An open letter from The Onion's Joe Garden
The author of The New Vampire's Handbook begs you to come to Sunday's reading at Magers & Quinn
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Dear A.V. Club readers,
If you’ve been a reader of The A.V. Club for, say, 15 years, you may remember me from my deconstructionist review of Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet. Or perhaps you remember my flights of hyperbolic fancy, such as the time I said Pavement’s Slanted And Enchanted was “The White Album and Revolver rolled into one.” Good times.
More recently, I have discussed a summit between Charles Grodin and Gene Wilder, in which my writing was described by an anonymous reader as “fanzine-like,” and taste-tested Coca Cola’s carbonated milk, where a commenter wanted to hear my “inevitable Professor Frink impersonation.”
Mostly, I’m the features editor of The Onion. I pour over headlines every day to assign the American Voices, comb through the results, punch up where necessary, and make sure we don't inadvertently rip off The Daily Show. I also created the characters Jim Anchower and Jackie Harvey, and I write them to this day. I have also written about Lovecraftian school board members, hyper-violent squirrels, and celebrity insurance fraud.
You may be asking, “What do I do in my spare time?” Or, for the purposes of this letter, I am going to tell myself you care enough to ask. Good question! I wrote a book with a creative collective (read: bunch of dopes who don’t want to put on pants in the morning) called Action 5, made up of current and former Onion contributing writers, as well a former writer for Important Things With Demetri Martin and a former segment producer for The Daily Show. Well, we’ve actually written three so far, and I am coming to Minneapolis on Sunday at 7 p.m. to shill it at Magers & Quinn.
It’s called The New Vampire’s Handbook. Okay, calm down. As you are all pop culture savvy people, I know what your first impulse is. “This is one giant bullshit trend-riding cash-in!" And your instincts are not wrong. We knew full well when we pitched that book we would have a better chance selling our publisher on a vampire book than any other subject. That said, we went into it as fans of horror and in revulsion of what Twilight was doing to the vampire. We researched. We read. We watched movies. We looked up historic vampires. We sat through the Blade trilogy. One of our writers even went so far as to watch nearly every episode of Dark Shadows. We approached this like we were going to be cornered at Comic Con by a fanboy with a handmade crucifix who would press us on every vampire nuance ever created before he swore us to secrecy and gave us his hand-written vampire script.
We also approached this as if we would be branded sell-outs by A.V. Club readers.
So check out the videos. Read a sample. If you like it, come down to see us read. If not, come down to tell us we suck.
Thanks for your time and attention.
Eternally yours,
Joe Garden, Features Editor, The Onion
