9781631490101 |
1631490109 |
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Summary
Summary
First published in 1897, Dracula has had a long and multifaceted afterlife--one rivaling even its immortal creation; yet Bram Stoker has remained a hovering specter in this pervasive mythology. In Something in the Blood, David J. Skal exhumes the inner world and strange genius of the writer who birthed an undying cultural icon, painting an astonishing portrait of the age in which Stoker was born--a time when death was no metaphor but a constant threat easily imagined as a character existing in flesh and blood.
Just as in his celebrated histories The Monster Show and Hollywood Gothic, Skal draws on a wealth of newly discovered documents with "the skills of a fine detective" (New York Times Book Review) to challenge much of our accepted wisdom about Dracula, Stoker, and the late Victorian age. Staging Stoker's life against a grisly tableau of the myriad anxieties plaguing the Victorian fin de siecle, Skal investigates Stoker's "transgendered imagination," unearthing Stoker's unpublished, sexually ambiguous poetry and his passionate youthful correspondence with Walt Whitman--printed in full here for the very first time.
Born into a middle-class Protestant family in Dublin in "Black 47"--the year the potato famine swept the country--Stoker was inexplicably paralyzed as a boy, and his early years unfold alongside a parade of Victorian medical mysteries and horrors: cholera and typhus, frantic bloodletting, mesmeric quack cures, and the gnawing obsession with "bad blood" that colors Dracula. While destined to become best known for his legendary undead count, Bram Stoker would become a prolific writer, critic, and theater producer, rubbing shoulders with Henry Irving, Hall Caine, and Lady Jane Wilde and her salon set--including her fated-to-be-infamous son Oscar.
In this probing psychological and cultural portrait of the man who brought us one of the most memorable monsters in history, Skal reveals a lifetime spent wrestling with the greatest questions of an era--a time riddled by disease, competing attitudes toward sex and gender, and unprecedented scientific innovation accompanied by rising paranoia and crises of faith. Stoker's battle resulted in a resilient modern folktale that continues to shock and enthrall; perhaps the most frightening thing about Dracula, Skal writes, "is the strong probability that it meant far less to Bram Stoker than it has come to mean to us."
Author Notes
David J. Skal is a respected scholar of all things macabre. A frequent talk-show guest and lecturer, his many media appearances include "The CBS Evening News," " Joan Rivers," "Charlie Rose," and NPR's "All Things Considered."
He is the author of The Monster Show, Hollywood Gothic, and Dark Carnival.
He has written, produced and appeared in a variety of film and television documentaries on occult and pop-culture subjects.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Known today almost exclusively as the author of Dracula, Bram Stoker (1847-1912) is thoroughly scrutinized in this sumptuous biography. Drawing on a wealth of research, Skal (Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen) finds credible influences for Stoker's classic novel in several key figures in his life: his strong-willed mother, who entertained her sickly young son with terrifying accounts of a cholera epidemic she lived through in the 1830s; Oscar Wilde, whose mother's salons he frequented and whose onetime love interest, Florence Balcombe, he eventually married; and Henry Irving, the renowned actor whom he served as business manager. As depicted by Skal, Stoker was a tireless workaholic who readily absorbed creative ideas from his experiences. Skal also breaks new critical ground, noting Dracula's similarities to Drink, a novel by Hall Caine, to whom Stoker dedicated his novel. Skal writes with intimate familiarity about his subject and his habits, and he has organized a remarkable amount of information into an engrossing narrative. There will likely be more biographies written about the author of Dracula, but they are not likely to surpass the achievement of this one. 16 pages of color and 80 black-and-white illustrations. Agent: Malaga Baldi, Baldi Agency. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Bram Stoker is a world-famous writer about whom most of us know almost nothing. Sure, we know he wrote Dracula (1897), and we probably know he took his inspiration from the legend of Vlad the Impaler but stop right there. Skal, a historian of horror literature and film, points out that apart from the name Dracula, Stoker actually doesn't seem to have taken a whole lot from the Vlad legend; those connections were forged afterward, by literary commentators and wishful thinkers. In fact, certain key elements of Dracula, including the vampire's sexual ambiguity, came from Stoker himself; even the themes of blood and darkness appear to be drawn from Stoker's own life and the gruesome medical experimentation he underwent. In writing about Stoker's life, Skal also writes about the time in which he lived, a time in which shifting literary sensibilities and the impending transition between centuries set the stage for a new kind of dark horror novel to launch a revolution. An engagingly written, well-documented biography of a famous writer we all think we know, even if we really don't.--Pitt, David Copyright 2016 Booklist
Library Journal Review
When Skal (The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror) includes "Untold" in the title, he is referring to the recently discovered letters written by Stoker (1847-1912) about his childhood, as well as correspondence with the eminent poet Walt Whitman. This audiobook is more than a simple biography; it is also a literary examination behind the history of Stoker's Dracula. For example, through recently discovered writings about his own past, Stoker talks about the Irish mythologies that frightened him as a boy. Skal believes that this had much to do with the style and atmosphere of the great 1897 novel. Further investigations lead to Stoker's friendship with Oscar Wilde before and during Wilde's trials and incarceration. Stoker was married but seemed to have had little interest in women, leaving Skal to interpret the sexual ambiguity of not only Stoker but of the character Dracula as well. James Patrick Cronin performs well as the narrator. His pronunciation of the Irish names, locations, and mythological creatures is spot-on. VERDICT Since this audiobook also includes the full text of Stoker's freshly revealed letters, it would be an engrossing listen for Dracula and Stoker fans, as well as literature students and faculty. ["For serious students of horror literature and Victorian culture": LJ 12/16 review of the -Liveright: Norton hc.]-Jason L. Steagall, Gateway -Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.