Is Dracula still relevant?

Kevin Fanning: That’s a tough question. I think that vampires in general are still so relevant, compared to the half-lives of zombies and pirates and mummies and ninjas, is in part thanks to the larger vampire narrative that Bram Stoker’s Dracula helped set in motion. But as far as the book itself, I’m glad I read it, and it’s an interesting piece of vampire literature, but it doesn’t change or alter my opinions about Buffy, Twilight, Irma Vep, Cronos, Castlevania, True Blood, Anne Rice, Underworld or any other vampire media. Vintage sent me a copy of their book The Vampire Archives: The Most Complete Volume of Vampire Tales Ever Published, and it’s astoundingly huge and sprawling. Vampires are bigger than any one book.

Matthew Baldwin: Van Helsing’s excruciatingly slow revelation of Fun Vampire Facts doesn’t work as well when the average reader already knows more about the undead than they do about the Supreme Court. But the underlying motifs of Dracula are as relevant today as ever: xenophobia, sexual hysteria, and the eternal struggle for power. At times the book was a novelization of the worst fears of the anti-immigration crowd, a depiction of malevolent foreigners skulking into a Western country, siphoning off valuable resources, and converting people over to their side.

In picking her top 10 favorite Victorian novels, author Sarah Waters described Dracula as “An exercise in masculine anxiety and nationalist paranoia”. As neither is in short supply, even in the 21st century, the novel strikes me as relevant today as it was a century ago.

Claire Zulkey: What I think are most relevant about the book are the the way it’s written and its treatment of gender roles. I still think that Stoker’s use of correspondence is an ingenious way to tell the tale: I love that it’s put together like a scrapbook and that it utilizes different voices to tell it, so me that’s still fresh and just a lesson in general for writers. Meanwhile I think Jonathan and Mina Harker’s relationship is worth discussing even today–at some points to me it’s a model of modern partnership. At other times…not so much.

Claire commented on the constant tension in the novel between the supernatural and the scientific method. Any additional thoughts on the subject?

Matthew Baldwin: I was unclear if Stoker was championing the scientific method, or warning about relying upon it too much. Obviously Van Helsing and others–the ostensible heroes of the novel–used science as a tool for defeating evil. But at the same time, a subtext of the story seemed to be “ignore the supernatural at your peril, because ignorance of evil makes you a target for it.”

Obviously vampires are hot right now. How is their current incarnation different from Stoker’s introduction to them?

MB: One obvious distinction is that the seductive power of Dracula was designed to repulse Victorian readers (at least superficially–I have no doubt that Stoker was pandering to baser instincts a bit), whereas modern vamp-lit authors package their bad boys as genuinely sexy, with their allure portrayed as a pro rather than a con. In other words, while Stoker had to titillate on the sly, today’s writers do so brazenly.

Claire Zulkey: I rewatched “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” and had to laugh about how deep I thought I was when I first saw it, saying “You see, it’s not a horror story, it’s a love story.” Well, actually, the book is pretty much just a horror story. Save Jonathan and Mina’s relationship, there is no real love in this book, especially coming from Dracula. There’s no immortal beloved, no sensitive vamp. Just a blood-sucking bad guy.

Kevin Fanning: I think the main difference is that it’s no longer a case of vampires being seen as creatures of pure evil. Between Anne Rice, the Underworld series, Buffy & Angel, True Blood, Stephanie Myers and Scott Westerfeld, there are lots of people making the case for a distinction between good and bad vamps. This is part of what’s really revitalized the genre in the last few years, and it’s a big change from the origins of the vampire myth.

What are the strengths and drawbacks of the epistolary format of the novel?

Matthew Baldwin: One advantage is that the reader never really knows where the author stands on some of these troubling issues raised by the novel. For instance, you could argue that the book contains not a whit of evidence that Stoker himself is sexist, only that he creates characters that are. (If anything, Mina comes out looking like the strongest of the protagonists.)

Curiously, though, I feel as if Stoker didn’t exploit the format to its fullest, because none of the narrators were “unreliable”. They were all remarkably consistent and forthright in their stories, so you never had to wonder if a given character was being deceptive or self-delusional, which is often the most compelling aspect of tales told in first-person. It would have been interesting if a character fell under Dracula’s sway, for instance, and used his journal entries to talk about what a swell guy he was.

Kevin Fanning: I also wonder if he should have exploited it more, because you get the sense that he was going for a pastiche effect, tying together a bunch of different narratives. But the narratives rarely overlap, and he leans on Seward and Mina’s voices to propel the storyline. There are large gaps in what we know about Jonathan’s story, we hear next to nothing from Van Helsing, Quincey or Arthur. A more jumbled collection of voices and storylines and newspaper clippings might have been really interesting. As long as it didn’t involve more ridiculous accents.

Claire Zulkey: I actually think that the format cuts down on too much over-the-top writing about an over-the-top subject. On the other hand, somebody pointed out that we don’t know what any of the characters really look like (since we don’t usually put down the details in our diaries of what the people we’re talking about look like), save Jonathan’s graying hair, but that didn’t really bother me too much.

Why do you think Stoker included Quincey Morris with the crew?

KF: I liked Quincey! Do people not like Quincey? I’d vote that Lord Godalming is a much more peripheral character, and questionable in terms of his value to the story. I don’t have any theories about what it means that Stoker felt like including an American character with a taste for shooting things, maybe as a counterpoint to the scientific & religious approaches to Dracula taken by the other characters? But he’s memorable and keeps things interesting, so he’s OK with me.

MB: Quincey strikes me as the pragmatist of the group, one less concerned in whether something was supernatural or scientific and more in whether it could be punched. He didn’t seems as vital a character as some of the others because he was considerably more laconic (and apparently didn’t feel the need to record each and every minute in a journal of some sort), but his emphasis on deeds rather than words keep things moving along.

KF: This 100% explains why I like him so much more than Van Helsing.

What were your exceptions going in? Did the novel meet or defy them?

Matthew Baldwin: Having previously read a number of olde tymey adventure novels (Frankenstein, Man in the Iron Mask, and even Moby Dick to some degree), I expected there to be a fair amount of action embedded in long, florid, and somewhat dull (to my tastes) passages, along with occasional digressions that dead-end in a cul-de-sac of superfluousness. So I was kind of surprised that the story was mostly linear and focused. If anything, it was a bit too focused, with Van Helsing often using an astonishing quantity of verbiage and time to divulge even the most mundane of details. Sometimes it was like listening to a guy who is way too enthusiastic about a hobby go on and on about it.

Kevin Fanning: I touched on this a little in my first post, but this book really went against my expectations. I haven’t read a lot of Victorian literature, so I was expected something really sterile and dry, nowhere near the level of vampire gore I’m used to. So I was really extremely surprised by how quickly it gets genuinely creepy. When this book is good, it’s extremely good.

MB: The amazing qualities of the first four chapters almost worked against the novel, as their promise of a real potboiler was not always fulfilled. But I thought it was pretty engrossing through-and-through.

Claire Zulkey: I remember enjoying it the first time I read it which I think was in late grade school or early high school. Both times I marveled at the concept of having the story be told only in correspondence, memos, official documents and published stories.

I do remember not enjoying the last third of the book as much as the first two and a few people who had read the book recently also felt that way, so I was surprised to find that I actually was more into the book towards the end than last time, neverending monologues from Van Helsing not withstanding.

KF: But I will cast my lot in with those who are disappointed with the last third of the book. It was a bit of a slog at the end, but I was delighted that it wasn’t a slog all the way through.

MB: Yes, I don’t fault the many filmmakers who, in adapting the book for the screen, have felt the need to “punch up” the ending a tad.

KF: I tried to rent Bram Stoker’s Dracula this weekend but it was all rented out. Super sad. I really cannot wait to see it again.

CZ: In case you were wondering what happens in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” that does not happen in the book, here are a few:

1. Mina hooks up with Dracula.
2. Mina hooks up with Van Helsing.
3. Dracula cries like a baby when Mina gets married although you’d think that since he is already the undead evil conventions like marriage wouldn’t matter to him.
4. Dr. Seward hooks up with Lucy
5. Lucy gets boned, big time, by Dracula as a wolf-man.

There are more but those are a few standouts.