Comments on: Elizabeth Miller: Welcome To Dracula

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:54:07 +0000

I’m re-reading Dracula for the third time this year in preparation for an original adaptation of the story for the stage to open in September of 2010. I’ve also been reading some histories and critiques of the novel. One of my all time favorite things ever written is Joseph Valente’s Dracula’s Crypt: Bram Stoker, Irishness, and the Question of Blood. It explores everything from the politics of the era, to Stoker’s psychology, to narrative techniques. I highly recommend reading it. I wish I would have found this site when you began reading the novel, but just Stumbled it today. I’m maybe a few chapters behind, but will try to catch up and will definitely follow this discussion from here out.

So far I’ve read some great entries, but the entry about Jonathan passivity is particularly nice. You’ll notice how Jonathan and Dracula change places over the course of the novel. Their chacteristics switch completely; young and old, hard and soft, hunted and prey, etc. It’s classic doppelganger effect. In fact, you’ll notice that when the famous mirror scene occurs in Dracula’s castle, Jonathan remarks that there was no one else in it but him. That’s because they’re the same. He later says he never saw the Count in the daylight, but that scene takes place in the morning. How can a creature of the night have been present in the morning were it not because Jonathan himself was present in the morning? They are two sides of the same coin.

By: Elizabeth Miller

Elizabeth Miller — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:23:58 +0000

Bob – good question. No, the novel was not first published in serial form. I’m not sure why Stoker chopped up chapters the way he did. Having closely examined his working Notes (which include a couple of chapter outlines), I notice that he seemed to have a fondness for symmetry. (After all, he had been a math major at Trinity College.)I suspect he was aiming at some sense of balance in the length of chapters.

By: Dracula: Bringing Scary Back at Wood-Tang.com

Dracula: Bringing Scary Back at Wood-Tang.com — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:30:17 +0000

[...] is seeing Count Dracula as a truly terrifying figure once again. As Elizabeth Miller wrote in her introduction to the book this month, it’s a victim of its own success. Dracula has been incorporated into [...]

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:19:36 +0000

Ms. Miller, I have a question about the chapter structure of Dracula. I am using Jonathon McNichols chapter-by-chapter PDF, and just finished Chapter 4. I see that Chapters 2-4 end in the middle of a journal entry by Harker, and the entry concludes in the first page of the next chapter. What is the reason for this breaking up of a daily entry into two chapters? Was Dracula first published in serial form, and this was a cliff-hanger way to keep readers anticipating the chapter to come? Or was it to keep the chapters approximately even in length? It’s kind of aggravating, especially when Stoker is writing excellent passages of the novel. The PDF’s being only one chapter at a time may be heightening this effect.

By: Moira

Moira — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:28:37 +0000

I’m in! Halloween is my favourite holiday, and Dracula is one of my favourite books. I haven’t reread it all that closely since taking a graduate-level seminar on Gothic novels in college. I’m kinda heartbroken about missing the Infinite Jest discussion so completely, since that’s _also_ one of my favourite books. But this sounds like great fun!

By: Eryoshimura

Eryoshimura — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:59:43 +0000

Thank you for that fantastic intro to the book! I read the novel a few years ago, so I’m looking forward to picking up on and benefitting from your insights above.

I just downloaded Dracula for free onto my Kindle, and picked up Frankenstein and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow at the same time. I’m ready to get into Halloween mode!

By: Everett

Everett — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:48:53 +0000

You won’t quite finish by Halloween, but you can also read Dracula by following Whitney Sorrow’s blog: http://dracula-feed.blogspot.com/

She is posting each diary entry, letter, and newspaper clipping on the appropriate date.

By: Mike Smith

Mike Smith — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:00:59 +0000

Already 16.55% of the way through the book, and it’s well worth it. Join me! Enter freely and of your own will — the book is out of copyright, after all.

By: webslog

webslog — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:42:23 +0000

While one risks ridicule by trying to link Jest and Dracula together too closely, I think there’s a real similarity in the structural approach both take … DFW, like many before him, worked hard to confound the traditional novel structure through cut scenes, included reference material, non-linear narrative and outright appropriation of common cultural memes as a part of the overall flow of the story (see The Bricklayer’s Letter section in IJ). It’s a pastiche of sources that brings all of the players and narrative sources together in the end for a not-altogether conclusive conclusion.

I think we’ll find that Stoker did precisely the same thing. I’ve never read Dracula, but I listened to a Librivox.org reading of it during the early part of this year. When Infinite Summer Began, I was just finishing Dracula and was struck at the way Dracula was built … piecemeal and in frustratingly small pieces that demanded the reader pay attention throughout. Just like IJ.

This should be fun.

By: Daryl

Daryl — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:50:50 +0000

What a neat intro. I had been figuring on Dracula as something of a lightweight read to bring me down off of IJ, but maybe I’ve sold it short. Scholarly input about a work at a rather greater distance culturally than IJ was will be most welcome, and I hope we hear more from you as the read progresses.