Fascinating look at the early incarnations of the Count, and his unlikely genesis as a cultural icon. Skal's writing is extremely knowledgeable, and very amusing and readable. Generous with illustrations, and the large-size format (while a little hard on the wrists!) means that the pictures are right there, where you want them, by the text. (Example: reading a paragraph about the various actors who were considered for the part of Dracula in the Universal movie, several of whom were unknown to me, I thought, I wish he'd just have a page with pictures of all of them ... Turned the page, and guess what ...? That's thorough ...)

If I have a quibble, it's that Skal seems oddly resistant to his material. He's pretty dismissive of the novel and the Tod Browning film. He seems to cordially loathe Bram Stoker himself. He has very little good to say about the three theatrical versions that wound up touring the UK and the USA, thanks to Florence Stoker's litigious grasp on the copyright of her late husband's one and only cash cow. (He's not crazy about Florence Stoker, either ...)

Now, I'm not saying that Bram Stoker's Dracula is a work of literary genius. It's clunky, and amateurish, and it's much more interesting for what it reveals of the psychology of its author, and the society he lived in and, indeed, the psychology of anyone reading it. And Skal does acknowledge its strange attraction as a pop culture Rorschach test, on which a reader can and does project almost any of their personal or cultural concerns.

And yes, Bram Stoker was a very strange, sad man. He lived his life struggling with his homosexual yearnings, and turned himself into the worst kind of closeted person -- one obsessed with "good, clean manliness" and obviously very frightened of women. (And Florence Stoker was a woman who married a strange, sad man, and had to live with the consequences of that). But having recently read a novel about Stoker which presents Stoker and Florence in a much more sympathetic light (Shadowplay by Joseph O'Connor), I found it a little hard to go along with Skal's very hostile reading. (A novel is a novel, of course, and Skal backs up his claims with evidence, and may be absolutely right about Stoker and Florence. But it just seemed that there was more nuance there than Skal was allowing.)

And finally, the movie. Yes, yes, yes: Tod Browning's movie is a hot mess, and it was very interesting to learn how much of that mess was NOT due to primitive technology, and to the lingering aesthetics of silent movies, or even to studio interference. By contrasting it with the simultaneous Spanish language version, which was directed with much more flair and sensitivity for the possibilities of the script, Skal makes it clear that, no, the limitation of the 1931 movie are all down to the curious limitations of Tod Browning, who seemed determined to ignore the opportunities that his script, cast, set and technology offered him.

It reminds me that I must watch the Spanish language version which, since Skal wrote this book, has been rescued and reissued on a deluxe dvd with the Tod Browning version.

One thing Skal makes clear: it's a little miracle of pop culture that so many flawed individuals --Stoker, Mrs. Stoker, Browning, even Bela Lugosi -- wound up producing something that lingers in the mind, and has spawned such a weird, rich mythology.

...ahh, the children of the night. What music they make! ( )