Iron Criterion’s blog, 2nd October 2018 -- Dearest reader, for today's post I shall recount to you a tale most foul. A tale which frightens me so, and yet, I am able to write down my exact thoughts - and everything which was said to me - in perfect detail. Quite how I am able to do this when I can never remember my PIN, I know not. Also, my story shall have zero tension; for if I died, how could I possibly have written this post recounting these prior events?
Nonetheless, the subject of today's entry - following yesterday's bowel movement update - is Dracula. I first became intimately aware of this terrible man many years ago, when I happened upon a text from 1897 by an Irish fellow named Bram Stoker. Hearing it was a legendary tale of lust and vampires, I hastened to see what all the fuss was about.
Fortunately, Dracula is the sort of book you’d expect to see passed around at Whitby Goth Weekend, or stuck in the seminar rooms of middle-aged university professors in the process of marital breakdowns. So the vampire in Dracula is THE vampire: a thoroughly evil, old fashioned, traditionalist with all these wild powers and abilities.
The first thing you need to know about Dracula - because this really put me off initially – is that it is an epistolary novel. This means it takes the form of a series of diary entries, letters, and articles. Which really fucked me off because you’re in for a ton of unnecessary detail, ‘and then I did this’ narrative like a 5 year old telling a story, and writing like ‘I’m most happy to have received your previous letter’. Worst of all, you’re experiencing the action 2nd hand. And anyone in a relationship will tell you how fucking boring that is.
The castle itself is gloomy, dusty, maze-like, dilapidated, and hidden with all manner of terrible secrets. Though Johnathan is initially enchanted by this strange old land, and by the mysterious Count, it soon becomes clear that he is a prisoner. Dracula himself casts this intriguing figure which immediately interested me - overtly sinister and yet well-rounded, a literary kind of monster. The entire Transylvania section is absolutely fantastic. We’re treated to a land filled with fearful, superstitious people, gloomy imagery, and Gothic tropes.
Whilst the first fifty-odd pages are set in Dracula's castle and are, by far, the most interesting part of the book, the novel begins to unravel once the proper plot begins. Unlike most foreign millionaires, Dracula isn't content to simply buy a house in England and let go up in value - he intends to live there.
That extremely atmospheric castle which Bram Stoker spent some time building up, is traded in for an England plot featuring Harker's fiancée Mina, her friend Lucy - aka The Incredibly Rich Village Bike - and Lucy's 3 suitors who are made up of a toff, an American cowboy, and the head of the local insane asylum. Later they're joined by Doctor Abraham Van Helsing who happens to be a doctor, lawyer, professor, and all-round elderly badass.
Dracula travels across to England on a ship; which (as the Captain's logs reveals) is quite an effective sequence as the Count slowly picks off the increasingly insane crew. He eventually arrives in Whitby, a fact that is still celebrated to this day in that town as though it actually happened. Seriously, if you ever go to Whitby it's all 'Whitby Abbey this' and 'Dracula That'. Aside from those two things, it's your standard UK seaside town - i.e an endless labyrinth of samey streets where everyone attempts to hard-sell you a stick of rock.
Once the plot turns its focus to England it slows down to an absolute crawl. Much of the plot focuses on the high society aspect, as Arthur Holmwood (toff), Quincey Morris (cowboy), and John Seward (doctor) all attempt to woo Lucy. With Dracula being a Victorian novel, obviously there's a parallel between Lucy's loose morals and the lusty allusions of the vampire, that's both alarmist or empowering, but did it have to be so bloody boring? It's not even got the sexiness of Gary Oldman's Dracula getting it on with Winona Ryder's Mina - as in the Francis Ford Coppola film - because that never happens in the book!
There's no rivalry, only eternal friendship like a Mr Rogers version of the Warhammer 40K Universe. Morris doesn't just gun down the other two and shag Lucy in the bushes. Nor does Seward simply feed his rivals to the zoophagous madman he has locked in the asylum. That's Renfield the man-servant of Dracula. No, as this novel is fond of pointing out, they're all such good friends! How good are these people! Give me a break. It's only once Lucy falls mysteriously ill that the book picks up, and by then it's a slow crawl to the lofty heights of the beginning.
Dracula is good for a book written 120 years ago, but I think it might get too much slack. Yes, it popularised and codified The Vampire as we used to know it until Twilight, and gave Christopher Lee and Bela Lugosi careers. And the opening portion of the book is incredibly strong and scary. And yes, vampires may have lost something without the context of repressive Victorian society. We no longer see women as being sexually empowered as a bad thing, after all. I know I wouldn't mind a sensual, lusty woman sneaking into my room at night.
But fuck me, this book is dull. Dull. Dull. Dull. The characters spend most of one half of the book trying to work out what is slowly killing Lucy (vampirism, obvs), and the other half sees them trying to track down Dracula. Track him down? He's a ghoulish man: an aristocrat of unusual appearance and sinister mannerisms. Just look for the guy who feeds on the working class and looks like Jacob Rees-Mogg.
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