A Grave Situation: Max Brooks and Zombie Satire

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"WORLD WAR Z" isn't scary like "The Exorcist." It's scary like the news.

Max Brooks' best-selling "Oral History of the Zombie War" is tailor-made for anybody who fears that a global calamity resistant to all individual, societal and governmental preparation (never mind goodwill) is about to deep-six humanity. In other words, anybody at all.

"Zombies defy the No. 1 rule of horror," Brooks says, "which is: You have to go find the monster. Most monsters, you have to go to the swamp or the forest or under the pyramid or whatever. Zombies come right to you."

But zombies have more than just personal service going for them; there's also ubiquity. "Every other monster is only a threat to individual humans," Brooks explains. "Zombies are a slate-wiper. They can take out the entire human race."

Brooks serves up a fantastically multivalent metaphor. His satire can be read as an allegory of global pandemic or climate change or famine or terrorism or imperialism or — well, it's a shame Marlon Brando didn't make more zombie movies: "Hey, Johnny, what's eating you?" "Whaddya got?"

Not that there's any reason to think that we're limited to one catastrophe at a time. "I'm a Gen X-er," says Brooks, "so, for me, it's all about growing up in the '80s and the horrible sense of paranoia and danger pretty much everywhere you looked."
Nuclear terror was big then. So were crack, AIDS and, of particular concern to an Angeleno, the prospect of the Big One tossing California into the sea.

Ideas of "macrohorror" versus "microhorror" are sure to come up Friday, when Brooks joins Grace Lee, director and co-writer of the "Blair Witch"-ified "American Zombie," and Toby Barlow, author of the free-verse werewolf epic "Sharp Teeth," for "The Undead," a PEN/Faulkner-sponsored discussion moderated by short-story writer Matthew Klam.

Knowing the enemy is vital to understanding him. Lucky for Brooks, he wrote the book on "Zack." "The Zombie Survival Guide" appeared in 2003, but Brooks' studies as an American University history major served "World War Z" even better.

"Everything in the book has actually already happened," Brooks says. "It just hasn't happened with zombies."

» D.C. Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th St. NW; Fri., Nov. 7, 8 p.m., $15; 202-544-7077. (Dupont Circle)

Written by Glenn Dixon for Express
Photo courtesy Three Rivers Press