Dracula by Bram Stoker

Cafe Society
1

I hadn’t read Dracula in about ten years or so, but the "What have they done to Vampires?" threadmade me want to go back and look at it again. It was one of my favorite books for a very long time, but I haven’t had the chance to go back and visit it for a while.

Either I’d forgotten how good a read it is, or it gets better as I’ve gotten older. The first four chapters are just wonderful. You can feel Johnathan’s grip slipping as the castle gets more and more claustrophobic. By the last couple of journal entries, you can tell the Count is, at that point, really just fucking with him.

The first time I read it, I read my father’s copy of Leonard Wolfe’s Annotated Dracula. One of the most handy features of that edition was it had a calendar of events. I’m reading it on my iPod right now, and I miss being able to flip to the calendar, especially as the various diary and letters skip around in date a bit during chapters five and six.

Has anyone else read the book recently? Would anyone like to discuss it.

2

Don’t have time to discuss it at the moment, but when I read it the first time a few years ago I was surprised at how “modern” the writing was, and also loved the way it was given in different voices.

3

Always been one of my favorite books! I read it when I was quite young, but I had no problem following it, and have re-read a couple of times over my life. (The first time I read it was in the fall, when I was home alone for the weekend, which made it extra-spooky…) The Annotated Dracula is really helpful to those who are interested in the original Dracula. My favorite part are the first few chapters, too. I remember Jonathan Harker stopping by an inn or pub, and he said “all the women look pretty until you see them close up”, lol. And the slivovitz brandy in the hell-ride coach.

4

The first book I ever read because I wanted to read it (not a book for school) was The Covenant with the Vampire, Diaries of the Family Dracul by Jeanne Kalogridis. The first 2 books in the series are prequels to Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the third is an alternet version of it. I loved the books. SO I picked up Bram Stoker’s Dracula expecting to love it as well. I didn;t get very far into it. The style of writing just put me off from reading it. I really wanted to like it, but I just didn’t.

5

I reread this a couple of months ago after a gap of 20+ years. I was worried that I wouldn’t enjoy it (as sometimes happens with revisited books), but once again I enjoyed the heck out of it. In particular I liked that the POV moved constantly, rather than a straight narrative, and Stoker also did a grand job mixing up foreshadowing and outright action.

My next step was to pick up Frankenstein for the first time…which I was unable to finish.

6

I read it about 5 years ago. it is easy to see why it has had staying power. It is very scary and very well written.

7

The book’s handling of the theme of (barely veiled) sexual temptation is probably deeply unhealthy but absolutely riveting to read. The scenes of Harker with the girl-vamps and Lucy trying to beguile her lover have a creepily memorable staying power.

(And you just know that the only real reason that Minna, unlike Lucy, was saved from permanent vampirity is that Jonathan had married and consequently nailed her before she met the Count. A branded mare can be recovered, a barefoot filly can’t. :p)

8

Still one of my favorites. I have an interactive version on my ipad. Hearing wolves howling and other effects while reading the story is very cool. :slight_smile:

I’m intending to read Dracula’s Guest soon. I’ve heard a writer named Saberhagen wrote a follow-up/companion telling the same events from the Count’s POV, I haven’t read but I’ve looked for it and will as soon as I get a copy.

The scene in Lucy Westenra’s tomb is still creepy/amazing.

9

I’ve just been watching every film version of it that I can, and looking through my editions of the book. Wolf updated his annotated version as The Essential Dracula in the 1990s. There have been several annotated editions since, most notably Leslie Klinger’s The New Annotated Dracula (2008), which I highly recommend – he had access to Stoker’s original manuscript, apparently the only annotated edition to do so, and it’s extremely interesting. Klinger also comments on Wolf’s notes and corrects some. (The mother of all annotated editions, with more annotations than any other, is Clive Leatherdale’s Dracula Unearthed, which I’ve never seen. I’m going to have to – you should pardon the expression – dig up a copy.

The novel Dracula invented many of the “ancient” traditions about vampires, while perpetuating a lot of older ones. Stojer really did craft this as a case of Modern Science (and knowledge of “ancient tradition”) against the Up To Date Monster (Dracula’s transporting crates of his native soil to England so he can still rest in “his native soil” is actually a clever end run around what ought to be acrestriction on his mobility. Dracula is repeatedly shown to be one clever sonovabitch).

A lot of the book consists of shorthand, telegraph messages, phonograph recordings, and the like, making a sort of early multimedia novel (although I understand Stoker lifted this gimmick from Wilkie Colins). I’m urprised that, as far as I can recall, no one uses a telephone.

As far as film versions go, David J. Skal (whose “Hollywood Gothic”, on the making of the 1931 film is a must-read) recommends the 1977 BBC Louis Jordan version as the most faithful. It also has long boring stretches. For my money, look at the fitrst half or so of the Christopher Lee/Jess Franco Count Dracula from 1970. It’s incredibly faithful, down to Lee resembling the original illustrations from various editions of the book. But it’s ultra-low budget, and it shows as the film progresses. Leonard Wolf would undoubtedly recommend the 1992 Coppola/Gary oldman version, for which he was advisor. Botyh Skal and Klinger revile it, but it contains more of the elements of the book than any other, and it’s definitely not boring. It’s fault is that it loads the film with things not in the original, notably the whole love story/reincarnated love thing that really doesn’t belong there.

Bela Lugosi, IMHO, is the best overall Count. Nobody else really convinced me that he was an undead East European nobleman. There are issues with the 1931 film (it’s too static a production and stays too close to its parent stage production. Dammit – it’s a motion picture. You can show us things instead of describing them. And you can move the camera, too. And there are no armadillos in Transylvania!), but Lugoi’s performance is overall my favorite.

10

I highly recommens Saberhagen’s The Dracula Tapes, which tells the story from the Count’s point of view, with plenty of pro-Dracula “spin”. I didn’t like the sequels, including the Holmes-dracula File. If that’s your cup of tea, read Loren D. Estleman’s Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula; or The Adventure of the Sanguinary Count, which tells the events of the novel from yet another point of view, as Holmes gets involved in the mystery (despite The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire).

11

It really, really is.

12

It’s been a while since I read it, but oddly enough, one of the things that sticks with me is the description of the real estate scam described within. Not only would they steal everything not nailed down, but they’d sell the house for scrap and the land for development, so when the poor sucker comes home, he’s greeted by an empty lot.

13

For a little humorous relief from tingling spine, watch the eight minutes of Stephen Fry’s 1982 “Cellar Tapes” revue monologue parodying the Dracula story.

14

  1. The captain’s log of the ship transporting the Count and his boxes of dirt to England, the seamen who disappear, the storm…also ultra creepy.

  2. You ask people (presumably those interested in such stuff) who in the book killed Dracula, and how. They’re generally wrong, the answer is somewhat of a surprise.

15

In America we Bowie knife our vampires :slight_smile:

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[Thanks Cal I’ll check those out]

I know the Count’s death by stabbing has been used as a plot point to resurrect Dracula in several cases. What I can’t recall is does Van Helsing state the only sure methods? I know Lucy gets the stake and beheading, they destroy his boxes with holy relics and he states Dracula would be trapped if the Demeter’s captain threw his boxes overboard.

Did Stoker screw-up the ending? Or was it an intentional hook?

17

I’ve been meaning to order a copy of Klinger’s.

Not that I’ve noticed. I know Sherlock Holmes used a telephone, but it seems that phones were primarily for “official business.” I think we could rest assured that our fearless vampire hunters’ business was certainly not official.

I remember catching a glimpse of this on Masterpiece Theater as a kid. About all I remember was seeing Dracula scaling up the side of the castle.

Agreed. It had all of Lucy’s suitors, which is a rarity. But the whole reincarnation thing would have been better left on the cutting room floor.

I don’t know whether it would be sacrilegious to say, but I think Lugosi’s best performance as the Count was in Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

I was thinking about the modernity of the novel last night, and began to wonder how well it would work, if Steven Moffat were to give it the Jekyll/Sherlock treatment.

18

The Spanish-language version, made during the night shift on the same sets but by a different director & cast, remedies all those faults, and is overall a much better movie. But unfortunately its lead actor doesn’t have Lugosi’s charisma. :rolleyes:

We need some computer-wise type to make a mash-up version: the Spanish version, but with Lugosi edited into it. :smiley:

19

Actually scaling down the castle wall, headfirst, which is one of the things that makes it so eerie. The BBC version was one of the first, if not THE first, to depict this (although it had appeared in illustrations beforee). Jordan has dracula throwing both arms forwards at once, as if doinf a Butterfly Stroke down the wall, which mnakes it look kinda goofy, rather than eerie. Gary Oldman wall-walked in the 1992 version.

By the way, the Jordan version has all three suitors, as well, with a pronounced Texas accent on Morris. All three are in the 1970 Franco version, but Morris has no accent, and it doesn’t look as if Seward is a suitor.

I’m watching the 2006 BBC version now, which is decided strange – it departs significantly from the book. Holmwood is sorta evil and involved with a Gollden Dawn-type cult. Marc Warren plays Dracula as if he’s Wormtongue from Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. And there’s no Renfield. It resembles the 1958 Horror of Dracula in a lot of ways.

I picked up the Frank Langella version cheap, then it’s on to the Coppola version. You can’t get enough Dracula!

20

He was stabbed in the heart and then his head was cut off. They made sure he was dead.