december 07 bookclub pick, i am legend by richard matheson spoilers !!!

I really enjoyed [I]I am Legend[/I], but I was very disappointed at the same time. I didn't know ahead of time that half the book consisted of short stories, so all the while, I was thinking I had plenty of book left to go, and suddenly, I turned the page to find the story ended on the last page. IMAGINE MY SURPRISE! On page 146 (I made that up), I thought I had half a book to go, and then on page 147 I realized that page 146 was the last page.

I thought he could have continued the story for quite some time, and started the story much sooner. The story itself had a lot of detail, but it was as if it was just a small fragment that was taken from a complete story and thrown in this book. It left me wanting more, but not in the good way that some other books do.

Still though...what he did include was very good. More detail and analysis later...

I too was surpised with how short the story was. There was so much time that was skipped over, I wish the story would have been twice as long. That being said I really did enjoy it. I wish that I had read it before knowing Will Smith would be Neville. I'm really hesitant about seeing the movie, because I have a feeling it won't come close to doing the book justice.
I have a few thoughts regarding why Neville didn't leave his house after he read the note that Ruth left for him. Throughout the story it is obvious that he has pretty much given up all hope, yet he keeps living, going through his routine that he established. What really keeps him going is his obsession with understanding what caused the plague, and what the plague is. When he found the dog, it opened up a glimmer of hope for him, the hope that he could possibly have a companion. When the dog dies a week after he finally gets him inside, Neville completely shuts down emotionally, he even stops drinking. He becomes almost completely logical and monotonous.
Then Ruth comes along, Neville fights to regain the humanity he has lost, and is flooded with emotion before she destroys his world. Not only is his fear confirmed that she is infected, she also takes away the mystery of the plague. All hope is finally snuffed out and he accepts that he is the last human, and waits for his fate to come.

Who knows, I might read this tomorrow and think I'm full of shit.

I hope they don't change the ending in the movie. I was happy that it ended the way it did.

Does anybody know of a reason for the years that Matheson chose to base the book in? Was it just a random date in the future? Or was there more to it than that?

[QUOTE=PGoutis01;1113179]

Thanks again for starting this.[/QUOTE]

glad i could help.. got a lot going on myself and stress keeps the thinking at bay, buried as if under a cairn

drewd, your thoughts impress me and had me wondering where youve been..

as for why he chose 1976 as a timeline..
my thoughts were that we'd been out of world war II for a few years by fifty four and the us was becoming prosperous--our most prosperous was in the early to mid sixties, but it started in the early fifties some five years after wwII

anyway, he wanted to offer a bleak future, something that was caused by the weapons of that last great war, the future effects of our decisions as a race of people

i think the reason he didnt leave his house was because he wanted to surrender himself to a higher calling, that the world needed him to. i think that what he learned from ruth was that his "humanity" is not the same as humanity is now. he feared he had changed too much to be a real human anymore, lost too much of his old, real self. so he stayed and waited to be taken in. his mind changed quickly when he saw how merciless the attacks on the others were. they enjoyed it. that bothered him, a side of humanity that should have remained died out as a culture back in the dark ages before rule and discipline and honor. he wanted to hand himself honorably over, but not to a bunch of savages, a society of hate mongers. when he met with ruth again and saw the reflection of his old humanity in her, and saw the faces of those who hated him because they dreaded him, he knew he was no longer a part of that society and gave in to the change, that he had to die before they could grow and prosper as a society. there was nothing left for him, not one single reason to live. part of the reason he didnt move into isolated hiding in the mountains. he didnt give up anything but rather, i think, knew this was what he had to do. it was his time to die, after all those who died around him, who were killed by him. it just made sense to him.
kabol

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The ony advantage of the short length is that it should lend itself better to a movie adaptation...so I do plan on seeing the movie.

I didn't see Neville's act as a sacrifice. I saw it as a realization...the realization that mankind had evolved - even if they did so consciously and artificially - and that his time had come and gone. Throughout the book we see him on this quest to survive, routed in this hope that maybe someday he would find someone else. And then he finds out that there is no one else - or if there is, they are the last of a dying breed. He simply accepts the fact that he is the past, and these new people are the present. There is no sense fighting them, because he realizes he is no longer fighting this army of evil - he is just fighting what has become the typical human inhabitants of earth. So he lets the inevitable happen.

That's how I see it...not some noble sacrifice - just the acceptance of reality.

[QUOTE=tom9d;1112524]I really enjoyed [I]I am Legend[/I], but I was very disappointed at the same time. I didn't know ahead of time that half the book consisted of short stories, so all the while, I was thinking I had plenty of book left to go, and suddenly, I turned the page to find the story ended on the last page. IMAGINE MY SURPRISE! On page 146 (I made that up), I thought I had half a book to go, and then on page 147 I realized that page 146 was the last page.[/QUOTE]

This happened to me!

Fucking hell, that was strange. Did your copy say anywhere that it was also a collection of shorts? Mine did not mention this on any covers, outside or in. I noticed an index like page that looked more like a typical list of works, in which the shorts were titled after I Am Legend. Briefly flipping through, I mistook that for a typical "Also by So-and-So" type thing.

Anyway, I thought it was perfect. Every zombie type situation I've experienced through cinema, I end up at a point where I'm kind of sick of it all and it seems to have dragged on too long. The tension subsides and there's too much to clean up. The world Neville was living in was still exciting to me when the book ended.

I get where you're coming from, JKabol, if you think the story should have went on awhile longer, because there was definitely more room for things to develop, more experiences to be had, more of everything. The world Neville lived in was almost untouched.

The part about the dog was good, but then the sudden "AND THEN THE DOG DIED!" part was true to what you're describing, how the writer kind of tells us what's happening but we don't experience it. A lot of the novel was like that.

The best part of the novel, to me, was being with Neville as he slowly lost his mind, going mad inside that little house. How he was always amazed by his own stupidity, how he got lazy at times and wouldn't even sweep up the broken glass. I swear I've lived similar days at home here, except instead of there being vampires outside my door there are the drones of a functioning society that sometimes seem as distant.

The ending was quick and painless, and good enough. There was no suspense to me, because I, like Tom, thought I was only halfway through the novel. It abruptly ends and then I figure out what's going on and then the ending of the story sets in. So the whole ending was displayed to me in such a strange fashion that it had no impact on me. To think about it after, it seemed clean.

It seemed like it was all for nothing. This man worked his ass off and tested his will to its bending point. He drives himself insane only to come out almost enlightened. It reminded me a lot of what the old man went through in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. An epic journey through intense hardship, only to be left with nothing.

Yeah, I did read a couple of the short stories and they are good. I'm not much for short stories in general - I'll take a novel over a collection of stories any day...but they are good.

Its really funny reading the threads on the [I]I Am Legend [/I]imdb page. a lot of people think the novel was written in 1975, that richard matheson is dead, that the vampire disease is an allegory for aids and homosexuals, and some even think stephen king wrote it.

some also think that its part of a trilogy which the "deceased" matheson never finished.

He surrendered because he understood why they had to kill him. They felt just like he felt. He killed a lot of them - even the ones that weren't bothering him. It was a moment of understanding. At least that's how I saw it.

I sort of felt like the story could have been longer (like a lot of you here). It seemed that we were just looking at his outline sometimes. I found myself wondering how he decided to expand on some things and then not on others. But then I guess the book would have read like the first chapters over and over until we got to one of the chapters he had in there.

The dog section was awesome. I was rooting him on, "Get the dog to stay!" And then he finally does - and I was cheering for him. And then the dog dies. Just like that. It's like an after thought.

Did anybody notice that he had some obsession with people's throats?
She looked at me and her throat moved.
He watched them outside and his throat moved.
He swallowed and his throat clicked.
His throat moved when he thought about it.
Over and over and over I saw passages like those. It was a little weird becuase I never saw an author make mention of people's throats so much.

[QUOTE=labelleza;1121891]I did notice! Obiously, it's a vampire novel. But yeah, it's almost sexual-fetitsh-ish-ish......[/QUOTE]

True - but he only mentioned something wanting to bite or biting a neck once (that I remember).

The rest was him using that gimmick to convey emotions. Sort of like "his brow tightened" or "a grimace overtook his face."

Went to see the movie this past weekend.

There were things i liked about the adaptation and things i didn't.

I loved! the Bob Marely reference.

My girlfriend loved the half nude will smith "pull ups" scene..... seriously he earned his paycheck just for that! i cant believe how ripped he was, that had to be an insane amount of gym time.

I did not like the way they changed the ending.

Dont want to spoil it for anyone, im just gonna say i didnt like the change that was made.

The death of the dog scene was very well done as well, really emotional! i actually heard people crying.

My favorite part of the movie was the couple behind me who need to explain to each other what was happening. Thank you random idiots, thats exactly how i wanted to get my 9.50 $ worth.

I read this separate from this Book Club, but recent enough that I can still comment on it.

The 'dog' chapter is one of my all time favorite chapters in a book.  Its level of quality so far surpasses the rest of the book that it's a little disheartening.   It not only captured Neville's overwhelming loneliness, but made it downright contagious to the reader.  The hope, the love, the need for the dog literally gripped me.   The sad, brief, ending to the chapter was perfection.  A gut shot. A reminder that this is the real world we're talking about, not some fictional paradise.

The rest of the book?  So-so.  The writing was servicable, but rarely did it stand out - I found myself criticizing it more than enjoying it.   Certain descriptive words were terribly overused - the only one I can remember offhand is 'palsied'.   It didn't feel like the overuse was atmospheric, such as found in The Road - instead it felt more like bad editing.

Parts of the story I really liked.  Other parts felt shoe-horned in.  The ending was kind of cool, in a certain way, but left something to be desired.   I never really bought into the vampire society. 

That said? It was certainly worth reading.  Especially the dog chapter.  I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a horror/sci-fi book.  But I'd recommend other books first.

*spoilers below*

I absolutely love I am legend. I have no explanation for why you are thrown into robert nevilles world half way through but i actually enjoyed that. I love the idea of perception and doing what you think is right even when actuality you are doing horrible things. I love the fact that you follow essentially a monster killing off the survivors after a catastrophic incident and its not shock value, its simply this is what he must to do survive.

The ending is well done but it did make me go..."oh shit thats it?" so i went back and re read it.

If you like this avoid the shitty new adaptation with will smith, also if you want something campy check out the charlton heston adaptation "The omega man". And if you want to see it adapted in a brilliant and perfect way check out Vincent Price in The Last man on earth.

Seriously how the fuck can anyone take will smith serious when he is reprising a role previously done by Vincent Price?.

Fred! how did you get out here Fred!" FRED!" <--douche will smith

i liked the movie, and the book.  the fifty year difference comes into play there somewhere.  something about i accept both mediums as an accurate artform.  they both brought me in and tore me apart, and they both annoyed me a little as well.  neither, i would ever say, is a waste of time.  that is, if you like movies and books.

-kabol