Dracula - Chapters 3-6: Is everyone a vampire?

So Jonathan Harker seems to be in a bit of a pickle (either dead in a ravine or being chased by angry Hungarians through Eastern Europe). Mina is dealing with death and tempests. Dr. Seward is helping a man upsize his pet collection. Where to begin?

Well, Harker seems the logical place, since he is where we left off. Our "hero" is told by the Count to continue to explore the locked up castle, but to make sure he doesn't fall asleep anywhere but his room. Harker is obviously new to this whole genre of Horror, because he decides to fall asleep in a room not his own as an act of rebellion. Now we get to see the Count's sweet side, as he saves Rip Van Winkle from becoming a drinking fountain for the three vampire women. But, before we get too comfortable with the image of Dracula as a savior, he tells the women that Harker is his for the eating, eventually. I was conflicted here. It seems obvious that the Count wants to take a bite out of Jonathan, but he seems almost genuinely concerned about him. Are we seeing a real side of the Count? We certainly have before, when he was busily and happily telling his family's history. So can we be led to believe that the Count is even slightly normal?

I'm going to quickly sum up the next bits, because this is already getting long and I haven't even gotten to Mina yet. Jonathan's explorations into Dracula's room give us the idea that maybe he's been a coin collector for a few hundred years now, and he likes a firm bed of topsoil. These scenes are unbelievably creepy, as is the scene in which Jonathan is seduced by the dancing dust in the moonlight. (Side note: Jonathan has obviously been warned of the dangers, and he obviously already has a healthy fear of both Count Dracula and his castle; so why is it that he always seems to be falling asleep? I mean, I understand that there is dust in the moonlight, and "oooo, dust!" Nevertheless, given the situation, if you are Jonathan Harker, don't you do everything in your power not to fall asleep outside your room? If I knew that three women, and possibly a Count were trying to make Cartoid Cocktails from me, I'd be darn sure I wasn't too busy watching moonlight theatre to get back into bed. Just saying.) One last note from the castle, we begin to see Stoker's (seeming) infatuation with the theme of life. Dracula regenerates his and this is part of what convinces Jonathan to flee. More on this in a bit.

We leave the castle with Jonathan (not knowing if we'll ever see him again) and head northwest to England where we meet a cast of characters guaranteed to keep this story creepy. For now, I'd like to focus on Dr. Seward, Mina, and the old fisherman. Seward's experiments with Renfield seem shocking today, but my guess is they were well within acceptable norms in Victorian times. But the truly interesting this here is Renfield's desire to upgrade his pet collection. First flys, then spiders, then sparrows, and finally the desire for a cat. After Seward learns that Renfield has eaten his sparrows (raw), he comes to a diagnosis of sorts for the madman:

My homicidal maniac is of a peculiar kind. I shall have to invent a new classification for him, and call him a zoophagous (life-eating) maniac; what he desires is to absorb as many lives as he can, and he has laid himself out to achieve it in a cumulative way. He gave many flies to one spider and many spiders to one bird, and then wanted a cat to eat the many birds. What would have been his later steps?

Renfield planned on ingesting life. We don't yet know his motives, but from what I know of vampire lore (which, granted is only loosely based on this novel, so my conjecture may be significantly off), this is the premise behind vampires. Are we, then, to believe that Renfield is some form of Vampire? That's certainly what I'm leading towards. Seward has (as do I), a sort of macabre fascination with what Renfield was going to do next.

Lastly, I'd like to turn to Mina and the incomprehensible fisherman (seriously, I'm all for dialects, but dear god reading notes to understand what someone is saying is frustrating). Here again we see a fixation with life or, rather, with the end of it. The fisherman makes light of death, only to reveal on the eve of what seems to be a massive storm, that it was only because he knows it will be coming for him soon. The imagery of Death (capitol D intended) here stands in such stark contrast to the earlier talk of gaining life. And at the same time, that too was centered around death. For Renfield to gain life, countless other things had to die. But the fisherman puts into words what I think will become the defining characteristic of the divide between vampires and normal people.

For life be, after all, only a waitin' for somethin' else than what we're doin': and death be all that we can rightly depend on.

The normal people accept Death (and death) as natural, and maybe even wanted. The vampires (at least Dracula) seem to be avoiding it at all costs. What for? Are they doomed to Hell and scared of their fate? Or, alternatively, is it just a desire to stay in the corporeal world? I'm leaning towards the former explanation, but I wouldn't be surprised to change my mind as the work goes on.

As a final question: is the Russian boat coming into the harbor Dracula? I say yes.

Alright, that's a mouthful. But that's what happens when I go four days without blogging. I'll try and be more punctual in the future so as to keep these to a more controllable size. Be sure to keep following along at VPO and IS:Drac as well! And let me know what you think in the comments.

Dracula - Chapters 1 & 2: What's with all the dogs?

So I'm going to be blogging as I read Dracula along with the good folks of Infinite Summer (not to mention Views from the Page and the Oven). This is my first time reading the novel, so keep that in mind as you read. I'll put chapter 2 after the break for those of you who haven't gotten there yet. 

Quite obviously, after the opening chapters, things are not looking good for our hero, Harker Johnathan. Oh wait, it's Johnathan Harker. Sorry, I keep thinking like the Transylvanians. But a few observations on Harker first. He seems to truly embody the Victorian spirit of "The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire." Take for instance his observations on the women he passes.

"The women looked pretty, except when you got near them"

At first I was drawn to thinking of Harker as the original Victorian brosef. But then as he talks more and more about the locals, I got a sense of condescension. It's never really overt, and he certainly never refers to people as anything so brusque as "savages," but there is a definite feeling of superiority to the locals. It comes across best when Harker talks about timetables:

"It seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?"

Everyone knows that Dracula is a Victorian novel, but I think it will be interesting to see what sort of impression I can glean of the Victorian mind at the time. How is their worldview reflected in the writing of Bram Stoker?

Another thing I noticed was the motif of dogs. In the first chapter alone, we get 15 mentions of "dog" or "wolves," and a "werewolf." Now, this is probably just a misconception on my part, but I've never associated the story of Dracula with dogs; bats were always the animal I had in mind. I'm going to be keeping an eye open as I keep reading, because I get the feeling that dogs (wild or domestic) are going to become a theme.

Toys for the bibliophile

Alright, I really want a DC-area bookstore to get one of these, like, yesterday. It's a new machine that can produce a library-quality paperback book in about four minutes. Currently, the soon-to-be-renamed Espresso has a fairly limited catalog (but it does have the Google books collection), but could lead to cheaper and more readily accessible books. The prices that the Harvard Bookstore are offering seem a tad bit high, especially when the On Demand Books website mentions that "Production cost is a penny a page and minimal human intervention is required for operation."

Nevertheless, this machine could have a huge impact on making out-of-print books available again. If you can have the choice between printing a new copy of an out-of-print book, or searching for a used copy for what may be a higher price, the decision seems easy. But more importantly, I think, is what we are starting to see in the world of books. With E-Readers soaring in popularity, and the means to read Public Domain books online, we are beginning to see the decommodification of the book as an object.

It's not going to be very long before we no longer prize having the actual object and merely want the content instead. And before the traditionalists have the chance to howl at me for blasphemy, look at what has happened in the world of music. As mp3s were introduced, people clamored that sound quality was poor and you lost the connection with actual albums. Well, it appears that iTunes and the like are the way of the future, and most of the complaints about missing the tangible are gone. It makes sense that sound was so easily adapted, because the process of consumption remains the same, regardless of the media on which the product is distributed. However, with books, we have to find a way to serve the product that is amenable to everyone.

The Espresso keeps with the standard format of giving us bound paper, but I think it will help to devalue the idea of having your own copy. Lose a copy of Three Musketeers? Who cares?! You can print a new one down the street! Additionally, if the publishing world embraces the idea, it will mean bookstores no longer have to keep massive stock on hand to satisfy all possible needs. Instead, we could see bookstores reduced to ATM-esque kiosks.

With all of this said, I'm not sure how I feel about the possibilities of the Espresso. Sure, it's a GREAT toy, and a really awesome concept. But there is no feeling quite like browsing around a book store. I know I can get anything I want on Amazon, but I still go to brick-and-mortar stores so I get the opportunity to browse and perhaps be taken by a whim. It's one of the joys of being a reader. I'm afraid to lose that, because it means taking fewer chances, and finding fewer surprises. So while I encourage the idea behind the Espresso, I am leery of implications it could have. What are your thoughts?

Dracula: Infinite Summer Style

http://infinitesummer.org/dracula/You may have heard of the reading craze that swept the nation this summer: Infinite Summer, an online community reading David Foster Wallace's doorstop Infinite Jest. Victoria, over at Views from the Page and the Oven, partook and was almost inspiration enough for me to do the same. But, in the end, I couldn't bring myself to tackle the work when I had so many other things I wanted to read.

Infinite Summer: Dracula

Well, luckily for me, the gang at Infinite Summer had such a good time that they decided to pick another book to read after Summer was over (or was it ever really over, being infinite and all). They've chosen the considerably less hefty, and significantly less post-modern Dracula by Bram Stoker. It's a fairly manageable reading schedule spread out over the month of October, and fear not, you don't even have to buy a copy! As announced today, they will be having Jonathan McNicol provide a newly typeset version of the Public Domain work in PDF installments over the course of the project. Otherwise, you can pick up a copy on the cheap from pretty much anywhere. So come and join. You should be able to read without putting down your other books. I know I will be multitasking American Prometheus, The Ground Beneath Her Feet (more on that later), and Dracula.

Irony is good for the diet

After my little rant about Satchel (brief review: a horrible book by a man who at times seems to know nothing about baseball, especially advanced statistical metrics), I've dived into another biography. In a wonderful turn of events, however, this one is magnificent already. The book is American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. I'm sure I'll write more about it later, but I had to post one little delicious bit of irony I came across.

A little back story. As I may have mentioned before, I'm a graduate student in music history at UMD. This being my second year of the MA program, I have to write a thesis, and I've chosen to study John Adams' opera Doctor Atomic. It's the story of Oppenheimer in the days leading up to the first test of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, NM. If you have a chance to see or hear it, do so, as it is a really stunning work and one that I think is going to carve itself a place in the permanent repertoire of opera companies around the world.

With that said, I came across this little bit (page 31 of the paperback edition) that makes me smile at the fantastic irony of Adams' work.

The one thing Boyd and Oppenheimer did not have in common was music. "I was very fond of music," Boyd recalled, "but once a year he would go to an opera, with me and Bernheim usually, and he'd leave after the first act. He just couldn't take any more." Herbert Smith had also noticed this peculiarity, and once said to Robert, "You're the only physicist I've ever known who wasn't also musical."

I wonder what Oppie would think of the opera about him?