by Bram Stoker
There's a lot to be said for going back to the source. Despite the ubiquity of vampire images in modern culture, Bram Stoker's Dracula is surprisingly fresh and intriguing. Count Dracula himself seems creepier--older and more alien--than a modern reader might expect, and the chases, stalkings, and bloody confrontations are artfully staged and vigorously executed. The book's team of heroes--a quartet of manly men aided by an aging intellectual and a clever woman--is delightfully Victorian in their virtue and grandiloquence. And the heart of the thing, the simultaneous fascination with and dread of violation, is remarkably powerful. One shudders, all these years later, as the heroes decide that if the heroine is herself turned into a vampire by Count Dracula, they will, unfortunately, have to drive a stake through her heart and chop off her head.
There's a lot to be said for going back to the source. Despite the ubiquity of vampire images in modern culture, Bram Stoker's Dracula is surprisingly fresh and intriguing. Count Dracula himself seems creepier--older and more alien--than a modern reader might expect, and the chases, stalkings, and bloody confrontations are artfully staged and vigorously executed. The book's team of heroes--a quartet of manly men aided by an aging intellectual and a clever woman--is delightfully Victorian in their virtue and grandiloquence. And the heart of the thing, the simultaneous fascination with and dread of violation, is remarkably powerful. One shudders, all these years later, as the heroes decide that if the heroine is herself turned into a vampire by Count Dracula, they will, unfortunately, have to drive a stake through her heart and chop off her head.
--Tom
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