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Leslie S. Klinger 's great virtue as an editor is his sublimely willful and scrupulous disregard for the boundary between historical fact and literary falsehood. In The New Annotated Dracula, he reprises the same earlier annotated Sherlock Holmes, treating Stoker 's novel as nonfiction: real events happening to real persons. After a brief preface in which he explains his trick, Klinger 's edition becomes a surreal treat, book 's succession of journal entries and letters.
Product Description
Travelling through two hundred years of popular culture and myth as well as graveyards and the wilds of Transylvania, Leslie S. Klinger illuminates every aspect of Bram Stoker's haunting novel (including an examination of the original typescript with its shockingly different ending). He investigates the many subtexts - from the masochistic, necrophilic, homoerotic and 'dentophilic' implications of the story to its political, economic, feminist, psychological and historical threads. Employing his superb literary detective skills, Klinger mines this 1897 classic for nuggets that will surprise even the most die-hard Dracula fans.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I have a few other volumes in the Annotated collection, ('Alice' 'Oz', and 'Hunting of the Snark') and I like them - I like them a LOT. They give all sorts of great background info, mixed with some entertaining speculations, and they really add to my enjoyment of books I already love.
This one, however, started to annoy me almost within the first few pages, then became more and more irritating, to the point that I found myself agreeing with Groucho Marx ("This is not a book that should be set aside lightly - it should be flung with great force"). I admit this may be a very personal thing, but I'm posting the review because if *I* feel this way, I'm sure I won't be the only one.
The author (or rather, annotator) begins with the rather nice idea that Dracula is a serious account disguised as a work of fiction. This idea appealed to me at first, and I still don't really have a problem with it. I don't even mind that so many of the annotations point out the inconsistencies and downright mistakes in the story. But the almost gleeful tone in which mistake after mistake is pointed out really got old very quickly for me.
It's not an exact comparison, but the main illustration that comes to mind is this: You're in a cinema, watching one of your favourite movies for the umpteenth time. And a couple of rows back, just loudly enough for you to hear, some smartass is keeping up a running commentary explaining how THAT'S just stupid because such and such is impossible, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.
I'm not saying that mistakes shouldn't be pointed out. In an annotated edition, of course they should. Maybe I just have some personality quirk that makes this writer continually rub me up the wrong way; Or maybe it's that so much time is spent (wasted?) on the idea that since this is a 'true' story the mistakes have to be explained away by piling fiction upon fiction.
In either case, sorry, but it just didn't work for me.
The volumes of Annotated Sherlock Holmes were next on my shopping list, but now I'm disappointed beyond belief to find that a) they're also by this writer, and b) he applies the same conceit that they're true stories (no doubt true stories with lots of mistakes that require his clever explanations). Well, no thanks.
If you love the original Dracula, you may love this, I suppose. But be aware that instead you may hate it.
This one, however, started to annoy me almost within the first few pages, then became more and more irritating, to the point that I found myself agreeing with Groucho Marx ("This is not a book that should be set aside lightly - it should be flung with great force"). I admit this may be a very personal thing, but I'm posting the review because if *I* feel this way, I'm sure I won't be the only one.
The author (or rather, annotator) begins with the rather nice idea that Dracula is a serious account disguised as a work of fiction. This idea appealed to me at first, and I still don't really have a problem with it. I don't even mind that so many of the annotations point out the inconsistencies and downright mistakes in the story. But the almost gleeful tone in which mistake after mistake is pointed out really got old very quickly for me.
It's not an exact comparison, but the main illustration that comes to mind is this: You're in a cinema, watching one of your favourite movies for the umpteenth time. And a couple of rows back, just loudly enough for you to hear, some smartass is keeping up a running commentary explaining how THAT'S just stupid because such and such is impossible, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.
I'm not saying that mistakes shouldn't be pointed out. In an annotated edition, of course they should. Maybe I just have some personality quirk that makes this writer continually rub me up the wrong way; Or maybe it's that so much time is spent (wasted?) on the idea that since this is a 'true' story the mistakes have to be explained away by piling fiction upon fiction.
In either case, sorry, but it just didn't work for me.
The volumes of Annotated Sherlock Holmes were next on my shopping list, but now I'm disappointed beyond belief to find that a) they're also by this writer, and b) he applies the same conceit that they're true stories (no doubt true stories with lots of mistakes that require his clever explanations). Well, no thanks.
If you love the original Dracula, you may love this, I suppose. But be aware that instead you may hate it.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
'The New Annotated Dracula' is a feature-packed presentation of Stoker's original 1897 novel, presented in it's unabridged version, together with 1500 notes, maps, illustrations, points of history and trivia, excepts from Stoker's edited additional material...in short, everything the Dracula fan could possibly want in a volume, including additional chapters on Stoker's life, information on TV and Film versions of the story etc.
A highly-engaging, enjoyable and informative presentation of this classic work of Gothic literature.
Highly recommended.
A highly-engaging, enjoyable and informative presentation of this classic work of Gothic literature.
Highly recommended.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a hefty tome, no doubt. The notes are informative for any scholar of victorian literature. Less impressive are the essays on vampire films & subsequent literature which are little more than Mr Klinger's personal taste and opinion. I found the editor/commentator's conceit of taking the text as a factual narrative to be amusing at first but not, finally, satisifying. Bram Stoker deserves to be taken more seriously as a writer in the Anglo-Irish tradition & I would have prefered a more precise approach to this great cultural influence. Still, a pretty book, for collectors.
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