David J. Skal (1952–2024)

I can’t write this review without mentioning how strange it is to read Dracula in 2021. We have so much foreknowledge of it simply through cultural osmosis that we come to the table so far ahead of the clueless characters. It can be frustrating but mostly I just found it comical—every time a character utters the name “Dracula” it’s like you can hear the ominous minor chord on an organ being struck, and when in the beginning Jonathan Harker says stuff like, “Why, this Country show more Dracula is a rather polite fellow, despite his little oddities!” it almost registers as parody.

As to the book itself, looking at it as much as I can separate it from the spectre it has cast onto pop culture, it’s really rather underwhelming. I suppose that’s inevitable with a book like this, but I feel like even if I knew nothing about vampires or Dracula before reading this, I’d still be disappointed—the book is 10% doing stuff and 90% talking about doing stuff. Most of what happens is painstaking preparation for encounters that last less than a page. Characters have to share information, have discussions on how to proceed, gather supplies, type up their notebooks for ease of reading, find the best geographical route to their destination—all things that are usually omitted in books and movies, and for good reason: they’re very tedious and boring.

We are also told how terrible Count Dracula is much more often than we are shown it; he gets very little airtime for a book that bears his name. The characters’ favourite pastime, apart from warning each other of his craven cruelty, seems to be complimenting each other—everyone in this book with the exception of the villain is so bloody good, so courageous, kind, noble, generous, blah blah blah you get it they’re all perfect. Which makes them very uninteresting. And you can only read so much of them all patting each other on the back before you start rooting for Dracula to swoop in and make Swiss cheese of somebody’s neck, just to shake things up a bit!

Speaking of, it’s a shame how often Stoker pulls back from describing the macabre and grotesque, because he’s really good at it. Lucy’s “true death” scene stands out as a memorable moment, as does the description of the Count’s stormy entrance into England—both are dark, richly detailed passages which evoke the oppressive unease of gothic horror as well as the straightforward frights of modern horror. I think they’re also a big reason I disliked the book overall, as they serve as this grating reminder that Stoker is capable of greatness, he just often chooses to skirt around it.

Read Carmilla instead. show less

Are you interested in vampires, but not allowed to read Twilight yet?

Try this classic on for size. It's the tale of the vampire who made vampires famous, the original Undead bloodsucker: Count Dracula.

The story is told through the letters and diary entries of a small group of people who encounter Dracula and find themselves shrouded in mysterious circumstances. They are drawn together by their suspicions and must work as a team, led by clue-tracking Dr. Van Helsing, to hunt down Dracula. show more Time is ticking - if the gutsy band of vampire seekers doesn't find Dracula soon, one of them may join him by transforming into an Undead herself, not to mention the whole world will be in danger. But the Count has wolves, weather, and other wild forces at his command. Will Van Helsing and his crew catch Dracula at his game before it's too late?

Grown-up portion of review:

I read this as a concession to a friend who insisted that any librarian worth her salt would not let the vampire-lit phase pass without actually reading some vampire-lit. "Fine," I said in my best nonchalantly superior tone, "I'll read Dracula."

Since the review was for our library's kids, I didn't explain why I only gave the book 3 stars; but now I will. The good characters are so relentlessly good and the evil character is so abominably evil that the book feels a bit heavy-handed at times. I became weary of the Good Guys' apologies, earnest and well-kept promises, endless self-sacrifice, and dogged explaining to one another of their intentions so there would be no shadow of misunderstanding. And Count Dracula is so bad, all the time. At the very end, there is about a paragraph when Stoker invokes, like, a nanosecond's worth of sympathy for Dracula; but it truly is a microscopic inclusion (so, if you're not reading the book with a microscope, you'll probably miss it).

But. If sparkling in the sun and choosing pseudo-vegetarianism are traits a little further along the Vampiric Evolutionary Chain (I swear that's a thing), this book is worth reading to meet the father of bloodsucking badasses. show less

Fascinating look at the early incarnations of the Count, and his unlikely genesis as a cultural icon. Skal's writing is extremely knowledgeable, and very amusing and readable. Generous with illustrations, and the large-size format (while a little hard on the wrists!) means that the pictures are right there, where you want them, by the text. (Example: reading a paragraph about the various actors who were considered for the part of Dracula in the Universal movie, several of whom were unknown show more to me, I thought, I wish he'd just have a page with pictures of all of them ... Turned the page, and guess what ...? That's thorough ...)[return][return]If I have a quibble, it's that Skal seems oddly resistant to his material. He's pretty dismissive of the novel and the Tod Browning film. He seems to cordially loathe Bram Stoker himself. He has very little good to say about the three theatrical versions that wound up touring the UK and the USA, thanks to Florence Stoker's litigious grasp on the copyright of her late husband's one and only cash cow. (He's not crazy about Florence Stoker, either ...)[return][return]Now, I'm not saying that Bram Stoker's Dracula is a work of literary genius. It's clunky, and amateurish, and it's much more interesting for what it reveals of the psychology of its author, and the society he lived in and, indeed, the psychology of anyone reading it. And Skal does acknowledge its strange attraction as a pop culture Rorschach test, on which a reader can and does project almost any of their personal or cultural concerns.[return][return]And yes, Bram Stoker was a very strange, sad man. He lived his life struggling with his homosexual yearnings, and turned himself into the worst kind of closeted person -- one obsessed with "good, clean manliness" and obviously very frightened of women. (And Florence Stoker was a woman who married a strange, sad man, and had to live with the consequences of that). But having recently read a novel about Stoker which presents Stoker and Florence in a much more sympathetic light (Shadowplay by Joseph O'Connor), I found it a little hard to go along with Skal's very hostile reading. (A novel is a novel, of course, and Skal backs up his claims with evidence, and may be absolutely right about Stoker and Florence. But it just seemed that there was more nuance there than Skal was allowing.)[return][return]And finally, the movie. Yes, yes, yes: Tod Browning's movie is a hot mess, and it was very interesting to learn how much of that mess was NOT due to primitive technology, and to the lingering aesthetics of silent movies, or even to studio interference. By contrasting it with the simultaneous Spanish language version, which was directed with much more flair and sensitivity for the possibilities of the script, Skal makes it clear that, no, the limitation of the 1931 movie are all down to the curious limitations of Tod Browning, who seemed determined to ignore the opportunities that his script, cast, set and technology offered him.[return][return]It reminds me that I must watch the Spanish language version which, since Skal wrote this book, has been rescued and reissued on a deluxe dvd with the Tod Browning version.[return][return]One thing Skal makes clear: it's a little miracle of pop culture that so many flawed individuals --Stoker, Mrs. Stoker, Browning, even Bela Lugosi -- wound up producing something that lingers in the mind, and has spawned such a weird, rich mythology.[return][return]...ahh, the children of the night. What music they make! show less

Edit: I just read this for the second time, and it was even better than I’d remembered! This book has such a sense of fun!

I liked this book very much. In terms of its impact as a horror novel, it does not disappoint. The villain Dracula is as creepy as I'd hoped he'd be, and the initial chapters, which take the form of Jonathan Harker's journal as Dracula holds him captive, offer a gripping and highly suspenseful opening to the story. In terms of its impact as a late-Victorian text, it show more was certainly a fascinating read, for lack of a better word. I could never quite make up my mind what Stoker was trying to do, exactly. He portrayed sexist characters, but not without a certain degree of amusement, and I was never sure whether he was supporting it or subverting it. He portrayed -- or even almost parodied -- romance, suitors, British pride, and fear of the foreign. The main protagonists consist of a very competent, logical, hard-working woman (whom the male characters all seem to revere, not only for her wonderful womanliness, but also for her ability to prove herself equal to the men), and a whole team of men, whose camaraderie, compliments, and affirmations of friendship hover somewhere between campy and absurd. A lot of books could be described as campy, but what's singular about Dracula is that it's meant to be. It was a delight to read, and it lives completely up to the hype. show less