On 2010-03-17 Brendan Moody, Augusta, ME, USA wrote: ´The game of Dracula is afoot!´
This may the sound like cover copy for yet another ´Sherlock Holmes meets Dracula´ pastiche, but instead it´s on the back cover of Leslie Klinger´s New Annotated Dracula. The reason it appears there is that Klinger, also responsible for the recent, well-reviewed New Annotated Sherlock Holmes in three volumes, has extended the Sherlockian game to Bram Stoker´s famous vampire novel, indulging the ´gentle fiction´ that the novel is Stoker´s modified version of real historical documents. That he has done so is, if I may be forgiven a perhaps inapt computers metaphor, simultaneously a bug and a feature.
As Klinger notes, there have been several previous annotated versions of Dracula. I can´t help but feel that part of the reason he has introduced the Sherlockian game for his edition is to give it a new ´hook,´ something that sets it apart from previous versions. This is all well and good. Unfortunately, there´s another ´hook´ for this edition, and it bumps up against the use of the Sherlockian game in ways that demonstrate some of the limits of applying this device to Dracula.
Klinger was able, as no previous scholar has been, to examine a manuscript version of Dracula (it is evidently such a patchwork of different materials that it´s hard to tell how far along in the process this version was produced, but it´s later rather than earlier), and his annotations record variations between this manuscript and the final printed volume. Joan Acocella´s dismissive comments in her oddly grumpy New Yorker review notwithstanding, some of them are rather interesting. Now, of course the historical Bram Stoker (or someone else) made these alterations for various reasons, which would be interesting to speculate on. Unfortunately, the way Klinger plays his game means that Stoker´s actual role in the authorship of the novel has to be ignored, and so these variations, when analyzed at all, are discussed in terms of how the ´real´ Van Helsing might have wanted some detail changed, and so on. This is good fun up to a point, although at times Klinger strains to imbue these alterations with more meaning than they seem to possess. But it´s rather disappointing that the first substantive treatment of the manuscript is chained to this game, which blunts its impact.
Indeed, it´s not hard to feel disappointed that Klinger couldn´t break out of his game mode once in a while and include occasional discussion of the writing process of the actual novel. In addition to the manuscript, there are some notes on the novel´s early development, and a later abridged text of the novel that may well have been prepared by Stoker himself. Klinger dutifully notes variations among these phases, and just as dutifully treats all this material as factual. When a character from the notes doesn´t make it to the novel, it´s not because Stoker decided he didn´t need her, but because her involvement was ´suppressed.´ This is charming, but a little of it goes a long way, and I would have liked to see more treatment of the actual background of Stoker´s writing of Dracula.
Other aspects of Klinger´s game of Dracula are more fun. There are so many holes in the narrative logic of Dracula that a more sober style of annotation would just have been depressing: you might start to wonder whether Stoker was actually all that talented. But when Klinger turns every changed premise or erroneous date into a sign of a cover-up, it´s a more enjoyable experience altogether. At times he does seem to be straining to question aspects of the protagonists´ story, or to find an excuse to call them shallow, cold, arrogant, or the like, but it´s all part of the game.
But back to that tagline. It underlines the fact that is a device from Sherlock Holmes scholarship. When Klinger played this game in the New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, there was a lot of precedent for it, and therefore a lot of other material he could refer to. Dracula has not often been so discussed (though of course any detailed examination of a work of fiction´s narrative logic implicitly treats its as being real), and the artificiality of the device shines through more. I wouldn´t call it a failure, but it´s not as much of a success as I had hoped.
If I´ve been so down on the book thus far, why have I given it five stars? Because, even with these quibbles, it´s a gorgeous, delightful edition of the novel that anyone interested in the history of vampire fiction ought to own. Even setting aside the ´Draculaic game´ annotations, there´s a wealth of information on the late Victorian context of the novel: historical, social, geographical, and otherwise. There´s rather a lot about train stations, which seems excessive even in light of the importance of modernity to the book´s narrative, but the level of detail is enjoyable even when the specific information is not. There´s a great deal to be learned from this edition of Dracula, and an extensive bibliography points readers in the direction of more information if they desire it. In light of all this, I can´t really complain about wanting more on my own preferred topics.
And finally, there´s the novel itself. Whatever its flaws of narrative logic, Dracula is an elegantly-structured, endlessly fascinating horror tale; the first half in particular builds in a wonderfully subtle manner, as the readers draws connections not obvious to the authors of the various documents. The second half is a bit long, and the soppy-stern (thank you, Philip Larkin) sentimentality wears a bit, but the novel remains compelling. I read it in a day, and then went back to start on the annotations. The game of Dracula was indeed, well, you know.... And summed up by saying A gorgeous, invaluable edition, but still.... Currently The New Annotated Dracula has an overall rating of 8 over 10.
The New Annotated Dracula can also be found in the following searches:
Leslie S. Klinger claimed Cause for international celebration—the most important and complete edition of Dracula in decades. In his first work since his best-selling The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Leslie S. Klinger returns with this spectacular, lavishly illustrated homage to Bram Stoker´s Dracula. With a daring conceit, Klinger accepts Stoker´s contention that the Dracula tale is based on historical fact. Traveling through two hundred years of popular culture and myth as well as graveyards and the wilds of Transylvania, Klinger´s notes illuminate every aspect of this haunting narrative (including a detailed examination of the original typescript of Dracula, with its shockingly different ending, previously unavailable to scholars). Klinger investigates the many subtexts of the original narrative—from masochistic, necrophilic, homoerotic, ´dentophilic,´ and even heterosexual implications of the story to its political, economic, feminist, psychological, and historical threads. Employing the superb literary detective skills for which he has become famous, Klinger mines this 1897 classic for nuggets that will surprise even the most die-hard Dracula fans and introduce the vampire-prince to a new generation of readers. 35 color; 400 black & white.
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