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| 0755100697
| 9780755100699
| 0755100697
| 3.25
| 762
| Jan 01, 1973
| Jul 01, 2001
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None
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Notes are private!
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0
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Apr 17, 2022
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Paperback
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| 0380011972
| 9780380011971
| 0380011972
| 4.39
| 18
| Jun 1973
| Jan 01, 1973
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Jan 24, 2022
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Paperback
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| 186105033X
| 9781861050335
| 186105033X
| unknown
| 3.72
| 80
| 1975
| Apr 15, 1997
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Oct 31, 2021
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Hardcover
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| 0727860992
| 9780727860996
| 0727860992
| 3.73
| 54,197
| 1971
| Jul 01, 2004
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Oct 31, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 0395657830
| 9780395657836
| 0395657830
| 3.88
| 1,579
| 1972
| Oct 31, 1994
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really liked it
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In Romania, Dracula seems to be everywhere. Some Romanians consider him a national hero for defending his homeland against the invading Ottoman forces
In Romania, Dracula seems to be everywhere. Some Romanians consider him a national hero for defending his homeland against the invading Ottoman forces -- even if, in the process, he impaled an unknown but undeniably substantial number of victims. The bloody-minded and unmistakably real Wallachian prince Vlad Ţepeş -- or Vlad the Impaler, or Vlad III Dracula -- appears at sites throughout Romania: the Borgo Pass that connects the historical regions of Transylvania and Moldavia; the cities of Sibiu and Braşov, where the local German Saxons often experienced Dracula's wrath; atmospheric Bran Castle, a virtual Ground Zero for Dracula tourism; and down through Vlad Dracula's actual Wallachian realm in what is now southern Romania. The modern-day tourist who travels to Romania in search of all things Dracula will not be disappointed. Interestingly, it is entirely possible that none of that Dracula tourism would be a feature of modern Romania's cultural landscape if not for the book In Search of Dracula. Written collaboratively by Boston College scholars Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu (one American, one Romanian) and originally published in 1972, In Search of Dracula was the first book to draw a direct link between the Prince Dracula of history and the Count Dracula of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula (1897), who has gone on to become a ubiquitous presence in film, television, and popular culture generally. Today, we take the link between the historical and fictive Draculas for granted; in 1972, it was quite a new thing, and any reader with an interest in Dracula and vampires owes a debt of gratitude to McNally and Florescu. The book's subtitle -- The History of Dracula and Vampires -- provides an accurate sense of its trajectory. The early portions of In Search of Dracula relate the fictive Dracula to the real-life Vlad Dracula (McNally and Florescu describe in Chapter 2 an expedition that they undertook to find the real Castle Dracula; Stoker's great novel notwithstanding, it is nowhere near the Borgo Pass of northern Romania). Chapters 3 through 9 chronicle the life, the bloody reign, and the violent death of Vlad Dracula. After a brief look at Old World vampire folklore, the authors then examine the manner in which Bram Stoker conducted thorough research regarding Dracula and vampire stories in preparation for writing Dracula, and then go on to consider Dracula on stage, in fiction, and in film. When I first read In Search of Dracula, I found the author's invocation of the tangled politics of Vlad Dracula's time somewhat confusing. Now that I have lived in Hungary and traveled in Romania, I found that part of the book, on a second reading, much more understandable. Many readers will already know that Vlad III Dracula's father, Vlad II Dracul, gained the nickname "Dracul" ("the dragon") because of his membership in the Order of the Dragon, a Christian chivalric order organized to resist Ottoman incursions into Europe; the "-a" in Dracula's name is a diminutive, and thus "Dracula" literally means "son of the dragon." Not that there's going to be a major movement to start referring to Vlad Ţepeş as Vlad Dragonson or anything, but it's still interesting to know. One impression I got from these portions of the book was that, when Vlad Dracula carried out his acts of impalement against his many victims, he no doubt knew that word of his cruelty would spread widely -- a possible deterrent to potential enemies, and a grim convergence of sadism and realpolitik. In Dracula's own time, the sight of a "forest" of impalement victims was enough to cause Mehmet II, the Ottoman sultan who had taken Constantinople, to end his invasion of Wallachia and return home; and more than 500 years later, those true stories of the horrors inflicted by Dracula still echo down the ages. From the bloodthirsty voivode of Wallachia to the blood-drinking vampire of Stoker's novel and endless films, McNally and Florescu guide us in a manner that is horrifying and compelling, right down through an account of how the Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu may have identified with the historical Dracula during the long grim years of the Cold War. The book is well-illustrated with maps, engravings, paintings, photographs, and film stills. Helpful supplements include original German, Russian, and Romanian stories about Dracula; for the Germans, who remembered Vlad Dracula's brutal actions against the Saxons of Sibiu (German name, Hermannstadt) and Braşov (German name, Kronstadt), Dracula is an unreasoning psychopath; for the Russians and Romanians, Dracula is depicted somewhat more sympathetically, as a harsh ruler in a harsh time. A filmography lets the reader know of Dracula and vampire films that include the good (few), the mediocre (many), and the bad (very many). There is even a travel guide that lets the reader know of opportunities for Dracula tourism in England, Scotland, Ireland, and (of course) Romania. This updated edition of In Search of Dracula was published in 1994. Another update might be welcome; I would be interested, for example, in hearing the authors' thoughts regarding Shadow of the Vampire, the 2000 film that imagines F.W. Murnau, director of the classic Dracula film Nosferatu (1922), hiring an actual vampire to play the film's Dracula character and suffering the consequences. But the book is great as it is, setting forth as it does the grim saga of a cruel medieval ruler whose life story evolved into the undying legend of an undead monster. For anyone with an interest in Dracula and vampires, In Search of Dracula is essential. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 19, 2019
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Paperback
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| 0141439572
| 9780141439570
| 0141439572
| 4.13
| 1,615,002
| Jun 1890
| Feb 04, 2003
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it was amazing
|
A portrait, it is said, can provide a window into the soul of both its painter and its subject; and never was that idea more true than in the case of
A portrait, it is said, can provide a window into the soul of both its painter and its subject; and never was that idea more true than in the case of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. First published in full-length novel form in 1891, this concise classic of literary Gothicism achieves terrifying effects with remarkable narrative economy. Perhaps never before or since has any author set forth so compellingly the idea of an attractive outer self that conceals the true corruption within. Born in Dublin in 1854, into an Anglo-Irish family where the life of the mind was prized, Oscar Wilde stood out early as student and writer. He is probably best known, in literary terms, for his comedies of manners – plays like The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), where characters are constantly engaged in contests of verbal wit. Artistically, Wilde aligned with the Aesthetic Movement whose adherents claimed that beautiful appearances in art were more important than a work’s moral function. Biographically, Wilde endured the pain and humiliation of a well-publicized trial on charges of homosexual activity; convicted and sentenced to two years’ hard labour, Wilde suffered in both physical and psychological terms, and his prison ordeal may have contributed to his early death at the age of 46. Yet the ordeals of his later life were still years away when Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray. In the book's preface, Wilde writes that “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” He’s telling the truth regarding the importance that a book be well-written, but he belies himself on the former point. The Picture of Dorian Gray is, in fact, a profoundly moral book. The book begins with a talented artist named Basil Hallward working on “the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty” (p. 1) whilst conversing with his friend, Lord Henry Wotton. Impressed by Basil’s painting, Lord Henry calls the portrait’s subject “this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus” (p. 1). The mention of the young man from Greek mythology who came to grief by falling in love with his own reflection certainly makes for suitable foreshadowing. As for Basil, he provides some interesting and important foreshadowing of his own, when he tells Lord Henry that “every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself” (p. 3). Hallward is right, to an extent – but only to an extent. The portrait that he is painting does reveal something about Hallward – specifically, his fascination or infatuation with the youthful beauty of Dorian Gray – but as the novel goes on, the portrait reveals more and more, and more, about Dorian Gray himself. Hallward worries that Lord Henry, with his oft-expressed disdain for “morals” of any kind, may be a bad influence on Dorian Gray, but Lord Henry, like everyone else in this novel who meets Dorian Gray, feels an immediate fascination with Gray’s physical perfection. “Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth’s passionate purity. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world” (p. 11). An aesthete like Wilde himself, who lives for the pursuit of pleasure, Lord Henry declares that “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful” (p. 13). Shortly after these reflections, Lord Henry finds Dorian Gray frantically smelling the lilac-blossoms in the garden, and expresses approval of what Dorian Gray is doing: “Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul” (p. 14). Dorian Gray loves the portrait that Basil has painted for him; but it causes him to reflect, with sadness, that “there would be a day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his lips, and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar his body. He would become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth” (p. 17). His sadness at these reflections causes Dorian Gray to make a fateful declaration: “How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June….If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that – for that – I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!” (pp. 17-18) Dorian Gray – who, prior to his meeting Lord Henry, seemed like a bit of a blank slate, with the potential to either rise toward virtue or sink into vice – falls in love with, and becomes engaged to, the young actress Sibyl Vane. Her brother James Vane is suspicious at this sudden show of love from a wealthy aristocrat to a poor actress without social connections, and feels that his mother is in no position to help Sibyl. Lord Henry, for his part, doesn’t much like hearing of how Dorian Gray has (supposedly) found true love: “A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them” (p. 56). And Lord Henry is correct in that assessment – though for reasons that Lord Henry himself cannot possibly suspect. Further foreshadowing is offered through the narrator’s observation that “When the cab drew up at the theatre, it seemed to [Lord Henry] that he had grown years older” (p. 59). Lord Henry will grow years older, as the novel goes on, while his friend Dorian Gray will not. Sibyl Vane is young, sweet, inexperienced of life, and a bit naïve; and when Dorian Gray suddenly, arbitrarily, and quite cruelly throws her over, the results are tragic. Yet what surprises Dorian is the change that he sees in his portrait after the event: “In the dim arrested light that struggled through the cream-coloured silk blinds, the face appeared to him to be a little changed. The expression looked different. One would have said that there was a touch of cruelty to the mouth” (p. 63). When Dorian Gray draws up the blinds, to get a better look at the portrait, the presence of more sunlight changes nothing, for “the strange expression that he had noticed in the face of the portrait seemed to linger there, to be more intensified even. The quivering ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing” (p. 63). Only then does Dorian Gray realize that the wish that he had impulsively made at Basil Hallward’s studio sometime before – that, in return for his soul, his portrait would age, while he himself would remain young – has been granted. Yet, as in deal-with-the-devil stories from the medieval Faust legends through the movie Ghost Rider (2007), the deal has an added and unwelcome twist: the portrait will reveal not only the normal ravages of age, but also the moral corruption that results from whatever acts of cruelty and selfishness Dorian Gray may commit. From that time on, Dorian Gray’s journey into moral depravity takes on an air of inevitability. Like the addict who makes periodic pledges to give up the addictive substance or behaviour, Dorian Gray occasionally declares that he is going to change his ways; as the narrator sardonically remarks, “There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution” (p. 67). In the main, however, Dorian Gray’s subsequent moral progress – or regress – is one big downward step after another. Dorian Gray hides the portrait – as many of us hide the evidence of our own moral shortcomings. Yet like many a criminal who has not gotten caught, he cannot help returning to the proverbial scene of the crime. His activities compromise a variety of young men and women of London society, to the point that his name starts to become a byword and a reproach in some quarters; at one point, the degree of degradation that threatens the lives and the fortunes of these wealthy people is vividly demonstrated when Dorian Gray, in order to blackmail a former friend into helping him with one bit of particularly nasty business, has only to write an address on a piece of paper and show it to his former friend. Yet while his appearance before the world remains preternaturally handsome, Dorian Gray periodically finds himself drawn to examine the continuing deterioration of his appearance in the portrait: He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. He would place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture, and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs. (p. 89) He has time and leisure to explore an elaborate array of aesthetic hobbies and interests – eighteen years of time and leisure, and it is striking (and not terribly flattering to Lord Henry’s powers of observation) that Lord Henry does not see too much significance in Dorian Gray’s unchanging appearance over those 18 years. Think about it: imagine that a friend of yours did not change one bit between 2005 – the time of Hurricane Katrina, the V for Vendetta movie, Coldplay’s X + Y album, the Chicago White Sox defeating Houston in the World Series – and today. Wouldn’t you notice? Lord Henry does not. A crisis in the story occurs when Basil Hallward goes to warn Dorian Gray about the damage to Dorian’s reputation that has been caused by rumours of Dorian’s bad behaviour. Angered by what he sees as Basil’s interfering ways, Dorian Gray says, “I shall show you my soul. You shall see the thing that you fancy only God can see” (p. 105), and takes Basil up to see the portrait. Basil is horrified by “the hideous face” that he sees on the canvas, and even more horrified to see that the so-dramatically-changed painting is indeed still his own: The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvelous beauty. There was still some gold in the thinning hair, and some scarlet on the sensual mouth. The sodden eyes had kept something of the loveliness of their blue; the noble curves had not yet completely passed away from chiselled nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it was Dorian himself. But who had done it? He seemed to recognize his own brushwork, and the frame was his own design. The idea was monstrous, yet he felt afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. In the left-hand corner was his own name, traced in long letters of bright vermilion. (pp. 106-07) Most of Dorian Gray’s depravities are suggested, rather than stated outright, in a manner that is suitable for a novel published in 1891. Yet his indulgence in drugs like opium is set forth quite clearly; and eventually, Dorian “graduates” from sensual self-gratification to murder, leaving his portrait with a “loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on one of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood” (p. 119). As a relative of one of the people wronged by Dorian Gray starts to seek revenge, and as Dorian finds himself forced to confront the cruelties he has perpetrated, Lord Henry remains as clueless as ever regarding the realities of his friend’s life; when Dorian expresses some tentative wishes to reform himself, Lord Henry dismissively states, “Ah, Dorian, how happy you are! What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk deeply of everything. You have crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing has been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more than the sound of music. It has not marred you. You are still the same” (p. 150). The situational irony behind Lord Henry’s words is crushing to Dorian, leading to a shattering final moment when Dorian makes one last futile attempt to free himself from his curse. Wilde made many protestations to the effect that all that mattered in literature was its aesthetic excellence – that the moral qualities of a book were meaningless – and yet The Picture of Dorian Gray provides a powerful moral argument. Wilde’s book reminds us of all the people we have met who hide their vices behind a graceful and attractive exterior – and makes us wonder when we may have been such a person. The portrait of Dorian Gray becomes a symbol for the human conscience, and Wilde’s novel provides, for all of us, a vivid reminder of the times when we have looked into the mirror and found a twisted, distorted version of ourselves looking back. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 07, 2023
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Oct 09, 2023
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Oct 31, 2017
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0141439734
| 9780141439730
| 0141439734
| 3.92
| 130,727
| Jan 05, 1886
| Feb 27, 2003
|
it was amazing
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The strange thing about the Jekyll-and-Hyde story, for me, is how true-to-life it all feels. From the moment one first takes up a copy of Dr. Jekyll a
The strange thing about the Jekyll-and-Hyde story, for me, is how true-to-life it all feels. From the moment one first takes up a copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) and begins reading, it is as if one is reading a moral autobiography. There is, after all, good and bad within all of us – a fact of which this great novella provides a powerful and disturbing reminder. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (the full name of the story) is not the only thing that the Scottish-born Robert Louis Stevenson ever wrote, though it is certainly the most famous. Notwithstanding the lung trouble that plagued him for much of his life, forced him to relocate from Great Britain to Samoa, and took his life when he was just 44 years old, Stevenson was a prolific author of engaging and entertaining stories. Works like Treasure Island (1883) and Kidnapped (1886) are often thought of in terms of their appeal to younger readers – a fact that may simply show that Stevenson knew how to write fast-moving, character-oriented stories that could grab and hold the interest of any reader. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a short novel that no one would describe as a children’s tale, also possesses those qualities, in abundance. The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde comes together in a gradual and fragmentary way, in large part through the investigations of a lawyer named Utterson and a doctor whose name is Lanyon; both are friends of Jekyll from university days, and both bring their respective areas of expertise to the investigation of a singularly disagreeable young man named Edward Hyde who, it is clear from the beginning, inspires instinctive feelings of horror and disgust in all who meet him. Knowing, as he does, that the respected physician Dr. Jekyll has inexplicably willed all his possessions to Hyde, Utterson sets himself to learning all he can about Hyde, remarking that “If he be Mr. Hyde…I shall be Mr. Seek” (p. 14). Jekyll himself, for all his outward respectability, shows hints of the dark side that emerges in the form of Mr. Hyde; Stevenson’s narrator describes him as “a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with something of a slyish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and kindness” (19; emphasis added). Jekyll casually dismisses the concerns of both Utterson and Lanyon. Yet events take a decided turn for the worse when Mr. Hyde murders a well-liked parliamentarian named Sir Danvers Carew; a maid who witnessed the murder recounts that, after Hyde and Carew casually met in the street, “Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth. And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway” (pp. 21-22). The final solution to the mystery is to be found in a narrative from Doctor Lanyon, and in a chapter titled “Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case.” Doctor Lanyon writes of being summoned to Jekyll’s home by an urgent letter from Jekyll – only to find, at the Jekyll home, not Jekyll but Hyde. Lanyon, who in response to Jekyll’s appeal brought a drawerful of chemical compounds from Jekyll’s laboratory, watches as Hyde mixes the chemicals and then drinks the mixture – and then “there came, I thought, a change – he seemed to swell – his face became suddenly black and the features seemed to melt and alter….‘O God!’ I screamed, and ‘O God!’ again and again; for there before my eyes…there stood Henry Jekyll!” (p. 54). We are so accustomed to the story that it is an interesting thing to try to imagine its impact on its original readers – what it must have been like in 1886 to realize, with a shock of pure horror, that Hyde is not an illegitimate son of Jekyll, or a blackmailer with knowledge of Jekyll’s secrets, but rather is Jekyll himself! All the clues laid down so carefully by Stevenson throughout the early part of the story click into place in that moment. And Jekyll’s statement sets forth, in eloquent and disturbing detail, the progress of Jekyll’s efforts to isolate from one another the good and evil sides of human nature. Jekyll explains that, while he had generally tried to lead a good life, he was infused with a spirit of selfish ambition when he drank his experimental serum; otherwise, “from these agonies of death and birth, I had come forth an angel instead of a fiend.” As things stood, however, Henry Jekyll gave birth to Edward Hyde, a man upon whose face “evil was written broadly and plainly”, and whose body bore “an imprint of deformity and decay” (pp. 58-59). Jekyll, we learn, consciously sought to live a double life; as “Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil” (p. 58), Jekyll thought that, in the guise of Hyde, he could pursue pleasures not allowed to a respectable gentleman of Victorian London. How many times, in the London of those days, did a real-life West End gentleman seek out ways of secretly indulging in forbidden East End delights? Jekyll is an extreme example in that regard, but hardly a unique one. Time and again, Jekyll tells us, he would swear off what he had done as Hyde, re-dedicate himself to a life of virtue – only to find that he could not resist the temptation to drink his potion just once more, take up the life of Hyde one last time. Transforming into Hyde became something like an addiction; and eventually, he found that the Hyde within him could not remain hidden. He would go to sleep as Jekyll, and wake up as Hyde – and thus this divided character moved forward toward his own destruction. The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde remains with us. So many great actors have responded with enthusiasm to the chance to play this compelling dual role: John Barrymore, Frederic March, Spencer Tracy, Boris Karloff, Jack Palance, Christopher Lee, David Hemmings, Leonard Nimoy, John Malkovich, Russell Crowe. It is truly the original “evil twin” story. This Penguin Classics edition of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde also contains “The Body Snatcher,” a story of the moral ambiguities attendant upon medical students’ attempts to find corpses to study at a time when doing so was illegal -- and a story that, in its 1945 film adaptation by Robert Wise, features one of Boris Karloff's finest performances -- as well as “Olalla,” an evocative Gothic story with elements of vampirism. Penguin Books editor Robert Mighall provides a helpful introduction as well as an afterword, “Diagnosing Jekyll,” that sets forth “The Scientific Context to Dr. Jekyll’s Experiment and Mr. Hyde’s Embodiment” – all of which provides a helpful sense of the factors that may have helped Stevenson write his great novella. Clocking in at only about 70 pages, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is truly one of the world’s great tales of terror. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Oct 31, 2017
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 014143984X
| 9780141439846
| 014143984X
| 4.02
| 1,314,062
| May 26, 1897
| Apr 29, 2003
|
it was amazing
|
Dracula is still a living presence in modern Romania, and there is nothing like reading Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula in Romania during the month o
Dracula is still a living presence in modern Romania, and there is nothing like reading Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula in Romania during the month of October. During the day, the landscape of the Transylvanian plains seems tranquil, almost pastoral. One sees a shepherd and his dog guiding the sheep to their grazing place, or notices the red tassels that adorn the horses pulling the carts of Romany farmers; and the chief danger seems to be from the aggressive drivers that one sometimes encounters on Romanian roadways. But then, as night begins to fall, one feels a chill that seems to go deeper than anything that the autumn air alone could cause. One remembers the travel-book warnings that one should not drive in rural Romania after dark. When one finally reaches Sibiu or Brasov, just as the sun is setting, one’s eyes are drawn to the stern, austere beauty of the town’s churches. And just what was that little creature winging its unsteady way among the lighted steeples?... Bram Stoker no doubt knew that he had a good story idea in mind. He conducted diligent research regarding the historical Dracula, who died in 1477. The bloody-minded Vlad Țepeș or “Vlad the Impaler,” who as voivode of Wallachia committed unspeakable cruelties on a regular basis, more than earned his nickname as a Drăculești or Dracula, Romanian for “son of the dragon.” So outrageous were the atrocities committed by Vlad Dracula that he became linked with the abundant vampire folklore of Eastern Europe; and 400 years later, Bram Stoker gave Dracula to the world. The power of Dracula starts with characterization generally, and with the title character in particular. Please allow Stoker to introduce him, as he is first seen by Jonathan Harker, a young English solicitor whose business it is to help facilitate Dracula’s plans to move from Transylvania to England: Within stood a tall old man, clean-shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of color about him anywhere. His face was a strong – a very strong – aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor. So powerful is Dracula as a character, from the moment we first see him through Jonathan Harker’s eyes, that the character can vanish from the novel for almost 250 pages, seen only as a bat, a wolf, a wisp of fog, and yet still loom over the novel as a dominating presence. From his initial conversations with Harker, Dracula shows his pride in his aristocratic heritage, his disdain for the common people (he would not want even to sleep in the same earth with commoners). It is as if Stoker is suggesting, mischievously, that the move from titled lord to vampire is not a terribly long leap. The impeccable manners that Dracula displays on a first impression give way quickly to an unconcealed disdain for human beings generally. Once he has successfully arranged to be transported from his Transylvanian homeland to England, one has a strong sense that a struggle for the future of humanity has begun. Other characters are sketched with comparable skill. In Jonathan Harker, we are given a quite suitable protagonist: a smart and likeable young man, imprisoned in Dracula’s castle, who cannot pit his power against Dracula’s and therefore must make good use of his wits if he is to survive his fearful captivity. Later in the novel, it is painful to watch Harker aging before his time as the vampire attacks the woman Harker loves. Van Helsing, the great scientist whose areas of expertise extend beyond the natural to the supernatural, likewise draws the reader’s interest and admiration (though Stoker’s attempts at rendering the character’s Dutch-inflected English sometimes seem forced). I have always found unfortunate those readings of the novel in which Lucy Westenra is the “bad” girl who succumbs to Dracula’s advances because she “deserves” such a fate, whereas Mina Murray-Harker is the “good” girl who survives the vampire’s depredations because she is somehow more “virtuous” and more “deserving” of a happier fate. Nothing could be further from the truth. Both characters are likeable young women, and Lucy is guilty of nothing worse than being popular (her receiving multiple proposals from multiple suitors on the same day is a bit much for us to be asked to believe). Because Lucy is a good person, it is all the more heartbreaking to watch the long struggle for her life and soul between Van Helsing and Lucy’s four suitors on the one hand (all of whom, at one point or another, donate their blood in an effort to stop Lucy’s long, slow decline toward death) and the implacable Dracula on the other. A couple of unfortunate twists of fate make the outcome of Lucy’s struggle all the more tragic. And then one senses all the more strongly what is at stake as the vampire turns his diabolical attentions toward Mina. I have not yet talked about the importance of the novel’s structure. Stoker unfolds the grim story of Dracula through journals, newspaper clippings, letters, diaries, phonograph recordings, and the like. This epistolary, documentary quality contributes to the novel’s power, and somehow makes the novel’s bizarre events – e.g., a ship sailing into a northern England harbor with a dead crew – seem more real. There are good reasons why this is one of the best-loved and most influential novels in all of literary history. If you have never read this novel, read it; if you have read it, read it again. Dracula will wait for you. He has all the time in the world. ...more |
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“The Phantom of the Opera – is there/Inside your mind.” These lyrics from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical-theatre adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera
“The Phantom of the Opera – is there/Inside your mind.” These lyrics from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical-theatre adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera echo the opening sentence of Gaston Leroux’s original 1910 novel: “The Phantom of the Opera did exist” (p. 5). And both sentences ring true – for in one form or another, as a novel or a film or a musical play, this Gothic-opera story of a mad, disfigured genius who lives in a network of caves and underground passages beneath the Paris Opera House has been very much with us ever since Leroux’s novel first saw print. The Phantom of the Opera does exist; he is here, inside our minds, and he shows no inclination to leave our thoughts anytime soon. Born in 1868, Gaston Leroux studied law but found that journalism better suited his talents. He was a hard-working and successful reporter, and his experience as a journalist gave him a thoroughgoing knowledge of the cityscape, society, and folklore of Paris. As Jann Matlock of University College London explains in a foreword, part of that folklore included stories of how, when the Palais Garnier was being built between 1863 and 1875, it was discovered that an underground lake – a natural collection point for water from a tributary of the Seine – existed beneath the site where the opera building would take shape. Opera houses around the world already possessed a rich folklore of hauntings and weird happenings; and from that story of an underground lake, Leroux began to weave his tale of a mysterious, ghost-like figure who made the sunless grounds around that underground lake his home. As Leroux’s novel begins, two new directors of the Paris Opera are learning, to their consternation, that the Opera House is haunted by an “opera ghost” who insists that Box Five be reserved for him at all times, and who has an odd physicality for a ghost; he sometimes asks for a footstool, and he always tips two francs and sometimes leaves a fan behind. And he shows a decided interest in the musical career of one Christine Daaé, a talented singer who is also the daughter of a noted Scandinavian violinist. Christine’s display of talent is threatening to the opera’s reigning diva, Carlotta, who seeks to make sure that upstart Christine will not steal her hard-won operatic thunder. But Christine, who is being trained in secret by a mysterious “Angel of Music,” also seems to have the protection of the “opera ghost,” who sends a threatening letter to Carlotta, warning her not to sing that night, and adding that “should you sing tonight, a great misfortune may befall you during your performance…a misfortune worse than death” (p. 81). The letter, “written in red ink, in a clumsy, disjointed hand” (p. 81), is no idle threat. Carlotta is mortified on stage when her hitherto beautiful singing voice becomes a toad-like croak. The mocking, “impossible disembodied voice” of the Phantom calls out, “Her singing tonight is enough to bring down the chandelier” (p. 92). What then follows is one of the most famous scenes in the history of literary Gothicism: [The audience] looked up as one to the ceiling and let out a terrible cry. The chandelier, the enormous mass of the chandelier, was moving, slipping downwards in response to that fiendish voice. Unhooked, it plummeted down from the very top of the house, crashing into the middle of the stalls, amidst a thousand screams. Terror struck, followed by a general stampede. (p. 92) Raoul, the Count de Chagny, was Christine’s childhood sweetheart; and his status as a patron of the arts brings him and Christine together once again. But Christine is also loved by the “opera ghost”, the Phantom; and when Christine and Raoul attend a masked ball together at the opera house, the masked ball is invaded by the Phantom, in a nice nod by author Leroux to Gothic forerunner Edgar Allan Poe: This figure was dressed entirely in scarlet. A huge hat adorned with a plume of feathers crowned his skull-like head – and ah, what a splendid imitation of a skull it was! The art students applauded and congratulated him, enquiring which master craftsman, which workshop patronized by Pluto, had designed, made, and painted so perfect a head! The Grim Reaper himself must have posed for it. A huge velvet cloak dragged on the floor like a trail of fire as the man in scarlet with the plumed hat and the skeletal head stalked. His cloak bore, embroidered in gold, the words: “Stand aside! I am the Red Death.” (p. 105) It is a love triangle with a difference, with two compelling men vying for the affection of the beautiful and talented Christine. On the one hand, there is the thoroughly Apollonian Raoul – a fine match, a good catch. He’ll be a good provider, a reliable and honourable husband, a doting father. He’ll never miss any of his children’s soccer matches or dance recitals. He won’t run around with other women, or gamble away the house payment, or get drunk and say tacky things at neighbourhood parties. He’s everything a girl is supposed to want. But then there’s the Phantom – dark, Dionysiac, transgressive, with the lure of the forbidden around him. He lives underground, does what he bloody well wants, and doesn’t care a fig what anyone thinks about it. He's creative and talented. The Phantom is a badass; and the thoroughly respectable Raoul sees that he’s at a bit of a disadvantage, bitterly asking Christine, “Why waste your time here with me? You clearly love him! Your fears, your terror, all of that is still born of love, and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind that one does not admit even to oneself….The kind that gives you a thrill when you think of it. No wonder: a mysterious man living in an underground palace!” (p. 140) But what Raoul does not yet know, at that point, is the story of how Christine learned the Phantom’s dark secret while she was being held by him. The Phantom, whose real name is Erik, always wears a mask; and while she and Erik are singing together, Christine finds herself feeling compelled to remove the mask and see the face beneath. When Christine unmasks the Phantom, there’s a dreamlike quality to it, the terrifying logic of a nightmare. The two are singing the duet from Otello – appropriately, a story of love and murder – and Christine recollects how “I wanted to gaze upon the hidden face that must have been transfigured by eternal art, so as to take this sublime image with me to my grave. I wanted to see the face of the Voice and instinctively, for I was no longer mistress of myself, my fingers tore away the mask. Oh! Horror! Horror! Horror!” (p. 145) It is the passage that the reader has been waiting for, as Christine tries to describe to Raoul what the man looked like behind the mask: “You must have seen skulls, dried and withered by the centuries….You also saw the Red Death among the revellers at the masked ball….But imagine, if you can, the mask of the Red Death suddenly coming to life in order to express – through the holes that were his eyes, his nose, and his mouth – the unfettered anger and sovereign fury of a demon; and yet not the slightest gleam from those eye sockets, for, as I was to learn later, his burning eyes only shone in the darkest night.” (p. 146) Like the vampire, or the zombie, or Frankenstein’s monster, the Phantom occupies a sort of liminal space, a middle ground, between life and death. Enraged at being thus exposed as “hideousness incarnate”, the Phantom, with “grinding teeth and no lips”, draws close to Christine, and curses what he sees as her womanly curiosity: “You wanted to see! Then look! Feast your eyes, sate your soul, on my accursed ugliness!” (p. 146) The story of how Christine engineers her escape from a Phantom who has sworn that, now that she has seen his ugly face, she can never leave him, is one of the most fascinating aspects of The Phantom of the Opera. As Christine puts it to Raoul, “My lies were as hideous as the monster that had inspired them; but they were the price I had to pay to regain my freedom” (p. 150). Yet Christine’s freedom is short-lived, as the Phantom kidnaps her in the middle of a performance and takes her down into his underground lair. The actual architecture of the Paris Opera House, with differing levels of basements and sub-basements incorporated into its design in order to accommodate the elaborate sets of the time, lends itself to this aspect of Leroux’s novel. At the same time, the opera’s underground becomes a sort of map of the subconscious and unconscious reaches of Erik’s twisted mind. Raoul’s initial feelings of despair at Christine’s disappearance are relieved somewhat when a mysterious Persian, who knows Erik from years past, offers to help Raoul find Christine. Warning Raoul that “You need to be ready for anything. I must warn you that we shall face the most formidable adversary imaginable” (p. 200), the Persian leads Raoul down into the grim world beneath the opera house. What follows is a descent through a variety of traps, devised by the Phantom to protect his lair from unwanted intruders. The traps impose different kinds of physical and psychological torture in a way that evokes Dante’s Inferno. The Persian, who takes over the narration at this point in the novel, sees how Raoul is being affected by the Phantom’s traps, and wonders whether Raoul will be strong enough to endure the ordeal: “He shouted Christine’s name, brandished his pistol, called out to the Phantom, challenged the Angel of Music to fight to the death, and swore profanities….In short, the torture was beginning to affect his unprepared mind” (p. 250). And amidst these hellish torments devised by a devilish but very human genius, The Phantom of the Opera moves inexorably toward its conclusion. While thinking about the array of actors who have played the Phantom on film – Lon Chaney, Claude Rains, Herbert Lom, Maximilian Schell, Robert Englund, Charles Dance, Julian Sands, Gerard Butler – I found myself reflecting on how often film directors have felt the need to invent a backstory for the Phantom. Those backstories, some of which are quite fantastical (in one, the Phantom is raised by rats!), perhaps reflect the fact that Erik’s backstory, as set forth in Leroux’s novel, is fantastical in its own right – downright operatic – though it does provide an explanation for how Erik could design all that interesting and weird stuff in his underground home. Today, as commentator Matlock wryly notes, the docents at the real-life Paris Opera House “don’t tell you about the Phantom unless someone asks. And even then, the guides…work very hard to keep that aspect of the building’s lore to a minimum” (p. xiii); the gift shop doesn’t even stock Leroux’s book! And meanwhile, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, which debuted in 1986, is still running, both in the West End and on Broadway, with total worldwide receipts of more than $6 billion – a monster in its own right. (I saw it once, in New York – had good seats, right under the chandelier. It gives one pause.) The ongoing popularity of The Phantom of the Opera, in such a variety of media, speaks to how skillfully Leroux crafted and wove a story calculated to fascinate the reader. Truly, the Phantom of the Opera is still there – inside our minds. ...more |
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Frankenstein is the doctor – a man named Victor Frankenstein – and not the monster, who is usually called “the creature” to emphasize his status as a
Frankenstein is the doctor – a man named Victor Frankenstein – and not the monster, who is usually called “the creature” to emphasize his status as a being created by Frankenstein the doctor. I wish more people were aware of that distinction. Those matters of nomenclature aside, we can all agree that, from the time of its publication in 1818, Frankenstein has held a peculiar power to shock and horrify. Mary Shelley's novel, written as part of an informal ghost-story contest, struck a chord that still resonates today, more than 200 years later. It is not just a classic of horror or terror; it is a classic, period. And yet it is a classic that can be hard to get in touch with. Maybe I'm thinking about this because I have recently observed my Halloween tradition of watching James Whale's film Frankenstein (1931). The undeniable power of this film, and of Boris Karloff's moving portrayal of the monster, does not make it a substitute for the book; and some of the film's stylistic flourishes (the anachronistic science-lab machinery, Jack Pierce's unforgettable makeup for the monster) have become so much a part of our culture that it is difficult to get past said flourishes and make our way back to the original novel. And what a novel it is. The Modern Prometheus, the original subtitle for the book, makes very clear the parallel that Shelley wishes to draw between the mythical Titan who stole fire from the gods, and the German scientist who sought to create his own form of life from dead tissue. And like Prometheus before him, Victor Frankenstein suffers unending torment for his offense against divine will. Frankenstein is, among other things, a masterpiece of concision. Dracula, written 80 years later, reflects the sprawling grandeur of the Victorian era; Frankenstein, although written a good 20 years into the Romantic era, is as crisply succinct as an Enlightenment-era scientific equation. At the same time, it has the remote, dreamlike qualities of nightmare, and aligns well with the then-new Romantic movement. Shelley describes, in a preface to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, the nightmare that inspired the novel that has inspired so many subsequent nightmares: I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. It is, at its heart, a framed tale. We begin with letters of Captain Robert Walton, an explorer seeking a passage through the frozen seas of the north. Captain Walton unexpectedly encounters a European man upon a floe of ice (after getting a brief glimpse of "a being which had the shape of a man, but of gigantic stature," guiding a sled across the ice). The European, a scientist named Victor Frankenstein, then unfolds his tragic story. A recounting of the difficult circumstances of Frankenstein's early life quickly gives way to a chronicling of his obsession with giving life to the dead. When Frankenstein succeeds in giving life to his creature, the passage is one of my favorite in all of literature: It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. Frankenstein's arduous labor at constructing his creature is matched only by the revulsion he feels once the creature is alive. Another essential passage: How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! -- Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips. Jack Pierce's excellent monster makeup for the James Whale films notwithstanding, I don't know if any cinematic makeup artist could truly do justice to that description. One gets such a strong sense from that passage that what causes Frankenstein to reject his creature in such a dramatic, atavistic way is the way in which life flows unnaturally within the creature. It is a form of life that has never existed on earth, and all other living things seem to flee from it, as if by instinct. As we all know by now, the monster does not respond well to rejection. Who among us does? But the monster's vengeance against his creator is a terrible thing to contemplate. Victor's younger brother William is murdered, and the boy's nanny, Justine Moritz, is implicated in the crime and hanged for it. When the monster seeks out Frankenstein and demands that the doctor make him a mate, the doctor initially agrees, but then destroys the partially made she-monster (this is as close as the novel ever gets to a "bride of Frankenstein"), and the monster subsequently turns his vengeful attentions toward Frankenstein's fiancée Elizabeth. There is a kind of terrible logic to that. After all, Frankenstein, in creating the monster, has already engaged in his own one-man act of asexual reproduction; he has already decided that he does not need a woman in order to pass on life in the traditional way. What wonder, then, that the monster threatens to take the life of Frankenstein's wife, as the monster's own bride was destroyed while only partially complete? It is particularly fascinating to consider this tale told by a woman author as a critique of the male-dominated scientific mindset of the time, and of patriarchy and misogyny generally. One of the terrible beauties of this novel is hearing the monster speak. The monster educated himself during the time when he took refuge near a remote cottage; his reading list includes Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. The books constitute a nice mix of the classical, the early modern, and the Romantic, as well as a look ahead to the monster’s status as a sorrowing Romantic, like Goethe’s Werther – and as a creature who will wreak harm in response to feeling wronged, like Milton’s Satan. His self-administered education in hand, the monster is downright eloquent. Most of the Frankenstein monsters of the silver screen – and he’s been played by quite an array of actors: Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., Christopher Lee, Robert De Niro, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Sarrazin, Peter Boyle, Randy Quaid, Kevin James, Charles Dance, Clancy Brown, David Prowse – have been assigned a vocabulary of grunts. It's difficult to imagine the majority of them saying, as the monster in Shelley's novel says to Victor, "Will no entreaties cause thee to turn a favourable eye upon thy creature, who implores thy goodness and compassion?" Inexorable as one of the cataracts of the frozen north where the novel begins and ends, Frankenstein moves grimly, irrevocably, toward its tragic conclusion. It is a singularly well-written and evocative novel. Like the Frankenstein monster itself, the novel Frankenstein is a profoundly disturbing creation. ...more |
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The Tar Heel State of North Carolina has centuries of history behind it, and therefore it should be no surprise that the state has its share of ghost
The Tar Heel State of North Carolina has centuries of history behind it, and therefore it should be no surprise that the state has its share of ghost stories. And readers who are looking for a Halloween-time set of cheerfully chilling stories that have a regional bent would do well to turn to John Harden’s 1954 collection Tar Heel Ghosts. Harden was a leading North Carolina journalist; a Chapel Hill graduate, he worked at newspapers in Burlington, Raleigh, Charlotte, Salisbury, and Greensboro. His experiences across the state led to his maintaining an informal collection of North Carolina ghost stories, and Tar Heel Ghosts was the second of two books in which he shared with readers the scary stories that he had unearthed. Much has changed since 1954 when it comes to how tales of the supernatural are told; an expectation, nowadays, sometimes seems to be that there will be sufficient gore to challenge the “gross-out” tolerance level of even the most jaded viewer, reader, or listener. But Harden doesn’t follow that sort of bloody path. Rather, the emphasis is on stories that awaken a delicious chill and leave the reader uncertain as to the causes and effects of any given ghostly manifestation. “A Haunted House,” a story that originally appeared in the Raleigh News and Observer, takes place in a location that “is not to be disclosed”, but Harden regards it as “the representative haunted house story of North Carolina” (p. 52). The occupants of the house, a family referred to as the “Storyteller” family in order to protect their anonymity, are said to have purchased this otherwise “mellow, delightful old place” in spite of the prior occupants’ warnings that frightening and “inexplicable things” have a way of happening in the house, and that “rumor said some member of every family occupying the house died there” (p. 53). Consumers of modern haunted-house stories, from The Haunting of Hill House to The Amityville Horror to The Shining to Walt Disney’s The Haunted Mansion, know what to expect. The Storytellers laugh at the former occupants’ superstitious fears, only to change their tune when mysterious noises and visions begin to plague them – a process that culminates when Miss Storyteller wakes suddenly from a sound sleep, with a decided sense that someone else is in the room with her. For a few moments she lay quite still, without opening her eyes, just to assure herself that she was fully awake. The impression of a presence near her persisted. She became sure that if she opened her eyes she would see it. So she opened them. Sure enough, a young girl was bending over her. She estimated the girl to be fourteen or fifteen, and a total stranger. Only the girl’s head and shoulders were visible from where Miss Storyteller lay quite still on her bed. Her expression was wistful and sad “like that of a child who wanted something and couldn’t have it.” The face was pale, almost waxy. The eyes were closed. Details were so clear, even in the semi-darkness, that Miss Storyteller could tell that the child’s hair was dark auburn, and seemed to be damp and hanging in ringlets about the face. (p. 56) Miss Storyteller wants to learn more, and tries to follow the girl, but then “the figure moved silently around the foot of the bed and toward the window”, after which it “suddenly vanished” (p. 58). The familiar archetypes of the ghost story are here – specifically, the idea that the ghost makes their return because of some unfinished business from when the person was alive – and the reader will not be surprised to know that a cycle of illness and death subsequently threatens the Storyteller family. The reasons behind the ghost’s visits to this representative haunted house of North Carolina are never made clear. “A Ghost with a Mission,” from Davie County in west-central North Carolina, returns to that theme of a ghostly spirit returning from the grave in order to take care of unfinished business. The background for the story is that one James L. Chaffin made in 1905 a will that left all of his money and provisions to the third of his four sons, disinheriting his three other sons and making no provision for the care of his wife. But it would seem that after his death in 1921, James L. Chaffin may have found himself having second thoughts about this demonstration of probate favoritism. By 1925, the second of the Chaffin sons, James Pinkney Chaffin, began having vivid dreams of his father standing silently by his son’s bedside. These visits led up to one in which the elder James Chaffin “was wearing a familiar black overcoat. And it was on this particular visit that the apparitional father spoke to his son for the first time. James said that his father took hold of the front of his overcoat, pulled it back, and said: ‘You will find my will in my overcoat pocket.’ And with that speech he was gone” (p. 101). The father’s overcoat, it turns out, was in the possession of oldest brother John Chaffin in nearby Yadkin County. James and John examined the overcoat and found, not a will, but a piece of paper bearing the inscription “Read the 27th chapter of Genesis in my daddy’s Bible” (p. 103). That chapter, with its story of how Jacob took away the inheritance that should have gone to his older brother Esau, figures importantly in the resolution of the story, along with the Chaffin family Bible that was still in the possession of James L. Chaffin’s widow. I enjoyed the compelling twists and turns of this story, along with the way it was firmly grounded in authentic details of real-world life in Davie and Yadkin counties. And author Harden, who would have spent plenty of time during his journalistic career covering stories from courthouses, seems impressed that this particular ghost story became part of a court case over the Chaffin inheritance: “[H]ere is a singular account of ghostly intervention that is well-buttressed by testimony, a chain of events that are a matter of record, simple and sincere acceptance on the part of the people concerned, and evidence in the form of actual court records” (p. 106). And another fun “haunt” story comes from near Madison, in northern North Carolina, not far from Greensboro and High Point. “The Headless Haunt” tells the story of a weary traveller who seeks shelter at “a big, comfortable-looking house” with a roaring fire in the hearth and a dining-room table set with delicious-looking food. But no one responds, for a time, to the visitor’s calls of “Hello.” But then the visitor hears the clearing of a throat, and turns from the fire to meet his host: Standing in the hall was a man. He was fully dressed, in fact stylishly so. He stood erect, almost at military attention. Thumbs hooked in vest pockets framed a simple chain of yellow gold from which hung a glittering something that looked like a Phi Beta Kappa key. The appearance was that of an attorney or a politician, and the stance had a professorial dignity. There was just one very startling thing about the man. He had no head! Where a head might have been, or once had been, was a raw, red cross-section of stumpy flatness. (p. 153) The visitor is shocked and horrified, of course – more so than the reader, who had some idea of what to expect when they took up and began to read a story titled “The Headless Haunt.” But the reader then shares the visitor’s further surprise when this headless man turns out to be nothing like the terrifying Headless Horseman from Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”: [The traveller] heard a voice. It had a soft, firm, worldly ring. The sound of the voice, the enunciation, told a story of education and experience and culture. There was no apparent source of the words as spoken. “I beg your pardon,” the voice said, “I hope I haven’t startled you too much.” At this point, the erect but headless figure bowed gently forward from the waist…. “You are welcome to the warmth of my fire and to the food of my table. Any hospitality of which I am capable is at your disposal. I hope your shock at seeing my condition will not keep you from accepting these modest favors. If you will be my guest, then I have a favor to beg of you. Please sit.” (p. 153) The reader is intrigued at once by how the courteous and gentlemanly deportment of this ghost contrasts with his ghastly appearance. And, as it turns out, this ghost story, like so many of the others included here, involves the settlement of unfinished business. This headless gentleman suffered cruel injustice in life, it turns out, and the visitor has the opportunity, by righting an old wrong, to help the ghost end his days as a “haunt” and find at last the peace of death. Not all of the 33 stories included in these collection are equally appealing; some suffer from a frustrating lack of closure, while others reveal outdated social attitudes from the time in which they were collected. But all display Harden’s storytelling verve, along with his genuine enthusiasm for these ghostly bits of North Carolina regional culture. Tar Heel Ghosts was originally published by the University of North Carolina Press at Chapel Hill, and is a good example of how the UNC Press, while publishing plenty of the scholarly monographs that are de rigueur for a university press, has also made a point, throughout its history, of printing regional material that would appeal to a general as well as an academic audience. Particularly, though not exclusively, for North Carolina readers, Harden’s book is quite suitable reading for the Halloween season, or for any time-of-year in which one may want to savor a fun, light-hearted scare or two. ...more |
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