Dracula For Dummies
by Tony Fonseca
Leatherdale, Clive, ed. Bram Stoker's Dracula Unearthed. Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex: Desert Island Books, 1998. 512 p.
Dracula.
Bram Stoker's Transylvanian count is one of those rare literary characters who has achieved first name basis recognition. He has achieved in fact, iconographic status, rivaled only by one other vampire, Lestat. Although it took readers around the world some time to appreciate the masterful way which Stoker weaves his tale of blood-sucking fiends and psychosexual horror, Dracula has become one of those few works of literature that has evolved into an industry all its own.
At first, and appropriately, given Stoker's relationship with the stage, Dracula became successful as a play adaptation (by Hamilton Deane). In the 1930s, Universal Studios hired a relatively unknown Hungarian actor named Bela Lugosi to bring the Count to life. Lugosi made the words "Good Eve-ening" a household phrase. With follow up Universal Dracula films, Lugosi--and Dracula--became famous. Dracula disappeared from the public eye for a couple of decades, to resurface in the 1960s and 70s Hammer Studio films, starring Christopher Lee. Since then he has been variously interpreted by actors as diverse as Frank Langella, George Hamilton, Jack Palance, and Gary Oldman, and his story has been revisited by countless authors of alternative fiction, such as Fred Saberhagen, Jeanne Kalogridis, Marie Kiraly, and Kim Newman.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the original story that spawned these children of the night, the plot is very simple, and somewhat formulaic for the genre, when viewed in retrospect. A young solicitor, Jonathan Harker, travels into the bowels of Transylvania (what is now Romania), in order to visit a rich client for whom his law firm has recently procured properties in London. Harker, of course, being westernized, ignores the nervous warnings he is given by the villagers in a small town when they learn of his business, and continues his journey to Castle Dracula, where he meets the Count, who has purchased Carfax, a castle-like abode in London. Through letters home to his fiancİ, Harker describes the strangeness of the Castle Dracula, and of his host, and the reader learns (and figures out before Harker, I might add), that the Count is a vampire. Harker survives a few close calls, and is basically left for dead by the narrative.
The plot line switches, and we find ourselves aboard a Russian cargo ship, the Demeter.
The crew of the ship is mysteriously disappearing, and storms seem to follow the vessel wherever it goes. The night of reckoning comes for the remaining crew and the ship's captain, and again the narrative switches, this time to a news report about a shipwrecked Russian vessel, which runs aground on the coast of England. Whatever crew can be found has been drained of blood, and in one of the best touches in all of horror literature, the captain is found dead, tied to the ships' wheel, with a rosary wrapped around his hand. We are then introduced to the protagonists of the novel, Arthur Holmwood, a socialite who is to marry a young woman named Lucy Westenra; Quincy Morris, a visiting American cowboy (complete with Bowie knife); John Seward, a medical doctor and proprietor of the local asylum; and Mina Harker, Lucy's best friend and now Jonathan's wife.
Through various narrative devices such as letters, news reports, and phonograph diary recordings, we are told of how Lucy falls mysteriously ill, and begins walking in her sleep. Our final main character, and the hero of the novel, a Doctor Abraham Van Helsing, is brought in by Seward, and Van Helsing immediately suspects vampirism. Unfortunately for the others, and for the reader, Van Helsing, who is somewhat of a windbag, plays games with the information he learns, never outright telling anyone anything. He rather bellows out orders and hints at some imminent danger, and his carelessness and lack of communication ultimately costs Lucy her life.
The narrative then switches to more news reports of a beautiful woman who is snatching up children in the local cemetery.
This is of course, the vampire Lucy, who is quickly dispatched. And then the hunt begins for the real vampire, the Count himself. Mina (who has been bitten and therefore has a psychic bond with the Count), Jonathan, Arthur, Quincy, John, and Abraham ultimately follow Dracula back to his castle in Transylvania, where the final showdown occurs.
Of course, only a literary work of the greatest magnitude ever becomes an annotated text, which says a good bit about the new critical reception of Dracula. What was once considered to be mainly a genre novel (Stoker wrote in two genres, horror and adventure) is now accepted as part of a literary canon. If you ask me, this acceptance is well-deserved. The first one hundred and fifty pages (or so) of Stoker's novel are tightly woven as any I have read. Although Stoker loses some steam after the first half of the novel (I like to see it as two volumes--the magnificently written pre-Van Helsing volume, and the ponderous and incredulous Van Helsing volume), Stoker has enough sense to know that one of his main characters should die, both to give a sense of reality (after all, Dracula is a pretty darn powerful monster in this novel), and to add a sense of pathos.
What is particularly interesting about Leatherdale's edition of this classic novel are the copious notes that accompany virtually every page of text. A Dracula scholar himself, Leatherdale makes the work more interesting by informing the reader of how certain details and scenes changed between drafts, and to what effect; how particular passages are often interpreted; what areas specific place names refer to, and whether these areas are real or fictional; what information is known about various ethnic groups and their religious beliefs (which are very important in this text); and sometimes how he himself teaches specific scenes. My personal favorite notes occur early in the text, where Leatherdale keeps tabs on Harker's comings and goings, to either point out inconsistencies in the text, or to shed light on significant events that are easily missed by the uninformed reader. And Desert Island Books does the reader a favor by placing these annotations as footnotes, rather than as endnotes. This means that there is no page flipping necessary, and that readers can choose to ignore the notes completely if they so choose.
In addition to his notes, Leatherdale also includes a list of Stoker's sources for the novel, those travel books, encyclopedias, and treatises on occultism that the author used to develop the ideas behind his text. Leatherdale's introduction serves as an excellent discussion of the history behind the novel, and his list of the Dramatis Personae of Dracula adds to the pleasure of the reading experience by clarifying character relationships.
Leatherdale's annotated text of Stoker's classic belongs on every serious Dracula and vampire scholar's bookshelf. In fact, I would recommend it to casual fans of vampire literature, as the librarian in me can't help but think that even the most trivial annotations contain information worth knowing. Personally, I intend to place the edition next to my interactive CD-ROM, Dracula: Truth or Terror, authored by Raymond T. McNally in the 90s. After all, one can never know too many ways to ward off the undead.