But don't let the vampire distract you from a more central character in The Accursed: M.W. van Dyck II of Eaglestone Manor, a historian so passionate about the "Crosswicks Curse" and its victims that he can't always distinguish the narrative forest from the trees. With van Dyck, Oates slips from pastiche to parody, for he is a cartoon of a historian, one drawn along bumbling, antiquarian lines. As a result, readers are treated to seemingly irrelevant plot detours and labyrinthine discussions of family trees, real estate transactions and arcane source materials. In one chapter, the dismayed historian cannot help enumerating all that he has had to leave out of his account. In another, van Dyck contemplates the work of the historian (which he sees as the recording, assembling and interpretation of facts), and laments its failure to help him understand what really happened in his hometown of Princeton back in 1905.
One of the reasons our fictional historian remains mystified is that he fails to appreciate what Oates and so many other writers before her have discovered: Vampires and other supernatural beings are useful monsters to think with. These otherworldly creatures illuminate the darkest corners of the human mind and spirit, put flesh and bones on our nightmares, and encourage us to explore issues of difference and deviance. Running like a black thread throughout the many stories in The Accursed are disturbing accounts of racial violence, class warfare, religious prejudice and misogyny. Oates' real monsters are not the rulers of the Bog Kingdom or even the mesmerizing Wallachian count (whom the reader cannot help but compare to Dracula), but the members of Princeton's beau monde, who preach from their pulpits and judge without compassion. The curse that afflicts the town did not begin with the abduction of a young bride on her wedding day, but with the secrets these monsters keep.
“ Vampires and other supernatural beings are useful monsters to think with.