(Vampires) - An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film - Revised and expanded edition

Oct 6, 2026

(Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film presents a revised and expanded edition of Jalal Toufic’s inquiry into cinematic undead. The work includes bibliographical references and a publication history noting the first edition (1993) and permissions for the second edition. Front matter provides acknowledgments, conceptual poster references connected to cinema and installation projects, and a concluding epigraph from H. P. Lovecraft, followed by a detailed table of contents spanning posthumous introduction, thresholds, motion, gaps, telepathy, montage, and ruins.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages191

Reading Time4 h 54 min

AccessFree to download

Contents

Posthumous Introduction to the First Edition

Who Will Warn Us About the Warning?

False Thresholds and Imaginary Lines

Fascinated Motionlessness and Quantum Tunneling

Gaps

Lapses

Memorable Accidents

Sensitivity to Initial/Final Conditions

Through the Unreflective Glass

What Does Not Resemble Me Looks Exactly Like Me/What Looks Exactly Like Me Does Not Resemble Me

Breathless

The Undead Has No Mirror Image

The Indefinite Poetry of Death

The Dance of Death

Here Lies and the Worldless

The Undead, Who Is Not All There, and the Mad, Who Died Before Dying

Matte

The Right of Return

Presence

The Absence of Ether, the Vacillation of Dimensions, and Excessive Presence

Varying Spectra

Telepathy

Parallel Montage

Bad Reception

Coincidences (?)

Absence of Sitting (Except while Sleeping) Close-Up

Ruins Undone Circles Labyrinth

Transit Visa to the Labyrinth!

Letters Counterfeiting Secrets

Are You Sure I Saw It?

The Emperor’s New Costume, Or the Case of the Missing Mask

Unsound Silence Frozen Still

Backward in Time Movement The Atavism of Mystery Counterfeiting

Coexistence of Tenses

Why Make Another Version of Nosferatu? Of Men and Mice

Pain

Reference Letter from the Hidden Observer Out-of-Sync

I Am Shattered!

The Off-Screen and/or the Set On-Screen Extras

Vertiginous Eyes The Mourner and the (Un)dead Mortal Guilt

Diegetic Voice-over/Image-over IAm the Maryt r Sana- ’ Ysif Muhaydlı

Composites

The Surgeon and the Dismembered Apprentice Magician Subtle Necrophilia

Gutless Death Acting

In the You Mode Over-Turns

Kneeling Angel with Mountainous Wings (aka Toward a Title for a Gibran Watercolor Left Untitled)

Arriving Too Late for Resurrect

Also by Jalal Toufic Undying Love, or Love Dies (Post-Apollo, 2002) Forthcoming (Atelos, 2000) Over-Sensitiviyt (Sun & Moon, 1996) Distracted (Station Hill, 1991; 2nd ed., Tuumba, 2003) (Vampires) An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film Revised and expanded edition Jalal Toufic The Post-Apollo Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Toufic, Jalal. (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film / Jalal Toufic. [p. cm](p. cm). Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-942996-50-X The first edition of (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film was published in 1993 by Station Hill Press under the imprint “Station Hill Literary Editions” in collaboration with The Institute for Publishing Arts, Inc. in Barrytown, New York, and is published here in a revised edition with permission. Copyright © 1993, 2003 by Jalal Toufic All rights reserved The Post-Apollo Press 35 Marie Street Sausalito, California 94965 Design: Ali Cherry and Hatem Imam Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. In memory of the amnesiac Jalal Toufic (not that he no longer exists, but that he was/is dead/undead then/now) Acknowledgments My conceptual poster for Robert Bresson’s Au hazard Balthazar was exhibited in the window panel at the entrance of cinema Hamra, oneof the three deserted cinemas that were the setting for the “Hamra Street Project,” November 17–27, 2000; and it was published in Al-A-da-b (January and February 2001): 51, and then online at [http://www.mafhoum.com/press/adab56/adab.htm. The](http://www.mafhoum.com/press/adab56/adab.htm. The) two letters on pages 82–85 were part of my installation Overlooking the Unsightyl to See, and were published in the project’s catalogue, Hamra Street Project (Beirut, Lebanon: the Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts Ashkal Alwan, 2000) . My conceptual poster for Harold Ramis’ film Groundhog Day appeared in Transit Visa: On Video and Cities, ed. Akram Zaatari and Mahmoud Hojeij (Beirut, 2001), 8. Two Posthumous Resumes was exhibited in the show“Exist,” Espace SD, Beirut, November 25–December 2, 2000. An Arabic translation (by Fa-dı-al-‘Abdalla-h) of the section “Ruins” was published as“Al-Atla-l” in Al-A-da-b ’s Audio-Visual/-Theoretical Supplement (July–August 2001): 108–111.“Ruins” as well as Two Posthumous Resumes were published in Tamáss: Contemporary Arab Representations, Beirut, Lebanon 1 (Barcelona: Fundació Antoni Tàpies, 2002), 19–25 and 118–121 respectively. An Arabic translation (by Fa-d al-‘Abdalla-h) of the section “IAm the Maryt r Sana- ’ Ysif Muhaydlı-” was published as “Ana- as-shahı-da Sana- ’Ysif Muhaydlı-” in Al-A-da-b (January–February 2001): 44–51. This second edition of (Vampires) was already finished by the time I provided these sections to various publications. I also acknowledge the Gibran Museum, Bsharr, Lebanon, for the 1923 Kahlil Gibran watercolor, and L’Harmattan for the photograph by Dmitri Baltermants that appears on page 266; and I would like to thank the Arab Image Foundation (AIF) forgiving permission to use and for scanning a number of the photographs in their collection. Most importantly, I wish to thank George Quasha, the publisher of the first edition of (Vampires), for gracefully agreeing to the publication of its second edition by the Post-Apollo Press. The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistasof reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu Content

FAQs

What edition does this book provide and how is it positioned in the publication history?

The front matter states that this is a revised and expanded edition, and it records that the first edition was published in 1993 with publication permissions for the second edition.

What does the book’s structure cover according to the table of contents?

The contents list sections ranging from a posthumous introduction and conceptual thresholds to topics like quantum tunneling, gaps and lapses, telepathy, parallel montage, and ruins, ending with “Arriving Too Late for Resurrect.”

What role do acknowledgments play in the early pages?

The acknowledgments connect the author’s conceptual posters and installations to specific venues and publications, and they also note permission for using and scanning photographs in collected works.

Oct 6, 2026

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