Reviews

I thought it might be nice to start a thread regarding our reviews of Gothic work. Links to blogs etc are encouraged as well as mention of LT reviews. On my end, I've reviewed several Gothic works in the past few months. Most recent are musings on Ray Russell's Haunted Castles, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and (most extensively) The King in Yellow. There's a link to my blog on my profile, where all these are located, and I've also posted all of my reviews here on LT. We spend a lot of time chatting about Gothic works but rarely get to see the more 'creative' lit crit some of us are aspiring to. So here's a good place to keep each other up to speed. :)

Special shout out to Paul (rankamateur alaudacorax): have you considered turning your musings on Uncle Silas into a more formal review? I never got back to you about them (shame on me!), but I thought they were brilliant!

#1 - You're flattering me, J!

I've been quite looking forward to a second read of Uncle Silas as part of my 'Punter and Byron' reading list (their 'key works' list in The Gothic) and perhaps I'll work out a review when I've done that.

The trouble is that it's about half-way down the list and the list itself has got a bit dormant. I've got really unfocussed, lately, with way too many books on the go (as well as my 'Currently reading' I've got fourteen books in my 'Long-term reading' collection). I was part-way through Vathek and I haven't looked at it for so long that I'm probably going to have to start it again - and that's not far off the start of the list.

I've just realised I hadn't spotted your The King in Yellow review - I'll look forward to having a look at that this evening (see - more distractions again!)

I tackled The Turn of the Screw a week or two ago and just finished posting a review of The Island of Dr. Moreau, which I believe has enough Gothic sensibility about it to warrant inclusion in our 'canon.'

Anybody else review anything lately?

Just finished last night The Romantic Revolution by Tim Blanning. Very brief history of the period, only about 190 pages of text, 100 pages of notes.. Only touches on the gothic for a handful of pages,mostly focused on the architecture aspect. Overall a decent overview, with as much about politics, music, and art as with the literary overview. Really good bibliography for further reading.

Posted reviews of Dracula (finally) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle to my blog/here on LT. Check them out if you're so inclined!

(Edited to deal with touchstones: wth, Dracula links to a DVD with 22 members? I will never understand this s***!!)

>5 veilofisis:
I think the guidance here is to put "adaptions" under the original author's name. I dutifully had Liz Lochhead's stage version of Dracula as by Bram Stoker for a little while - until common sense reasserted itself.

#5 - Very impressive review of Dracula, J.

One odd thing: I'm sure that I knew you were working on a review and I was wondering how you'd tackle such an icon. Your 'finally' in parenthesis seems to suggest you've mentioned it but I'm damned if I can hunt down where. Second sight?

Reading your words on it being anti-climactic, it suddenly struck me that, though I've read it several times and most recently certainly within the last two or three years, I can't for the life of me remember the ending. It's the earlier bits that stick in my memory; Harker's experiences in Dracula's castle, the scenes in Whitby, the Demeter, Lucy's story. When I try for the ending, it's Coppola's film that comes to mind instead. Coppola's ending would seem to be more powerful than Stoker's.

I quite agree about the glaring flaws in general. My personal one is Stoker's inability to differentiate his narrative voices - which really doesn't bother me so much in the reading as it does in the thinking it over (and there's always something that niggles me about Harker wanting that recipe for Mina but I can't remember it offhand.)

And I quite agree that the whole thing makes a really great read in spite of it all (as I said, I've read it multiple times, which says something). Why it does is a fascinating subject in its own right.

I finished Dracula more out of a misplaced sense of duty than anything else. I didn't think, however, that the end was all that bad. It could have been much better, certainly, but at least it didn't drag as much of the middle parts did (which took me literally years to get through).

I genuninely liked the first third or so of the book.

I've never had a problem with the book's ending. The only film versions that better it, I'd suggest, are the Lee/Cushing battle in the Hammer "Dracula" ("Horror of Dracula" in the US) - although sunlight wouldn't do that to the book Dracula - and the downbeat ending of Herzog's "Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht".

As regards Coppola's ending, I have to agree with critic Kim Newman obvious distaste that it "...left Dracula ascending to Heaven - forgiven for the peasant baby fed to his harpie-like brides and the unpleasantness with poor silly Lucy..." - is this, I wonder, the result of overlaying a Catholic sensibility over a Protestant story, or a belief that the Jack Palance TV movie had resolved the perceived problems with the source novel, or simply a sadly inevitable mainstream Hollywood happy ending?

Or - and I may be reading too much into a mere coincidence of timing - was the movie given the green light after the success of Lloyd Webber's "Phantom of the Opera" on the basis that it would be the same sort of animal - a "Gothic Romance" (as in the Bookshop definition of Romance)?

Oh - and I agree that was a very impressive review (although, was the British Empire "withering", or was it still in front (so to speak) but nervously looking behind as others (Germany, the US, etc) were catching up?)

7 > You might want to fix that touchstone, BTW, it goes to some DVD version.

#10 - Oops. Fixed.

hi peeps. Just found you guys over here, lurking in the shadows of LT. Funny, I just finished both Dracula and The Island of Dr. Moreau in the last couple months. I was on a gothic lit binge for a while, starting with one of my favorite authors ever, Patrick McGrath and his exquisite early work Spider. Are there other McGrath fans here?

>12 Bookmarque:

Hi. I read Blood and Water (touchstones gave up) back in 1989. It's due for a re-read, because to be honest I can recall very little of it - not a reflection on McGrath, but on my memory!

short stories are that way I find. Strangely, I haven't read any of McGrath's short fiction, but I have all his novels. I'm such a freak.

#9 - Funnily enough, though a lot of the Coppola film has stuck in my mind, I don't really care for it that much.

I understand that they called it 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' because someone else owned the rights to the plain 'Dracula' as a title, but it still irks me that they could use Stoker's name and then take such liberties with his story (why didn't they call it 'Francis Ford Copolla's Dracula' or something?)

And I can't escape the conviction that Gary Oldman's doing a Glenn Close in 'Dangerous Liaisons' impersonation in the early part ... and then there's Anthony Hopkins slipping in the odd Hannibal Lector impression for no good reason ...

I watched it after I read it, but don't recall much in the way of Lecter moments though Hopkins did chew the scenery quite a bit. Tom Waits was a masterful Renfield though. And yeah, liberties were taken. I watched Coppala's version of Frankenstein after reading that, too, and it veers off as wildly. More cinematic I suppose.

#16 - Hopkins does that Hannibal Lector sniffing bit somewhere - standing in a garden, I think, but I can't remember offhand who he was sniffing. I got a distinct impression that he didn't take the job that seriously and was hamming it up a bit.

All said, I rather like Copolla's film. I watch it all the time, actually. It's a lot more about the scenery/old-school effects for me (which is strange, considering that that sort of thing is usually not my bag at ALL). The acting is...just too much. I mean KEANU REEVES AS JONATHAN HARKER? WTF? His 'accent' makes me cringe...

Paul: Oldman as Close in DL gave me an ENORMOUS chuckle...thanks for that... :D And I know what you're referring to about Hopkins aping his Lecter days! He sniffs Mina outside the house, on the steps, while Lucy is dissipating in her room...

Bookmarque: welcome to my (our) parlor! :)

I logged in to LT this morning and noticed a review of The Golem on the home page under 'hot reviews.' Imagine my surprise when I realized it was my own! I feel as though I've done something worthwhile, then, with these last few wasted days, haha...

> 19

Congratulations. As you said yourself, your review was very personal, and that makes it difficult to comment on.

I'm going to have to re-read The Golem, as I've upgraded from the Dedalus paperback to the Folio Society edition. I'll feel obscurely wasteful, extravagant with my money, and guilty, until I read the hardback - however long that will take me. Which shows, possibly, how far I have to go, when it comes to spiritual development.

I've had a go at writing a review (my first, as long as you don't count putting tags in the wrong field). It's for Shadow Plays by Reggie Oliver.

I've done another review, for an old but, I suspect, influential non-fiction title, A Pictorial History of Horror Movies by Denis Gifford. Popular rather than academic.

Weird - #19 & #20 came up coloured as read, but I have absolutely no memory of ever having seen them.

Anyway, belated congrats from me, too, veil.

>19 veilofisis:. I'd expect all your reviews are "hot." Congrats!

Here we are a year later, and I swear I'm not dead, friends! I haven't been a very good host of this group in the past year, but I'm beginning to ease back into literary life. To that end, I've posted my first review in over a year on my lit blog therealmoftheunreal.blogspot.com. You can find it here, too: 'T'ain't the Meat...It's the Humanity!' and Other Stories.

The content, I promise, is more appropriate to this group than it may immediately seem. :P

Anyway, greetings, people. I've missed all of you too too much!

-Jourdain

Nice review, J.

Following up on some of the titles you mentioned and seeing the associated artwork stirred up old memories. When I was a little kid, back in the fifties, we couldn't get comics like that, But a lad from London, a close friend of one of my older brothers, used to visit relatives in our street and, one visit, he brought down a six-inch stack of old American comics for my brother. I loved the horror ones - can't remember the titles but, looking at the artwork after reading your review, I'm sure they were 'Tales from the Crypt' and/or its stable-mates.

So it's occurred to me that there's probably a 'full-circle' thing going on here - you're reviewing a book about the stuff that probably, long ago, started me on the journey that led to me being a member of this group and reading your review (it also occurred to me that those comics would probably be worth a fortune now - disappeared long, long ago, of course).

Will Eisner, the creator of the comic strip "The Spirit", said that the Yiddish theatre was a big influence on him as a writer (or dramatist? storyteller?) in the comic strip/graphic novel medium.

I wonder if this (or perhaps written Yiddish literature) was also something that that writers of the EC horror comics also drew on, and subsequently was introduced into mainstream horror and/or gothic? As this is almost totally unknown territory for me I can do no more than speculate.

I'm not suggesting that the writers were some sort of naive artists, or working in a cultural vacuum. I presume that their backgrounds were similar to the SF writers, superhero comic creators, and writers for film and television that I know about through memoirs, interviews, and so on. These people were even if economically disadvantaged children of immigrant families or growing up isolated from major cultural centres, keen to absorb all the culture they could get (two examples spring to mind: Isaac Asimov in NewYork and Robert E Howard in rural Texas).

As an aside, did you know that these comics were banned by Act of Parliament in the UK? A Haunt of Fears by Martin Barker tells the whole story. It's nearly 30 years since I read it but I've still a copy and I skimmed through it today. First off, Barker explains that American comics aimed at an adult audience - the crime comics that predated the horror comics - first came into the UK "in any numbers" with the G.I.s during WWII. They were then imported by publishers who had spotted a market. After 1950 imports were restricted and "a number of small publishers started importing the printing matrices (mats), and producing the comics locally with print-runs of up to 50,000 per comic". {Barker}.

There was a "Seduction of the Innocent" type campaign against so-called "American Comics" which eventually lead to the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act. At the time the book was written, this Act was still in force.

Barker discovered that behind the scenes, one of the major players in the campaign to ban these comics was the British Communist Party!

25

I love a good full-circle moment. ;)

26

Had no idea that the UK took the same draconian approach as the American censors. Thanks for enlightening me! 'A Haunt of Fears' just made it to my reading list... That bit about the British Communist Party's involvement is titillating if nothing else, ha!

In other news, I seem to be on a bit of a roll lately... Just posted an extended meditation on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to my blog, therealmoftheunreal.blogspot.com Quite pleased to be picking up the pace, actually...

#26, #27 - I've been trying to remember a quote all day - "We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality" - Thomas Babington Macaulay

Started a second blog, dealing with the Decadence. I reposted my reviews of Vathek and The Picture of Dorian Gray, and have added two new reviews, on Mirbeau's Torture Garden and Rodenbach's Bruges-La-Morte. Not entirely relevant to the Gothic, but these may be of interest nonetheless... :)

ETA: you can find them at aportraitinflesh.blogspot.com

> 29

I've got a copy of Torture Garden, but now I might be too scared to actually read it!

#29 - ... and Rodenbach's Bruges-La-Morte.

... and yet another book I've long been meaning to read. I've had a recording of the opera based on it - Korngold's 'Die tote stadt' - for years and years, and every time I play it I make up my mind to get hold of the book - and I still haven't done so!

Houseful: I don't blame you. Incidentally, my review...DOWNPLAYS its sadism, if anything. There are a few of the more sedate extracts in The Decadent Gardener that give perhaps a 2 on the 1-10 scale Torture Garden is actually capable of reaching, if you're curious... (I only mention that because I know you have the former; incidentally, apparently I have more books in common with you than anyone else on LT! :)

Paul: Please do so! It's one of my absolute favorites!

My last post was made well after midnight last night (UK time) and I was pretty much falling asleep over the keyboard (only fired up the machine to check my emails before bed - don't know how I ended up on LT). I have to say that reading veil's blog that time of night makes for very troubled dreams!

The bits about Torture Garden brought to mind my failed attempt, years ago, to read The 120 Days of Sodom (so disturbed and repulsed I had to give up not very far in).

The somewhat mind-boggling reference to 'automatic quartering machines' brought to mind historical accounts of the quartered chunks of characters like William Wallace and Guy Fawkes hanging, rotting, over city gates and a rather horrific short story I once read about a prison-warder being slowly tortured to death by his own torture machine.

Then there were odd bits from the film 'Belle de Jour' (the book cover at top of veil's blog is a still from it, I think), a film I find a little - 'uneasy' - shall we say.

There was the music from 'Die Tote Stadt' - and a naked Elizabeth Hurley miming, badly, to 'Mariettas Lied' from it in the film 'Aria'. This last bit comes with baggage - when the naked girl turns her face to camera so you see who it is who's miming to opera, I alway get a fit of the giggles - which completely kills any eroticism. On top of that, the chap who's miming the male part always looks to me like an axe-murderer with Liz his prospective prey. So, quite confused feelings there, when they turn up in dreams. Then, on top of all that, there were random other images from 'Aria' getting into the mix - especially John Hurt's clown almost coughing his lungs up and Bridget Fonda and lover slitting their wrists in the 'Liebestod' segment.

And lots and lots of blood

So with all that in the mix it's no wonder I woke twice in the night.

Actually, Snoopy was in there, too, but I'm damned if I can find an explanation for that ...

Took a crack at Zofloya; or, The Moor. Less relevant to this group, I did a review of one my all-time favorites: Huysmans' A Rebours.

Check my two blogs for the text: therealmoftheunreal.blogspot.com and aportraitinflesh.blogspot.com

j

#34 - Nice review. I've already ordered Bruges-la-Morte - you've now got me determined to read 'Zofloya'. 'So many books, so little time' - how many times have I said that?

I'm also intrigued by Ms Dacre - she sounds a very interesting character, by the little I can find out online.

One has to wonder whether she was publicly working out some issues from private relationships - I suppose I'm never going to know.

#34, #35 - Talking about your goading me into acquiring yet more books, I've developed a real lust for that The Rime of the Ancient Mariner edition you featured in your previous 'Realm' post.

36

It wasn't the cheapest thing, at least not for a copy in decent condition, but it was totallllllly worth every penny. It's HUGE and the engravings are actual engravings, not prints... I'd go for it... Before they're all gone...

How Mephistophelian I feel just now... :P