Some tasks you just can’t win, no matter what you do. Being Peyton Manning’s back-up Quarterback when he was with the Colts, being the guy at the club who turns on the lights after Slayer’s third encore are two things that come to mind. Right up would be finishing the first and last novel of a beloved filmmaker like George Romero. That was the mission given to a long time Romero superfan Daniel Kraus. As he said himself if he got right everyone would praise George and if he got it wrong the pitchforks were coming to Chicago to blame him.
First things first you have to give Romero’s estate absolute credit for finding the perfect human being out of 7 billion overpopulating this planet to finish this vision. While not a super fan of Romero like Kraus The Dead films were super important to me as a Fangoria obsessed young kid in the late 80s. I also followed Romero's attempts over 20 years to make a fourth Dead film.
Land of the Dead happened in the early 21st century but everyone knew Romero had written several versions of Twilight of the Dead the title was often teased to us. While he got to write and direct a second trilogy before his death that was not the end of the story. Kraus who would know better than I says that Day of the Dead released in 1985 tells the last cinematic story in the Romero Zombie Universe. The RZU as I am going to call it for the rest of this review now includes The Living Dead, so cinematic universe won’t cut it.
Romero ignored the era each film was filmed in thinking of the story’s timeline, and Kraus has too. This is all one Romero universe, one story of a single zombie apocalypse. It was clear from statements Romero made late in life that he wanted to write this novel for two main purposes. He seemed to want to have the scope he never had the budget for and most importantly to close the loop and end the story. The Living Dead goes the deepest in the timeline. In the narrative this novel journeys from day one to fifteen years after there was no room left in hell. Kraus suggests the best order of reading and watching to follow the timeline. (In my upcoming podcast interview)
When I interviewed Kraus for the podcast I thanked him for not breathing fresh air into the Zombie genre and he smiled and thanked me. He and I agree “enough with the zombies already”, and while fresh air was welcome in a book like this year’s Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay that was not the mission here.
This book feels like a Romero story, that is amazing when you consider that while there was a rough outline and 1/3 of the book written it was not a straight line. It was fragmented and most of it was in the third act, with pieces scattered. It was clear that scenes on the Olympia aircraft carrier were well researched but Romero didn’t leave that research behind.
Many of the reviews and discussion of this book are forgetting that first crucial point, so I will repeat myself, what an impossible task Daniel Kraus had. The fact that this book exists requires a series of unlikely accidents. The fact that a talented author whose first movie was Night of The Living Dead went to high school with Romero’s future manager is just one of those. Kraus showed reverence, respect, and tenacity that probably no one else would show.
700 words into this review and I have not talked about the story. Sorry about that. The story shares a structure with my favorite Science Fiction novel John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar. Unlike the USA trilogy that inspired Brunner, this story eventually weaves together.
If that seems like a spoiler, I got to say I don’t think anything in the first two acts can be ruined. None the less if you are worried stop reading and come back because we are going to go deep on the themes here.
Still with me? The Living Dead weaves the narrative around the Dead timeline. In this book, we see what might be the first zombie, and it happens right here in San Diego. I think we will have to petition for a plaque or something on the wall there at the Medical Examiner’s office. This happens in a storyline featuring Luis and Charlie who work in the morgue. These two characters are the ones that broke my heart the most. As the chaos, many of the best moments happen to and around these characters from intense scares to reflective moments when Charlie years down the line waits in hospice to go zombie. She wonders if she failed a test when the dead first rose in front of her. It is those subtle moments that interested Romero and Kraus doesn’t throw blood and guts at us. In fact, some of the most bloody moments survive from Romero’s early drafts.
The storyline that shows the most massive scope is the story of the Olympia aircraft carrier which is the size of a city and deals with an outbreak. This like many of the storylines could have been a film or novel on its own. This storyline provides the Mrs.Carmody-like character and a religious reaction a theme that was important to Romero.
The themes are all there, the dangers of technology, consumerism, mistrust, and dehumanization. The Dead standing in for the working class and oppressed. While not as on the nose as some of the films Kraus weaves all of it in subtle moments throughout. The last act shows Kraus/Romero’s attempt to envision what a Utopia in this context looks like.
Another strength was the character of Etta Hoffman, a character with mild form Autism (representation matters!) who keeps track of numbers, records, and books as best she can from D.C. in the early days.
“Housewives forming covens as a means of survival. Stopgap police forces burning citizens to contain what they stubbornly believed was a biological agent. A young man encouraged by the chaos to play out delusions of vampirism. A troupe of ren-fair motorcyclists who believed their Arthurian code could withstand any strain. A paraplegic man trapped indoors, tortured by his helper monkey, begging her to send help. Such strange tales and Hoffmann read them over and over. One day they might remind us who we used to be, and who we tried to be, and that recollection could save the world.”
The thesis of this book and the message is subtle throughout the book but there were to moments and with perfect symmetry, the first was written by Kraus.
“People, zombies – we’re all dying.” He said gently. “Here’s what we need to accept. We’re smart zombies as much as they are dumb humans. Any second now, those two lines are going to converge, and us and them will be exactly the same. Body and soul back together. I can feel it. The Chief can feel it all of Slowtown can feel it.”
We are no different. Romero tried to remind us over and over that we are them, that the line is paper-thin between the hungry consumers mindlessly ending the world slowly and the zombies.
George’s words that form the thesis end the book, they end the saga and they are perfect. Do you want to know what those words are? Sit your ass down and read it.
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