Dracula!

I hate horror films and books but I liked "Drakula". There is something interesting in - awful, but gripping!
 
I find it incredibly fascinating to wonder how a 19th century audience viewed this novel. In our society today , we experience so much horror and scares in novels , movies and even in real life that we are surely far more de-sensitised to such things than they were.

What horrors must the imagination have conjured when the lamps were blown out on a dark,chilly Winters night after reading several chapters of Dracula? At a time when monsters of many kinds were widely held to be alive and living in the more remote corners of the world ( perhaps sometimes closer to home!) the scenarios mentioned in the book must have seemed very realistic and frightening to a Victorian reader.
 
I remember reading this at about 12 or 13 iirc, did nothing for me if I remember ;)
 
I remember reading Dracula at around the age of 13 as well... a red, 1926 doubleday lambskin edition, monogrammed in gold on the cover, with a key flap so that it resembled an old diary. While Dracula is not an example of great literary skill, it remains a classic of atmosphere, much as the Sherlock Holmes stories of AC Doyle are. Stoker never replicated that quality in his other efforts, but Dracula just breathes time and place and the diary approach contributes to that effect. It's hard to retreat back in time to approach a book like this from a fresh perspective, given the overwhelming glut of vampire lit/movies that have assaulted us over the last 20-30 years, but it remains a classic of its kind and fairly edgy re sexuality, given its time.

My guess is that the same people who would find a popular book like Dracula to be "boring" and "slow" must be absolutely intolerant of the vast majority of classic literature. What then must Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Dickens, Fielding, Conrad, etc. feel like. They actually make demands on the reader that Stoker doesn't.... just wondering.
 
Good point GoC. They feel slow. In the modern age they are an acquired taste, the literary equivalent of Laphroaig. Unfortunately it takes time and a degree of ambition to come to these works. So much easier just to plug in your earphones and glaze your mind over to another episode of Coronation Street on your phone/pc/coffeemaker.

Damn... that's cynicism.

But I enjoyed Dracula; it reeks of time, decay and the nineteenth century.
 
I read it about 5 or 6 years ago. It didn't scare me but, I liked the story and thought the book was very well written . I do recommend it .(y)
 
I wonder if there's an audio book version of it? A lot of those old dusty classics like Dickens are best when read aloud. In the old days, the family would sit around the fire after supper and listen to one person read a chapter. They didn't have t.v. The original Dracula novel is very good if you like that Victorian style of storytelling.
 
BAYLOR said:
I read it about 5 or 6 years ago. It didn't scare me but, I liked the story and thought the book was very well written . I do recommend it .(y)
Click to expand...
Didn't scare you?!!
Not even the bit where Harker sees him crawl upside down on the outer wall?
Everybody needs to read the short story prequel 'Dracula's Guest' too,go and do it,you!Right now!!!
 
anno said:
Didn't scare you?!!
Not even the bit where Harker sees him crawl upside down on the outer wall?
Everybody needs to read the short story prequel 'Dracula's Guest' too,go and do it,you!Right now!!!
Click to expand...

When the book first came out, it was cutting edge horror. but it's been superseded by time and so many other novels in terms of it's shock horror value. But is still a great read and I do recommend it . (y)
 
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