Saturday, October 06, 2012

The Passage of Justin Cronin



Jeff Riedel for The New York Times
The novelist Justin Cronin.
Justin Cronin is still a bit sensitive about the word “vampire.” Yes, the supernatural bad guys in his sprawling, 766-page novel, “The Passage” — about death-row inmates infected by the United States military with a rare Bolivian jungle virus, afflicting them with superhuman strength and a lust for human blood — are recognizable as very close cousins of the fanged creatures who’ve torn a bloody swath through American pop culture. Yes, Cronin originally sold that book, along with two sequels — the first of which, “The Twelve,” comes out this month — for close to $3.75 million, and the film rights for a reported $1.75 million. Yes, that cinderblock-size apocalyptic thriller hit the best-seller lists soon after its 2010 release. And yes, he received a very public benediction from no less a pop-literary eminence than Stephen King, who called in during an appearance by Cronin on “Good Morning America” to congratulate him: “You put the scare back in vampires, buddy!”
Gabrielle Plucknette/The New York Times
  • Yet when Cronin first began discussing “The Passage” with his agent, Ellen Levine, “he liked to call them ‘glowsticks’ or ‘fliers,’ ” she told me. “He didn’t like to call them vampires.” Even now, years later, you can still catch Cronin wincing just a bit when you use the word.
“When I started writing ‘The Passage,’ ” he told me recently, “I said O.K., I’m going to write a story that arguably has something rather like a vampire in it. But I have to do two things. One is I have to wonder why I chose that and what’s interesting about it to me. And two, what do I want to do that’s my own take on it?” 

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