchist movement, in Italy and abroad, to be the most dangerous form of political rebellion. This fear developed not only in response to the willingness of some anarchists to utilize assassination and bombing as political tools but also because adherents sought to overthrow the state and capitalism and thus attracted “a sizeable and militant following among the Italian working classes until the late 1920s.” The anarchist movement took hold in Naples and Sicily in the 1860s as a result of government repression and spread quickly because of its compatibility with peasant resistance traditions. Once the island was placed under martial law after the uprisings in the 1890s, those anarchists who did not languish in prison went underground and into exile. Most went to the Americas to nurture a transnational movement in Buenos Aires, São Paulo, New York City, and Paterson, New Jersey, among other locales.
To the criminologists, like most of the Italian elite, anarchism was merely a form of brigandage. Thus, they considered the popularity of anarchism as indicative of the inherent criminality and primitive nature of the southern peasantry. In this way, they helped “to formulate the definition of the political subject by elaborating ever more closely the criteria for political exclusion.” Enrico Ferri, for example, declared that it was possible “to delineate good idealist revolutionaries and sick rebels”—one struggled for the nation, the other against it. Lombroso linked the Sicilian peasant rebellions of the 1890s with race, explaining that the epicenter of the movement was in the towns surrounding Palermo, because it was here that “the rapacious Berber and Semite tribes had their earliest and longest-lasting settlements and where anatomical types, customs, politics, and morality retain a clear Arab imprint.” He pointed out that “the Arabs are a race of greedy conquerors who are hospitable but cruel, intelligent but superstitious, and always restlessly in movement. Their blood must play a role in fomenting spontaneous and implacable insurrections and perpetuating brigandage.” Consistent with his overall ideas about female criminals, Lombroso viewed southern Italian women rebels as the most abhorrent, noting “everyone agrees that the few violent women far exceed men in their ferocity and cruelty.” In this way, the Italian criminologists used political radicals as a “foil for defining the boundaries of nationhood and the shared characteristics of ‘normal’ citizens.” Moreover, they offered “a scientific way to understand the failures of unification and a blueprint for disciplining groups that resisted integration into the new national culture.”
(from Living the Revolution: Italian Womens Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880-1945 by Jennifer Guglielmo)
and Italy shipped its homegrown racism right over to the US and Canada. & i think something similar can be said for how people act the same way with racism against the Irish in the US, as if its not directly connected to the colonization of Ireland and the oppression of the Irish people in their homelands.
and this is just scratching the surface of this topic, but it feels like the result of internalizing the specifically USAmerican white supremacist worldview, that the natural state for European people is imperial colonial whiteness before any ethnic identity, to the extent that the idea of Europeans being conquered / colonized / racialized feels unnatural - separate from whether or not you think blatantly racist ideas are good, you still think its natural for Europeans to be the conquerors even if its bad. you still think there is a fundamental whiteness that really exists, its just that its been poorly defined by avowed racists.
that sense that people you are taught to see as white were once blatantly racialized & that being unnatural may be used to introduce people to the construction of whiteness, but if that feeling isn't ever used to radicalize people further on resisting white supremacy, then what good is it actually doing? how can we discuss the racialization of italians in the US without discussing the imperial violence and racist ideology constructed in italy against southern italians, and in europe more broadly? how can we discuss the assimilation into whiteness of italian-americans without the broader context of escape from poverty and oppression, the anti-social(ist) violence of the First Red Scare and how it targeted anti-racist leftist Italian organizers including many women? how the bloody pursuit of whiteness and imperial dominance is an intergenerational cycle of violence, one southern italians on both sides of the atlantic have participated in?
never related to authors being like "childhood is such a blessed innocent time", catch me with that jane eyre shit like "such dread as children only can feel" and "I then sat with my doll on my knee til the fire got low, glancing round occasionally to make sure nothing worse than myself haunted the shadowy room"
"Adults can change their circumstances; children cannot. Children are powerless, and in difficult situations they are the victims of every sorrow and mischance and rage around them, for children feel all of these things but without any of the ability that adults have to change them. Whatever can take a child beyond such circumstances, therefore, is an alleviation and a blessing."
I find this passage from the Mary Oliver essay "Staying Alive" very poignant and true.
i mean that tweet is simply not what's happening here. circe is attempting to coerce not only sex but affection from odysseus; odysseus reminds her that she may want to pretend that this relationship is one of equals, but she holds all the power -- after all, she's transformed his companions into pigs, depriving them of humanity and him of their aid. (the translator also left out a fairly critical θεά [goddess] from line 344, emphasizing odysseus's helplessness here.). the only way he can mitigate her power over him is to ask for the oath. and the reading bugs me because i do often get grumpy about surface readings but also because odysseus is a hero who is often stripped of agency, and i think it's interesting that many modern readers don't or can't see that. this is not odysseus saying "she may be evil but she's hot," it's him saying "i can't say no, so at least don't pretend that i can love you."
I won't publish the ask (they asked me not to), but I thought I'd still answer it publicly!
no, royalties are not a significant source of income for most authors. if you wrote something like Project Hail Mary, then absolutely, the royalties would be substantial! but that's like winning the lottery. Ryan Gosling is not starring in the movie adaption of most books.
when you sell a book to a publisher, you get what's called 'an advance against royalties'. it's usually split into multiple parts, so you might get one third for the initial sale, one third for the final revised manuscript, and one third on the publishing date.
an advance against royalties is the publisher saying "we believe you will eventually make X amount in royalties, so here it is ahead of time." and then you don't actually see any money from royalties until the advance is paid off. most books do not make enough in royalties to pay off the advance (I have two children's books and one fiction book, and have yet to see royalties for any of them).
advances are still great, but you need to make them stretch! for instance, last year my net income was about 30k Canadian (21k USD), which is fantastic when you consider that I mostly made it through writing. but I'm definitely not a millionaire. I can live off my writing (not trying to undersell that!) but I'll probably remain in a low income bracket for the foreseeable future.
this isn't meant to discourage anyone from seeking out writing as a career! however, there is a reason that many authors have alternate jobs with writing on the side. or, you know, rich spouses.
this isn't me making a fuss about pirating (I've pirated way too many shows to run my mouth on that lmao), but there IS actually a financial incentive to having people buy your books!
buying books shows the publisher that they can make money off you, which means they're more likely to give you advances for future books. and advances are what authors live off (if they don't have a side job). that's why I always push pre-orders so hard! you have to be a racehorse worth betting on, or else they send you to the glue factory....
if I can offer one alternative to pirating: asking your library to stock the book also helps authors, and doesn't cost anything. the only downside is the patience required.
OOPS yes, @stjohnstarling makes a good point! everything I'm saying is from the perspective of traditional publishing, but it's a very different game if you're a self-published author
I will also add that this is why pre-orders can make a HUGE difference to authors - because if there's enough hype, publishers can pull more levers to build that momentum and reach more readers to help authors earn out their advance faster.
Trad publishing contracts person here to co-sign everything in this post. If you want to support an author you really like but are broke as hell, then you can buy their book when it's discounted, buy it used, borrow it from a friend, or use the library. The first step as an author is to get your book read, not to get it bought. The important thing for you as a reader is to spread the word about how good the book is so the publisher knows the audience is there even if sales aren't spectacular. Piracy of books, especially books from small/indie publishers, means the publisher will print fewer copies of their next book, and sometimes if it's an ongoing series the next books in the series will be canceled, either to be replaced by a book with a different premise or they'll cancel the contract for the next books entirely. The "hack" where you buy the ebook or audiobook and then return it for a credit also takes money directly out of the author's pocket since those payment/royalty systems are set up differently than if you were to buy a book from a bookstore and return it. In that situation the bookstore absorbs that loss, but returning the ebook means the money gets clawed back from the author's advance or royalties and they'll have to earn that back.
Pre-orders and Amazon/Goodreads reviews are used as a gauge by publishers to predict how many copies they are likely to sell and therefore how many copies they want to print. They want to sell most of what they print rather than print too many and end up with a bunch of copies no one wants that they'll have to pay to store or sell at a huge discount or recycle, which is what happens to unsold books. Most publishers have a limited amount of money and manpower to dedicate to any particular book, so if there's a book building up a lot of buzz, that'll give them reason to put their resources towards promoting that book to get a better return on their investment. If the publisher can't make money off a book or author they'll dump them.
Generally, every aspect of the publishing and book industries, including writers, agents, publishing employees, librarians, and booksellers are overworked and underpaid. Unless you're Stephen King or already famous, you don't make money off of books. We do it for sheer love of the game.
Use your library! Publishers have a whole department dedicated to selling their books to libraries and the author gets part of those sales. Increasing circulation of library resources means the libraries can make a better case to get more money from the government to buy more books that you want to read and they're a place to hang out for free. Libraries are the best gift humanity gave itself, use yours as often as possible.
I sometimes remember Anno Dracula when I go here— Looking back, the books and graphic novels are not good or fun. And none of the featured vampires feel like themselves, do they? I get changing characters to flesh them out, but if only the names remain then what’s the point? The human main characters are more interesting. The plots are mid, and for all its gore, nudity and “grown-up” posturing, it is ultimately wishy-washy.
Because AD relies on classic horror, yet the author’s chosen vampires can opt out of the uncomfy parts. For instance, Kate Reed (scrapped Stoker character) feels a sexualized temptation around blood after she turns, but she resists it. She feeds on packed blood snacks, privately, as she finds any public feeding shameful. I couldn’t help noticing that female vampires who sexily feed on randos and enjoy it end up murdered. In a sequel, Kostaki sheds his entire identity, abstains from blood forever, and represses his dark nature which he loathes with a vegetarian substitute. Literally. Lord Ruthven is a harmless gloat. Geneviève Dieudonné fights evil and feeds only ethically and sparingly. Unlike the Carpathian vampires, she does not turn into beasts or go feral. Instead, her “purer” French royal vampiric bloodline gives her greater control— which is why she easily defeats them. She hates problematic “Truly Dead” vampires who give into “The Red Thirst,” feeds in tiny drops from her willing partner, legally, and she patronizes blood banks. But. Why use classic vampire mains if you want “ethical vampires”? They are from gothic fiction. Just make an immortal superhero OC with a silver allergy fighting baddies. I love the idea of a literary vampireverse, learning about the old stories, their influence, their historical contexts, and potential ways to adapt/retell/mix them. But AD is not good. ...I have feelings about this series clearly
my greatest anno dracula Hot Take is that it doesn't deserve the title of "ultimate literary vampire crossover". In fact, it cares so little about any of the literary vampire pack that I hesitate to call it a literary vampire crossover at all. That's not the story Kim Newman wanted to write; it's not the story he's interested in telling. He got the idea to write a story in which Jack Seward and Jack the Ripper are the same person, and constructed all of his shoddy worldbuilding around propping up that premise.
unorganized ranting under the cut; cw for discussion of xenophobia, misogyny, disordered eating, homophobia, and also me losing my cool and yelling a lot
i knew about a bunch of the blood drinking stuff but this bit with kate reed is new to me. it's funny how for as edgy a series as this clearly wants to be, it's too chicken to make any of its vampire protagonists morally gray in regards to blood drinking. like damn, man, if i wanted vampires with nothing i'd go read twilight, and then i wouldn't have to feel my blood pressure rise another two points every time kostaki's name appears on the page attached to a character who is as much his opposite as it is possible to get. but the actual lore around the blood drinking is batshit. apparently copstaki (i refuse to call newman's character anything else) finds out that he actually becomes stronger when he abstains from blood. at the time i learned about this i was like "what is this, some nofap shit?" given the detail about kate reed, apparently yes???
my biggest gripe with all this stupid shit around the blood drinking, though, is the way it evolves throughout the story, because it is initially framed as a physical need—you know, the way it is in 19th century vampire fiction—before copstaki discovers the magic of nofap. hold on where's the quote
As a vampire elder, he discovered he grew stronger through starvation. Dracula's get knew something they never talked of. They drank human blood not because they needed to, but because they wanted to. Needing was no shame. Wanting was weakness.
I HATE THIS FRAMING. SO MUCH. oh my god oh my FUCKING god if you are going to tell a vampire story in which blood drinking is framed as a temptation/addiction rather than a physical need, YOU NEED TO WRITE IT THAT WAY FROM THE START. otherwise, what you have written is a story in which having an eating disorder is framed as the morally correct choice.
also, much smaller gripe, but "needing was no shame" is a stupid cop-out. incredible amounts of privilege and entitlement shining through. plenty of needs are shameful. needing to hurt other human beings in order to survive is shameful. that is, dare i say, The Whole Point. but rather than tackle the moral complexity of that and take all the FREE CHARACTER ANGST that results from having to do something awful in order to survive, he just has his protagonist conveniently discover that the defining feature of vampirism is, in fact, optional, which allows him to sort every character into Morally Pure Abstinent Paragons and Icky Degenerate Blood Perverts and avoid all those nasty moral and ethical quandaries, because god forbid this work of horror vampire fiction have moral grayness in it.
SPEAKING OF "DEGENERACY" kim newman hates eastern europeans so fucking much it's actually insane. Oh your Carpathian characters are all more savage and bestial and prone to "degeneration" while your English and French characters have "purer" bloodlines and stronger minds and greater self-control? Why don't you start comparing their fucking skull shapes while you're at it. Jesus Christ. And of course in this story the Icky Degenerate Easterners stage a violent takeover of England and the Heroic English Resistance must bravely fight back against their savage oppressors. Not only is this story more racist than the original Dracula, it's in direct competition with The Beetle.
oh and don't forget about the misogyny!! welcome to my Dracula fanfic with cameos from other literary vampires where we simply MUST conform 100% to the strict letter of Carmilla canon, no bringing her back from the dead, it is simply impossible, the book said she died so she's dead. Oh Kostaki? Yeah he's 400 years old and a cop. So instead of Carmilla who do we get? Her mother, a formidable, mysterious, and manipulative vampire who was left alive at the end of the book? Lmao no, Random Male Relative. What about Clarimonde? Well, she's not in this series. Kim will reference her name one (1) time in the title of a play, though, just so you know he COULD have put her in and specifically chose not to. Female suffering, framed through a titillating lens, is milked for shock value (it's not just all the violently murdered sex workers, it's shit like dracula parading queen victoria around on a leash like a dog, supposedly treating her like the rest of his vampire "harem" even though that is extremely not how the weird sisters are treated in Dracula proper). But everyone bends over backwards to give him brownie points for including Kate Reed, even though nothing I've heard about her character so far gives me any reason to believe he's taken her in a direction worth reading.
To bring this back around Kim's (lack of) use of literary vampires, he clearly doesn't want to, or at least he doesn't care about them one way or another. Varney doesn't appear; he gets a couple of dismissive offhand mentions and that's it. Kostaki, despite what you've heard, does not appear either. I don't know who the fuck that bootlicking loser is in Newman's book, but it sure isn't Kostaki. Gorcha, Azzo, and Vardalek are all unrecognizable, because Kim assumes no one in his audience will have actually read their stories to call him on his mischaracterization—or else, again, he doesn't care. I will draw and quarter him for what he did to Vardalek. I don't even really want to defend Vardalek but what Kim did with him is beyond the pale. The entire concept of the "Carpathian Guard" is laughable and spits in the face of every character he ropes into it, but especially Vardalek, who is not remotely Carpathian by any stretch of the imagination. Why is he in there, then? Homophobia. Vardalek is the series' only gay character; he's also a child predator (a description which, frankly, does not even begin to describe his portrayal in the series, but I'd really rather not get into that topic). Kim also doesn't care about the lore of ANY of these books, INCLUDING DRACULA ITSELF. We've talked about the blood thing, but you know what else? You know what kills vampires in this worthless hack of a series? SUNLIGHT AND SILVER. Basically the ONLY two things in modern vampire lore that have ZERO basis in ANY literary work. Because fuck you, that's why. The series is also full of references to a bunch of other, more recent pop culture vampires, as well as a bunch of non-vampire literature cameos; it seems like all this shit is only there to score points with readers who get excited every time a story references another story.
In conclusion, if you want a book which mixes together a bunch of literary vampires, read Vivian Shaw's Strange Practice.
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