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Stoker had Dracula transforming into a dog. "Hmm maybe it was related to another shipwreck with a dog name." - Really? Was there also a shipwreck of vampire bats? Every aspect of Dracula was based from various wrecks on Irish shores /s
A dog bringing death? Perhaps John W. Campbell Jr. (Who Goes There? / The Thing) was riffing off this.
Maybe I've become too cynical, but with the movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter recently coming out, I can't help but think of Paul Graham's essay "Submarine".
... I don't understand. What's your complaint here? Is it somehow a bad thing for them to write a topical article that adds context to a current piece of media? I had no idea about these details of Bram Stoker's Dracula and it's interesting finding out more about it. I didn't realize The Last Voyage of the Demeter would be about dracula until seeing it and it's fun to read more about it.
So yeah, be less cynical. Some of us want to learn more about the world around us. Sometimes it's really tiring reading the comments here. Nothing but bitter old men yelling at clouds.
Bitter? No. Old? Getting there. Yelling at clouds? Not even once, even though live in Oregon.
What's my complaint? Not really a complaint but when you realize that National Geographic is owned by Disney and DreamWorks used to be under Disney's umbrella, it's not a big stretch that there may be people at DreamWorks who have connections at Disney and can get a story idea planted. I'm not even sure that's cynicism. I think it's just an understanding of how the world often works.
But how does that understanding help you in this case? I just see somebody who's deciding not to give any further thought to Dracula, Bram Stoker or how the story was written, instead aiming for the low fruit of "corporate capitalism bad". Like, there are so many ways you could've guided the conversation into a more productive, interesting direction that's actually relevant to the topic in the article while not necessarily pandering to the underlying/implicit PR priming.
Reading this article was a waste of my time, but I’m glad it made me think again about this great book. Gonna spend a bit of time reading interesting stuff about it on Wikipedia.
Does anyone have a Dracula (Bram Stoker's) edition that they can recommend? Have always been interested in reading it and this discussion has piqued my interest again.
Edit: I was searching for a good version and came across this article with this interesting tidbit:
> Bram Stoker did not intend for Dracula to serve as fiction, but as a warning of a very real evil, a childhood nightmare all too real.
But his editor prevented it, apparently concerned it would alarm the public.
> When the novel was finally released on May 26, 1897, the first 101 pages had been cut, numerous alterations had been made to the text, and the epilogue had been shortened, changing Dracula’s ultimate fate as well as that of his castle. Tens of thousands of words had vanished. Bram’s message, once concise and clear, had blurred between the remaining lines.
> In the 1980s, the original Dracula manuscript was discovered in a barn in rural northwestern Pennsylvania. Nobody knows how it made its way across the Atlantic. That manuscript, now owned by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, begins on page 102.
https://time.com/5411826/bram-stoker-dracula-history/
Now I am very curious what the dracula/castle fate changes were. If the published version is good I would expect the original may have been even better. Especially since the criticisms against it (would alarm the public) are no longer relevant.
I always found the inconsistencies off-putting (though my high-school English teacher was not taken by my attempts to note them).
Fred Saberhagen has the titular character write a pretty convincing defence in his book _The Dracula Tapes_, which is well-worth reading so as to be able to enjoy _The Holmes-Dracula File_.
Wow! It was mandatory reading in high school for me (Virginia). I’ve only read it a couple times, but I remember really liking it. This thread has also motivated me to re-read it. I read one of the Puffin paperbacks when I was a kid.
I find it intriguing that BS's Dracula was required reading in VA. I may be wrong but I doubt any UK or Eire skool mandated it.
> I find it intriguing that BS's Dracula was required reading in VA.
The Virginia Department of Education doesn't and hasn't had a required reading list. Such decisions are the purview of local school districts. A minority of local school districts in the state specify a required reading list, but mostly these decisions are made at the school or individual teacher level.
nothing interesting to me