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Dissecting Dracula

I’m one of those readers who blithely enjoys a story, while a little voice in the back of my head keeps asking questions.  It’s like those annoying people you watch a movie with who keep saying, ‘Who is that guy?’  ‘Is that the girl?’  My mind hones in on some reference made by the writer and worries it like a bone.

An example? I recently re-read Susan Kay’s Phantom and got hung up on two books taken to Box Five by Erik to read.  They were Madame Bovary and Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert, neither of which seemed liked anything a disfigured genius of his ilk would be interested in.  So why did Kay pick those two?

I believe writing is not just tapping at a keyboard.  We are like filters, sifting through experiences either survived or imagined; bring to the blank page a wealth of left and right brain thought.  I don’t think every writer sets out to put those annoying little things in, but studying them, I find them opening up tiny secret doors to places the other readers missed, or would sometimes pick up on subliminally.

With that in mind, I have included links from some of my comments on books I have gone through along with some of my friends.  We got into a Gothic vein (pardon the pun) with Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera and went on to Dracula.  I’ve included both here as well as a ‘review’ if you will of Gerald Hogle’s The Undergrounds of the Phantom of the Opera, which was extremely helpful in opening up the reader to a wealth of clues as to what the heck was going on in that genre.

Visit Dracula--Under Construction

Visit Phantom of the Opera--Under Construction