KEV67
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Posts posted by KEV67
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45 minutes ago, lunababymoonchild said:
Alrighty, I have finished Dance of the Serpents by Oscar de Muriel and will be moving on to Lady Audley's Secret.
Already!? You'll be able to finish Varney the Vampire this month at that rate.
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Does anyone read the Hard Case Crime books? They are paperbacks with lurid covers, often with a young woman showing some cleavage or leg. I have read five of them:
- Blood on the Mink by Robert Silverberg
- Cut Me In by Ed McBain
- Joyland by Stephen king
- Nobody's Angel by Jack Clark
- The Vengeful Virgin by Gil Brewer
Often they are reprints of old pulp fiction stories. Joyland was only published a few years ago. I am not sure it is really crime, because of the supernatural element. Nobody's Angel was interesting. It was written by a Chicago taxi driver. It had quite a bit of sociology in it. If you want to know what it was like driving a taxi around Chicago in the 80s was like, it is probably your book.
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I wondered whether this bit was hinting at same-sex love. Not really sure.
'How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I have forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me! Beware how you meddle with him, or you'll have to deal with me.' The fair girl, with laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him:-
'You yourself never loved; you never love!' On this the other women joined, and such a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the room that it almost made me faint to hear; it seemed like the pleasure of fiends. The the Count turned, after looking at my face attentively and said in a soft whisper:-
'Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so? Well, now I promise you that when I am done with him, you shall kiss him at your will. Now go! go! I must awaken him, for there is work to be done.'
Something about the introduction that has occurred to me. I don't think Professor Roger Lockhurst mentioned syphilis. Syphilis was rife in the nineteenth century. Actually he did mention it. He speculated Bram Stoker had it. Syphilis could cause death and deformity in children. It is also nasty in that it goes away, but then comes back many years later in a different form. Quite often it attacks the nervous system. Maybe vampirism reflects on tuberculosis too. TB is not sexually transmitted, but it is a long term wasting disease. I think one symptom is paleness. Having either disease may count you among the living dead or under a curse. Not a very original thought, I'm sure.
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Those Varney the Vampire books do look. I'd be interested to hear if they are any good.
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Started East Lynne by Ellen Wood. It has 62 chapters, so that is two chapters a day. Dracula has 27 chapters, so that is almost a chapter a day. That is quite a lot of reading, since I've several other things I'm reading too.
Don't know about East Lynne yet. It forms the third part of the great 1860/61/62 sensation novel trilogy with Woman in White and Lady Audley's Secret. So far in the first two chapters we have been presented with an aristocrat with a massive estate (check), a beautiful and motherless daughter (check), a fine young man and probable hero (check). Ellen Wood has introduced the cad rather early in this one.
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3 hours ago, Hayley said:
Which edition do you have? I think, from what I've read anyway, that the point on immigration is more of a theory than a proven intention? I have definitely seen it presented before as part of the Gothic motif of 'the other', playing more on a general fear of the foreign than a specific sexual fear (although, agree that makes sense in the same context). It was also necessary for Dracula to be from a different country to have that contrast of a place that is "less developed", where there's no industrial revolution, travel is slow and the locals are all very superstitious. I have never heard the theory that Dracula is subconsciously Oscar Wilde though!
I ordered a really cheap copy of Lady Audley's Secret and it came today (I feel a bit bad saying this, because I know somebody had to design it, but the cover is hilariously bad). I think I'm going to start with Dance of the Serpents anyway though, because I'm very excited to read that and I think it will probably be a quicker read!
I have the Oxford World Classics edition.
I am trying to think what resemblance Oscar Wilde has to Count Dracula
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I read the introduction of Dracula today. Apparently, all that sucking of blood is a metaphor for sex. The book symbolises a late Victorian fear that our good old Anglo Saxon blood was getting tainted by our women having sex with immigrants. But then it says Count Dracula was, in a subconscious way of speaking, Oscar Wilde. Lord Ruthven, from The Vampyre by Dr Polidari, was Lord Byron, which makes more sense. Oscar Wilde was Irish, not all that foreign. Strangely, Bram Stoker married a woman who turned down Oscar Wilde. I know Oscar Wilde was married, but I thought he was mostly into young men. Bram Stoker's folks knew Oscar Wilde's folks, and I think Bram Stoker also worked for Sheridan Le Fanu on one of his publications. The Anglo-Irish Gothic fiction writing community was obviously a close-knit one.
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Does anyone have a problem keeping their TBR list under control? Books are so much easier to buy than read. I currently have seven books on my bookshelves waiting to be read. One of them is 1700 pages long. Another looks about 1000 pages long. I am trying to restrict myself to one new book for every two I read. It's a bit like paying off the national debt.
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I am going to read East Lynne, Dracula and some episodes of Spring Heeled Jack if I can find them.
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Yes, the top 3 as itt currently stands would be good for me. I would have to get a Gothic book, which would probably be Dracula. I tried reading it once before and did not like it, but I'd push through this time. I have read Frankenstein, which is the other great C19th monster novel. TBH I did not like Frankenstein that much neither. It is odd to think Frankenstein was written the other end of the C19th to Dracula, and is not strictly a Victorian book.
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Challenge suggestion 7: read a story relating to the clergy.
BTW, when are we going to stop taking suggestions and hold the poll? When do we intend Victober to start? It doesn't have to be October.
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I have read two of his novels: The Man Who Was Thursday and The Napoleon of Notting Hill. Both were mad. I read his Father Brown detective stories. They were like Sherlock Holmes, but not quite so good. He would be in big demand today for his plots. He would be great at writing scripts for Doctor Who for instance. He was a good poet. I especially like his Rolling English Road. He seems to have had a bit of a problem writing women. I get the impression he felt he did not understand them, despite being a married man. His Christianity is very apparent. Chesterton is still popular in the more religious parts of the USA because of his faith.
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I have read Lucky Jim, which I enjoyed. It's a campus novel. Quite funny. I also read The Old Devils, which beat The Handmaid's Tale for the Booker Prize. It was an unusual plot. It was about these Welsh pensioners who spend too much time down the pub. An old acquaintance of theirs, who made it big being a professional Welshman on the telly, retires to the area. Things happen, but it's not like Last of the Summer Wine.
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I'd rather it was to read a sensation novel than it be to read Lady Audley's Secret. I was going to read East Lynne for the other Victober anyway, and I read Lady Audley's Secret last year.
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I have been trying to learn Latin. It is difficult. My main incentive was that, from time to time, I come across Latin phrases in books. It annoyed me that having spent three years attending Latin classes at school, I could never translate anything.
Anyway, I am reading The Red and the Black by Stendhal. The lead character, Julien Sorel, is studying to become a priest. The seminary is a nest of vipers.
Quid tibi dixerunt? [What did they say to you?]
Erit tibi, fili mi, successor meus tanquam leo quarens quem devorit. [Because for you, my son, my successor will be as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour]
Cornelii Taciti opera omnia [The complete works of Tacitus]
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7 minutes ago, Raven said:
What is a sensation novel? (I've not come across the term before, but I'm assuming it doesn't have anything to do with posh crisps...)
The exemplars are The Woman in White, Lady Audley's Secret, and East Lynne. They generally include stuff like secret identities, bigamy, murder, blackmail, amateur sleuths, and young women being locked up in lunatic asylums. Their heyday was the 1860s.
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Comics publishers may well sue you if you copy a character too closely.
This video is instructive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2yZwh_gCIU
Captain Marvel was closely based on Superman, so Fawcett was sued by Action Comics, the forerunner of DC Comics.
L Miller and Son, who used to repackage Captain Marvel for the UK, simply renamed him Marvelman, changed a few names, special words and distinguishing characteristics, and carried on publishing.
Eventually L Miller and Son had to close down, because the US were allowed to export their superior, coloured-in comics to the UK.
Twenty years later Marvelman was resurrected by Dez Skinn for Warrior. Marvelman was renamed Miracleman, because Marvel the comic publishers would have sued otherwise. The new writer for Miracleman was a young writer, Alan Moore, who did absolutely brain-scrambling stuff, and revolutionised the super-hero genre forever.
Now, I hear Marvel has bought the copyright to Miracleman, although it is still unclear what they are going to do with it.
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Challenge Suggestion 3: Read several chapters from a Penny Blood / Penny Dreadful.
I might read my namesake, Varney the Vampire; or I might read Spring Heeled Jack, a sort of early Batman.
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Shakespeare was a pretty bad plagiariser. He rarely worked out any of his own plots.
Some people have pointed out that 1984 by George Orwell has similarities to a book called We by a Russian writer whose name began with Z. There were some similarities, but they were also quite different.
J K Rowling was not the first writer to think about a wizard school. Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea series was set in a wizard school. I expect the Harry Potter stories are still quite different, although I have not read any.
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There are the Flashman books by George MacDonald Fraser. I used to like them. Flashman is a bit different to Sharpe. Then there are those Horatio Hornblower books. Bernard Cornwell is a big fan of those.
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La Maison de ma Mère by Marcel Pagnol. I read it in the original French, because that's the sort of guy I am. I did consult a dictionary. The bit that made me blub was the epilogue. The author's mother died several years after the events of the book. His friend died in World War I, and his brother grew up to be a recluse and died young.
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I can see you can have up to ten options on a poll. In the Victober rules, you are allowed to read a work of literature that completes more than one challenge. I quite like that idea, because in the past the four organisers presented a challenge each, then there was a group challenge, and a read-along. That can amount to a lot of reading. Personally, all I am prepared to read is one long story, a shorter story, and some shorter works. such as essays or poems. However, some readers take on a lot.
So how do you want to do this? Perhaps each participant (or first 10) issues a challenge. Then we present the challenges in a poll and the top three or four are picked?
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The Victober challenges have been set:
- Read a book about the countryside or about the city
- Read a book with a female main character
- Read a sensation novel
- Read a popular Victorian book you have not read yet
- Read Gothic Tales by Elizabeth Gaskell
I am not sure I like the challenges. In particular, I do not like the read a book about the countryside or the city challenge. Isn't that most Victorian novels. I don't like the read a popular Victorian book challenge neither because they have said that can be a book that was popular when it came out or a book that is popular now. Those are two quite different things. Nevertheless, I will read East Lynne, which is a sensation novel and a bestseller and has a female main character. It sounds quite interesting. I thought about reading Trilby by George du Maurier about a young artist's model called Trilby, which was extremely popular when it came out. I might read that another time. I will make a start on Framley Parsonage after East Lynne. I will not read all the Gothic Tales, but I might read Lois the Witch. I am not sure I like the sound of it, though. I considered reading Agnes Grey, which is also quite short.
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15 hours ago, muggle not said:
btw, 90 year old Clint Eastwood will be starring in a new Western to be released in September. It is title Cry Macho.
Interesting, it was written as a screenplay in the 70s but rejected. So the author turned it into a book and tried to pitch it as a screenplay again. Lots of actors have been pitched for the starring role, including Arnold Schwarzegger and Pierce Brosnan. Makes you wonder what sort of film it would be.
Victober
in Reading Challenges
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Dracula has started to remind me of Wilkie Collins' Woman in White and Moonstone, with all the diary entries, letters and changes of perspective. Got to say I think Bram Stoker does it well. One of the characters, Dr Seward is in charge of a lunatic asylum, which is a very sensation novel thing to be.