There are some books you feel that you know without reading them.
For example, I knew who Bram Stoker was, and Mary Shelley, but why should I have to read Dracula or Frankenstein? I knew those stories through symbiosis already!
But when I began a class
on Science Fiction and Fantasy through the University of Michigan on
free education website Coursera a few weeks ago (I know! I just don't
have enough to do, do I?) I found that both Dracula and Frankenstein were on the syllabus, and so I was dragged reluctantly back to the originals.
What I didn't expect
though, was that these two novels were an absolute treat. Oh sure, I
knew the basic premise of each one well enough, but nothing beats the
original. Both texts had such eloquence of language, and each took me by
surprise. Of course I had heard that Frankenstein was the creator, not
the monster, but who would have thought that there would be no green
hunk of flesh in sight, nor any neckbolts? No Igor, and no lightning
re-animation either, though suggestions of a bride popped up sooner than
I expected!
Dracula had most of the
traits I'd come to anticipate and yet some of the most striking images
of the novel had nothing to do with him. Lucy Westerna's childless death
stayed with me as one of the most powerful sequences of the book, as
she fed on the children of the neighbourhood, who, dazed, described her
only as the "booful lady." And the psychiatric patient Renfield, driven
mad by his psychic link with the Count was another highlight, his
desperate pleas to his doctor to be given a cat, even as he lures
insects into his cell window with sugar and eats them. Where were these
indelible images in my cultural consciousness?
We've all got a pile of
classics we have put off reading because we feel like we know them
already, perhaps musty second-hand paperbacks we haven't opened since we
picked them up at a garage sale, or that beautiful deluxe edition that
someone gave you because, well, it's influential and you should get to
know it. Maybe now is the time to start reading, and see if you really
know them like you think you do.
No comments:
Post a Comment