JULY - Dracula the Undead

July review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: Dracula the Undead by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt, 2009. [Action Adventure category]

I had bought Dracula the Undead when my beloved Borders was going out of business early last year (fun fact, that is also where/when I bought Drawing in the Dust, my March book!), but it has sat on my shelf ever since. Reading 'Salem's Lot jolted me back into my love of the vampire and I remembered I had this legitimate-looking sequel lying around, waiting for me to sink my fangs into once again. (To be clear, I don't really have fangs, I am not a vampire--though I have inherited some particularly pointy incisors from daddy dearest.) These are my thoughts!

The GIST. Dracula the Undead is the "true" sequel to the Bram Stoker's original Dracula, cowritten by Stoker's great-grandnephew and a Dracula documentarian/historian/screenwriter. According to the Author's note in the back, its intent was to reclaim the Dracula that Bram Stoker envisioned in his 1897 novel that has been co-opted, bastardized, and generally stolen by the popular media. The plotline fallows Quincey Harker, son of Mina and Jonathan Harker of Dracula fame, as he tries to follow his dreams of the theater--instead of his father's dreams for him of the Sorbonne--and how those dreams lead him back to the ancient evil his parents have been guarding from him his entire life. I liked the idea of a sort of next-generation attempt to reclaim the past, both in the fictional characters and the authors themselves, and it seemed to me a good, honest attempt at continuing Bram Stoker's legacy.

The CHARACTERS. Reprising their roles in Dracula the Undead are the brave band of heroes: Mina and Jonathan Harker, Arthur Holmwood (Lord Godalming), Abraham Van Helsing, and Jack Seward. (Get used to the phrase "brave band of heroes," because it comes up A LOT.) They are in various stages of denial and/or conflict about their involvement with Dracula in the past, and they have fallen away from each other--even Mina and Jonathan. Or should I say especially? New to the tale is our quasi-hero, next-gen Quincey Harker who is as-yet unaware of his dark parentage. He is the quintessential angry teen, hating his parents for forcing his life away from where he'd like it to go, and his relationships with said parents are very black-and-white: for a general but hugely plot-hole-y example, he quickly turns against his mother and judges her without the full story, all the while taking her word about his father and completely absolving said drunkard of any aforementioned misdeeds. Of course, the tale wouldn't come to fruition if Quincey was on his mother's side at the end. On the other side of the table is Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the new "absolute evil" come to London. She is our new Big Bad, but within the first 40 pages, we get her backstory of a loveless, abusive marriage and subsequent imprisonment. There is a feminine sympathy I found in the way she presents her tale, her own history in her own words--and this quality of allowing everyone their own voice is what pulls the characters in this novel up from the flatness of their ever-recycled prototypes. So often is Count Dracula portrayed as an infuriatingly black, evil character with no wiggle room. The original Dracula in Stoker's mind was an eloquent and complex antihero, and his apparent reincarnation here allows him his own voice again. This grey area the coauthors allow for the two vampires in order to examine the idea of "pure evil" is not extended to the human characters who, like Quincey as I mentioned before, are violently convinced one way or the other about what they think is right and wrong, which I think does a discredit to the characters Bram brought to life in his original.

One thing that has always intrigued me about the vampire was the incredibly sexualized nature these metaphysical beings seem to have taken on throughout the years, and this overt sexuality is very apparent here. Bathory is abused and then shunned for realizing her homosexuality and escaping her marriage, and that preference is continued on a wildly bloody scale to her actions as a vampire. Countess Elizabeth Bathory was said to have killed thousands and bathed in their blood orgiastically. True as that may be, its incorporation here offers a distinct dichotomy between her actions and the actions of the only other real female lead in the novel, Mina Harker. Their decisiveness and confidence is upsettingly linked to the vampire, the dark, which Mina eventually succumbs to under the guise of joining her one true lover. Ultimately the female characteristics of docile flirtatiousness are kept alive in the memory of pure Lucy Westenra while other, more self-actualized female traits are condemned with Bathory and Mina. Something that as a 21st century woman of higher education and relative broad-mindedness, I found hard to internalize.

In terms of ACTION ADVENTURE, the category I chose for this novel, I was not disappointed. It is most certainly an updated vampire tale, building off of the amalgamation of lore that has stacked up over the years while still trying to bring to light only the attributes Bram originally put forth in his novel. I didn't feel myself particularly tied to one character as my adventurer protagonist, though; granted Quincey is the newcomer whose understanding spurs on the climax, but all the characters seemed spread thin, and I didn't necessarily like any particular one of them (I hated Inspector Cotford though. So infuriatingly blind). In this respect, I think the "action adventure" trope falls short.

The RESEARCH. In retrospect, it could've also very well fit into historical mystery, mostly due to the real-life events and people the coauthors decided to lay their story over, like the Jack the Ripper murders and the Titanic maiden voyage. also in terms of the historical accuracy, the legacy being reclaimed, etc. (afterword by the coauthors). To get the full effect of this brilliant sequel, you need to read the afterword and the author's note. Something geeks like me love to do ;] I would love to be a historical fiction writer like this. The way these two men went about writing this book is so fascinating to me; it's one of the things that pushed me toward being a history major, an endeavor I ended up leaving due to the intensely factual nature of most history courses. Not that I don't like facts, but I learn better through stories, I've found. This story is an interesting confluence of research, fusing literature and the historical past to try to explain the unexplainable. It was more or less a fun read--except for wanting to skip over everything Cotford said ever--and I believe Dracula the Undead has deserved a place under the Stoker umbrella.

M. Night Shyamalan's The Village (2004)

Tonight after work, I watched M. Night Shyamalan's 2004 thriller-masterpiece (thrilsterpiece? no, that's not good...) The Village. It had been sitting in my family's TV cabinet for years and I'd never really looked at it--nor had anyone else apparently, as it was pretty dusty when I picked it out to bring back to school with me last week. I'd seen a few of M. Night's movies, knew he was famous for The Twist Ending (that guy was Bruce Willis the whole time! ... anyone?), and didn't really go either way on the love him/hate him front. I had no idea what this movie was about, except a village (duh) and some ominous music I remembered from the trailer when it came out originally. Of the friends I watched it with, one had seen it but didn't remember the twist, and one was as clueless as me, so I was in good company for a first time viewing. Beware: here there be spoilers!

I like movies that make me think, ones that leave me speechless, ones that don't do my thinking for me. The Village was like that for me. The Village was billed as horror, I suppose, but it was so much more: the fact that you see the creatures, The Ones We Do Not Speak Of, halfway through the movie--albeit from afar and relatively blurrily--makes it less of a monster thriller and more about the people in the town itself. Sometimes the creepiest horror stories are the ones that aren't about the supernatural or the unexplainable; they are the ones about real flesh-and-blood humans and the way our natures can go terribly wrong.

I really want the twist to be that this village is a cult and outside it's really like 2009. But probly not. #TheVillage #thatsnotthetwist

— Caitlin Clayton (@caitclay) July 31, 2013

This was like 40 minutes into the movie. I'm not saying I'm psychic buuuut...

A general rundown of the story if it's been a while for you: everybody lives in this quaint little countryside village, ostensibly in the middle of nowhere, but there is obviously fear here--exhibit A, two full-skirted girls having a wonderful time sweeping the porch when they see a scary red flower and run a safe distance away from the house to bury it without explanation but with mortal terror in their eyes. The Elders run the town, and it is made up mostly of the parents of each of our protagonists: handicapped Noah Percy (Adrien Brody)'s parents have no audible names but cry a lot toward the end of the film; heartthrob Lucius Hunt--who does not bounce about like the other boys, father--is brought to brooding life by Joaquin Phoenix and is mothered by the incomparable Sigourney Weaver, who wears no makeup and has a lot of sexual tension; blind Ivy Walker (badass then-newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard) is one of the daughters of the revered Reverend Edward Walker (William Hurt) and his wife Tabitha (Jayne Atkinson), who obviously isn't that into him because papa Walker is said to be the cause of mama Hunts aforementioned sexual tension. Angsty Irishman Brendan Gleeson is August Nicholson, whose pain pushes our story into motion with the loss of his son. Ever-honorable Lucius approaches Ye Olde Council to ask permission to go through the forest of beasties to fetch medical supplies that could've saved Nicholson's son, but everyone says no because they don't want to breach the boarder and make Those We Do Not Speak Of angry enough to attack again. Business as usual: people are married, loves are professed, but the attacks come anyway. Even in this quaint little nowhere town jealousy comes to rear its ugly head, bringing with it attempted murder: Noah stabs Lucius after the latter announces his intentions to marry Ivy, and Ivy leaves her beloved on his deathbed to go to the towns and subsequently learn what the deal is with their perfect little town.

It would've been easy for this movie to fail based on characters alone. It is difficult to write a blind or mentally handicapped character without making their pain seem co-opted, but Shyamalan worked the intricacies of each character's disability into their mannerisms, their speech, and ultimately their actions (i.e. the plot). At one point, my friend asked, "Ok, whyyy do you send the blind girl to "the towns" through the creepy monster-infested woods," and while part of the answer is to further the plot (she can't see modernity outside the walls, so the towns dirty little secret stays safe), but it is also because that is her character, and because of her blindness, Ivy has actually become one of the most capable and aware characters in the entire story. She continues to have footraces with Noah and break up fights and dance the lovely choreographed dances that everyone in town knows and even go to the freaking forbidden forest alone because her escorts are awful and pansy-assed. While at first I was irked that the female protagonist was the blind one (disabled by a man, and other feminist inklings), I grew more and more impressed with Ivy Walker, standing her ground to wait and see if Lucius was safe during the attack, continuing on through the forest and killing the monster that stalked her in the woods; basically never giving up, even when faced with the very evil her she grew up fearing though her father just recently told her it was a hoax (I mean, hearing and believing are two very different things). She was dedicated to her goal and came back to her love, and the movie closed on her face, staring straight into the camera with unseeing eyes, as she so often did. I loved her.

Look at that face. That girl gives no fucks.

Later, my boyfriend and I discussed the ending. He mentioned how he would've liked the original draft ending better; where death itself was watching over the town which was in some sort of limbo. I agree that that particular ending would be excellent as well, but I kind of liked how it was brought down to earth, how the most unexpected thing to do in a supernatural monster movie is to make the monsters actually humans and the whole thing a grand experiment that makes poor security guard Kevin question what he is doing with his godforsaken life. The slow reveal of more and more toward the end is typical of a Shyamalan flick, and I think the quality of having to think backward after a film is over is one of my favorite aspects of a well-done movie like this.

Now, I'm not saying that every aspect of the plot works logistically and some of the questions I had after the movie ended were certainly substantial, (like why they went back to the 1800s, why the only way they made them sound old timey was to eliminate contractions, how the village was going to continue when the elders were no more, etc) but The Village was cinematically executed to a near-perfection. Shyamalan used every masking of the frame to enhance who was speaking, allowing the camera to follow Ivy from the back so we too were blind as she walked, focusing on hands and feet and movement rather than particular faces, intense color binaries unexplained early on and left to pop up again and again until we understood them better--these are the things that made me love this movie.

After re-watching the trailer, it occurs to me that I watched the film on the anniversary of it coming out in theaters. Huh.

The Village, 2004. Dir. M. Night Shyamalan. Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Adrien Brody.

My summer of the vampire

It started out innocently enough. Being a newly-minted horror aficionado, I wanted to read more Stephen King. So I picked up one of his most famous (and his favorite, apparently) books, 'Salem's Lot (1975). I had always sort of loved vampires, I'd read Dracula when I was in high school, and it seemed like a good solid book to take with me on vacation. (Since I was about 13, I wasn't allowed to buy books at less than three or four hundred pages, because my mom said I read them too fast.) So I did.

I read 'Salem's Lot all through Israel, though less often than I would've thought. I loved it. I loved King's style of focused omniscience, changing with every chapter. I loved the chapters that were from The Town's perspective. But most of all, I loved that he didn't use the actual word "vampire" until at least page 300, but you knew what it was about from page 10. A master of storytelling and insinuation, that one. I had fallen in love again. So it seemed a simple enough continuation that for my July Eclectic Reader challenge I would choose Dracula The Undead by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt, a sequel to the original. I didn't think much of it at the time.

Now, nearly two months later, I finished both novels, read the first installment of Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse books (on which HBO's blockbuster True Blood is based), re-read Dracula and have just picked up Anne Rice's Interview With A Vampire, which has been sitting on my shelf since my first intoxication with the undead.

So why the sudden spike?

I've always loved the undead, the concept of a different sort of life playing by different sort of rules, and I think I've become more in tune with that now, as a recent grad trying to navigate this world that apparently has no apparent rules that I'm familiar with. Trying to find a new job and a new purpose in a new era is really hard, so much easier to just sit and read about vampires who couldn't give a shit about any of that stuff.

NEIL FLIPPING GAIMAN, EVERYBODY.

Holy shit, guys. Today I saw NEIL GAIMAN. In person. I heard him speak his beautiful words and read from his beautiful new book and just generally be awesome. He told stories about Shirley MacLaine pulling his hair in Santa Fe, his son at age 4 wanting a goldfish instead of a dad, the best way to maintain one's humility (a cat!), how he thinks and other wonderfully normal things. His flight and subsequent arrival was delayed due to complications at the SF airport from the crash yesterday, so we were entertained for a good two hours with old BBC archive footage of interviews and readings, our crowd laughing along with the one on the screen. As Neil caught his breath once he came onstage, I was reassured of the incomparable humility most of my favorite writers have. He told a story about how there was a girl on his plane who recognized him who was on her way to Ann Arbor to see him, still distraught that she was going to miss the show (even after seeing the man himself!). He signed her boarding pass just in case, but said "the show can't really start without me, now can it?" But in a totally non-douchey way. Just humble and logical and reassuring.

Being at his book tour for his new novel, Neil read from said new novel, The Ocean At The End Of The Lane, which he wrote for Amanda. Then answered with "terrifying randomness" a bunch of index-carded questions that he hadn't had time to go through before the show due to his tardiness. We got to hear how weird he was as a kid, sitting under tables to read (it's dark and quiet and no one will bother you!); how to actually pronounce his last name (his grandmother changed it not-quite-legally between the engagement and the wedding because she liked the spelling better); he acknowledged his grumpiness at his wife being away which led to the writing of this short-story-accidentally-turned-book.

As a writer myself, I think my most meaningful memories of the night will be when he talked about himself as a writer. About where he gets his ideas. How he decides to do what he wants to do next. He said he got his ideas out of his head, by taking one thing that people know all about and another thing that people know all about and pushing them together and seeing what happens. (like...a chairwolf!) When asked about writing sequels (specifically of Stardust), he made a comment about doing something that he knows absolutely how to do and everyone expects him to do and something that's already half formed, but then on the other hand there's this thing that he has no clue how to do and no one at all is expecting..."and I generally just hare off after that!" he said with a flourish and a laugh. I love that idea of new territory. I am exploring it more and more every day, what with being recently graduated and trying to find my way in the "Real World." Neil is a self-professed "maker-upper" and I try every day to emulate that beautiful feeling.

I didn't stay to get my book signed. I was alone and tired and hungry and had waited for two hours before I even got close to having my section called, at which time I would've still had to wait in the serpentine line that snaked up the grand staircase at the Michigan theater, around the balcony, and back down the stairs to Neil Himself. I wrestled with my decision for a long time; because this is Neil's last US signing tour, it would be special to have that, and i could've traded in my copy for a presigned one if I really wanted to (he signed hundreds throughout the actual meeting-people parts, as is apparent in the really grainy camera photo below), but I'd already written in my copy, notes and little hearts and things that it made me think of, and I didn't want to let those first blushes go. I was there, I heard him speak, I laughed with the rest--I didn't need a signature to make myself feel validated. I didn't want to be one face out of 1700 on a conveyor belt. Who knows what the future will bring?

Some of the best quotes of the night:

Because a cat looks up at you and you know what it's thinking: 'dear God, that man does not know how to deploy a semicolon.'

When you go to author school, they teach you. . .

I get my ideas...out of my head, I guess. By pondering. By "what ifs."

Hmmm, what's a good word for librarians...

he's a proper grown up now

and of course, my favorite:

I am just a maker-upper of things.