I've been listening to the audiobook of Dracula.
I've been listening to the audiobook of Dracula. Never read the original before. These guys (and Harker and Van Helsing) are all idiots.
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I read it for the first time about two years ago and was stunned by how boring it was. The only thing the book did really well was to make Dracula seem pretty alien.
ReplyDeleteWhat if they're not idiots, but actually psychotic—like Fight Club "Tyler Durden" psychotic?
ReplyDeleteWhen I read it, I couldn't help thinking the evidence for Dracula is pretty thin apart from some very surreal experiences journaled by a handful of people. Consider: Dracula doesn't appear in the mirror, and the woman calls Jonathan the monster when she sees him in the window.
What if they are the monster that is predating the neighborhood, and everyone is too stuffy with Victorian sexual mores to confront it, so they all take part in a collective fantasy to purge the monster?
Lucy is dying for a good 45% of the book it seems like.
ReplyDeleteI would almost assume Stoker wrote it as an indictment of Victorian society since people who know what’s going on delay and delay because they don’t want to upset the other characters.
There are some good turns of phrase though, like Harker talking to the real estate agent and calling him “A prig of the first order.”
Also good: Dracula's scheme to spread his lairs all over the city. That is pretty much ignored in every version I've seen.
ReplyDeletei've tried to read it several times. there's a stretch for like 80 pages where someone is going on and on about how people lie on tombstones. i just can't make it past that. i'd rather give finnegan's wake another attempt.
ReplyDeleteSpoiler alert: Dracula kills that long-winded old dude.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I dig about it is the way it presents Dracula not as a known species as much as the Antichrist/Beast of the Apocalypse!
ReplyDeleteJohn Stephens have you read Kim Newman's Anno Dracula? If not, you should.
ReplyDeleteJohn Stephens i'm down with that interpretation. the book is essentially presented as a collection of writings in defense of why they murdered this aristocrat. maybe they're going for that insanity plea.
ReplyDeletestill can't bring myself to read it cover to cover.
Casey G., no I haven't heard of it, but I just put it on my list.
ReplyDeleteDracula and Finnegan's Wake both getting slammed at once? Surely fisticuffs are not far behind!
ReplyDeleteIt's excellent. I read it thinking that having seen enough movies it would make sense. And that's true. Francis Ford Coppola's version is close enough.
ReplyDeleteThe last time I read it, my takeaway was "Dracula is syphilis, isn't he? Foreign syphilis getting all over our nice English women."
ReplyDeleteJeff Rients at least joyce was intentionally dense.
ReplyDeleteHey cut the fellas some slack - they've never seen any vampire movies!
ReplyDeleteIt's a bad book, man. It's success just baffles me.
ReplyDeleteYou will find in nearly all stories that the smart ones are only intelligent by comparison.
ReplyDelete