Review by New York Times Review
VAMPIRE STORIES HAD been around a long time before Dracula started sucking blood, so what was it about the Transylvanian count that captured the public's imagination, making him one of the most famous characters in modern literature? The short answer: Sex sells. More than any other monster of classic horror, Dracula pairs violent threat with a carnal one. Bram Stoker's Gothic novel revitalized the vampire legend, Stephen King rightly pointed out, because it "fairly pants with sexual energy." David J. Skal's "Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote 'Dracula'" is an essential examination of where all this heavy breathing came from. Skal has been chasing Dracula for more than a quarter-century, since his 1990 debut, "Hollywood Gothic," a chronicle of the villain's evolution from an animalistic literary monster to a debonair screen star. He's written a biography of Tod Browning, director of the original movie, and co-edited an annotated version of the novel. His command of the material combined with his gifts as a storyteller manage to make this an authoritative book without a dull moment, its wandering narrative always returning to the shadowy corners of Victorian sexuality. Skal suggests that Stoker was a masochist with "a strongly transgender perspective" muffled by the conventions of his age. Stoker was given to hero worship, and his life was filled with intense friendships with charismatic men, including Walt Whitman. Skal lingers for pages on a fan note Stoker wrote to the poet, which reads like a bizarrely emotional OK Cupid profile. His most important relationship was with Henry Irving, the 19th-century star actor. As a drama critic, Stoker raved about his performances before going to work as his business manager. "Henry Irving was the master he had been searching for all his life," Skal writes. "Irving would make him whole. And Stoker's devotion to the man would be the exquisite ecstasy of a martyr." "Dracula" was born in the theater. The evil demon kings of English pantomimes fired Stoker's imagination as a child, as Irving did later with his melodramatic turns. The famous crucifix held aloft to stop evil had its origins in Irving's production of "Faust." And Shakespeare, Skal persuasively argues, was a major influence, particularly the bloody tragedy "Macbeth." Skal devotes considerable attention to speculating about the influence of Oscar Wilde, often with labored comparisons to Dracula. Wilde and Stoker did have similar backgrounds: Both were Irish-born graduates of Trinity College who moved to London and became involved in theater around the same time. But the record of their interaction is thin, which somehow, in this book, draws them closer together. "It was as if Oscar represented a part of his own life and psyche Stoker simply chose not to recognize or validate," Skal writes. Skal uses Wilde's flamboyance to illuminate his subject the same way Tom Stoppard did in his portrait of A. E. Housman, "The Invention of Love." But that was a play. And while the brouhaha around Wilde's trial may illustrate the explosiveness of certain taboo sexual pleasures that "Dracula" also tapped into, straining to make the point reveals a shortcoming of the book's focus on sex. None of Stoker's other novels received anything close to the attention "Dracula" did. H. P. Lovecraft explained its success was due to an editor. What's telling is Skal never makes the full-throated case for Stoker as a great writer, or even an underrated one. Like vampires, great art lives forever, but this biography doesn't suggest that's why "Dracula" endures. In fact, with its emphasis on the unspoken and repressed passions of Bram Stoker, its most provocative point may be that the book transcended its time by being firmly a part of it. The novel 'Dracula,' Stephen King said, 'fairly pants with sexuell energy.' JASON ZINOMAN, who writes the On Comedy column for The Times, is the author of "Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 20, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
Bram Stoker is a world-famous writer about whom most of us know almost nothing. Sure, we know he wrote Dracula (1897), and we probably know he took his inspiration from the legend of Vlad the Impaler but stop right there. Skal, a historian of horror literature and film, points out that apart from the name Dracula, Stoker actually doesn't seem to have taken a whole lot from the Vlad legend; those connections were forged afterward, by literary commentators and wishful thinkers. In fact, certain key elements of Dracula, including the vampire's sexual ambiguity, came from Stoker himself; even the themes of blood and darkness appear to be drawn from Stoker's own life and the gruesome medical experimentation he underwent. In writing about Stoker's life, Skal also writes about the time in which he lived, a time in which shifting literary sensibilities and the impending transition between centuries set the stage for a new kind of dark horror novel to launch a revolution. An engagingly written, well-documented biography of a famous writer we all think we know, even if we really don't.--Pitt, David Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Known today almost exclusively as the author of Dracula, Bram Stoker (1847-1912) is thoroughly scrutinized in this sumptuous biography. Drawing on a wealth of research, Skal (Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen) finds credible influences for Stoker's classic novel in several key figures in his life: his strong-willed mother, who entertained her sickly young son with terrifying accounts of a cholera epidemic she lived through in the 1830s; Oscar Wilde, whose mother's salons he frequented and whose onetime love interest, Florence Balcombe, he eventually married; and Henry Irving, the renowned actor whom he served as business manager. As depicted by Skal, Stoker was a tireless workaholic who readily absorbed creative ideas from his experiences. Skal also breaks new critical ground, noting Dracula's similarities to Drink, a novel by Hall Caine, to whom Stoker dedicated his novel. Skal writes with intimate familiarity about his subject and his habits, and he has organized a remarkable amount of information into an engrossing narrative. There will likely be more biographies written about the author of Dracula, but they are not likely to surpass the achievement of this one. 16 pages of color and 80 black-and-white illustrations. Agent: Malaga Baldi, Baldi Agency. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
When Skal (The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror) includes "Untold" in the title, he is referring to the recently discovered letters written by Stoker (1847-1912) about his childhood, as well as correspondence with the eminent poet Walt Whitman. This audiobook is more than a simple biography; it is also a literary examination behind the history of Stoker's Dracula. For example, through recently discovered writings about his own past, Stoker talks about the Irish mythologies that frightened him as a boy. Skal believes that this had much to do with the style and atmosphere of the great 1897 novel. Further investigations lead to Stoker's friendship with Oscar Wilde before and during Wilde's trials and incarceration. Stoker was married but seemed to have had little interest in women, leaving Skal to interpret the sexual ambiguity of not only Stoker but of the character Dracula as well. James Patrick Cronin performs well as the narrator. His pronunciation of the Irish names, locations, and mythological creatures is spot-on. VERDICT Since this audiobook also includes the full text of Stoker's freshly revealed letters, it would be an engrossing listen for Dracula and Stoker fans, as well as literature students and faculty. ["For serious students of horror literature and Victorian culture": LJ 12/16 review of the -Liveright: Norton hc.]-Jason L. Steagall, Gateway -Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An exhaustive portrait of the author of Dracula and his suppressed emotional life.Skal (Halloween: The History of Americas Darkest Holiday, 2016, etc.), a cultural historian and horror film and literature critic, delves into Bram Stokers life (1847-1912) deeper than others before himand there have been countless critical considerations of Draculas provenance since its appearance in 1897, many of which the author shares here. An exemplary gentleman of a certain class, Dublin-born Stoker embodied the anxieties of the highly charged Victorian era, especially fears about the (sexual) body, disease, miasmal vapors, and blood-borne contagion and degeneration. Indeed, Stoker gleaned early on as a bedridden child (born at the height of the Irish famine, no less) the ghastly tales his mother told about the cholera epidemic of her youth. Skal underscores how strikingly similar Stokers life was to that of Oscar Wilde. They both attended Trinity College, where they absorbed pseudoscientific theories of mind, body, and eros, were fascinated by the theater and fairy tales (terrifying theatrical pantomimes, in Stokers case), were drawn to the homoerotic work of Walt Whitman (Stoker wrote him bashful fan letters), and were romantically connected to the same woman, Florence Balcombe, who rejected Wilde and married Stoker. Skal uses Wildes Picture of Dorian Gray as a kind of touchstone against which to explore themes of male attraction and the leprosies of sin, foretelling Wildes public downfall and the submerged self that Stoker injected into his character Count Dracula. Mostly, however, Stoker was a man of the theater, the acting manager for the famous actor Henry Irving at Londons Lyceum Theatre for over 25 years, and such a workaholic that Skal wonders how he could have found time to write (stories, criticism, novels) so prolifically. The author also assiduously sifts through Dracula productions from then until today. A wild, occasionally messy, ultimately enthralling work of biography. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
