Vampirica Pseudepigrapha

Lucas, Tim. The Book of Renfield: The Gospel of Dracula. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005. 403 p.

Alternative literature, the retelling of an established tale from a different perspective, is a 20^th century phenomenon[1] As we come to realize that reality is subjective, we also understand that no one version of a story can produce an objective account of events. But this limitation of knowing makes us no less desirous of a complete and official truth. Hence, alternative literature helps satisfy this need for a wholeness which can never actually be achieved, but can at least be pursued.

Tim Lucas’s The Book of Renfield is an excellent example of this sub-genre. Told from the point of view of Dr. Seward’s zoophagous patient, Renfield, an important character in Dracula who nevertheless gets very little textual attention, The Book of Renfield can best be compared to Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea, a rewriting of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre from the point of view of Bertha Mason (Rochester’s first wife kept locked in the attic until she burns down the house). Like Bertha Mason, Renfield is a pivotal character in that he is the proverbial canary in the coal mine, alerting the reader to imminent danger. Furthermore, Lucas’s purpose in imagining Renfield’s life before Dracula can be compared to Rhys’s purpose in writing Wide Sargasso Sea: both authors are giving voice to minority perspectives silenced in the original story. Renfield in particular is silenced ultimately in how he is dismissed, both by Bram Stoker, and by his culture, as a mere madman whose perspective is not valuable, and whose life is easily expendable in the service of furthering the plot.

Lucas’s Renfield is an interesting character in his own right, and the author’s formation of him is deeply grounded in both Stoker’s characterization of Dr. Seward’s patient and in previous retellings of Dracula that have likewise contributed to the collective story.[2] In particular, Lucas’s tale focuses on how Renfield (in Stoker’s novel) came to change so rapidly from being someone fond of the non-traditional pets he keeps in his cell to becoming someone willing to allow each of his new pets to consume one of the old, and to ultimately consume these animals himself. In other words, it traces how he evolves from eccentricity to madness.

But The Book of Renfield does more than provide a prequel for Renfield. It also genuinely fills in voids regarding other characters, particularly, Renfield’s physician John Seward and his good friend and rival for Lucy Westerna’s hand, Arthur Holmwood. As we have suspected from Stoker’s novel and later retellings, Dr. Seward isn’t that much different from his patient. Both feel the insecurity that comes with being of obscure social origins, and Seward too has his own moments when he is far from mentally whole.

Finally, The Book of Renfield is about the editorial process of Dracula itself. The book is made up of Dr. Seward’s papers and transcribed wax cylinders, collected by his own grandson (another similarity to Allen C. Kupfer’s The Journal of Professor Abraham Van Helsing, which is discovered and edited by his descendants). And we learn that Stoker wasn’t the true author of Dracula either; rather he was mere a popular novelist of his day approached at the time to put his fictional stamp on the very real papers complied by Mina Murray Harker—after the work under her name which was complied as fact had been turned down by several publishers. This rendering of Stoker’s novel fits nicely with what some modern critics believe of its authorship: that Dracula is so different in character from Stoker’s other, generally poorly written and forgettable offerings, that it must have actually been written by Stoker after he was entrusted with tidying up a manuscript.

Despite the fact that this text challenges a good portion of our accepted beliefs of a canonical text, Dracula enthusiasts will derive a great deal of enjoyment from this latest work of alternative literature, if they accept it for what it is. The Book of Renfield is an original contribution to one of the earliest, and most popular, vampire stories as a whole, and it is an engrossing and entertaining piece of writing.

[1] Okay, yes, I know that long ago, authors such as William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer retold stories too, but their purposes for doing so were different. For authors such as these, in an age before mass produced popular culture, retelling the tale was more a means of dissemination than it was a way of filling in gaps.

[2] Just sitting here writing this review, I can already think of six retellings of Dracula: Allen C. Kupfer’s The Journals of Professor Abraham Van Helsing, Marie Kiraly’s Mina, Norman Partridge’s “Do Not Hasten to Bid Me Adieu,” Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Fred Saberhagen’s Dracula Tapes Series and Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula Series.