Puttering in the Study

The New Annotated Dracula by Bram Stoker (Leslie Klinger, annotator)

This is a beautifully presented newly annotated edition of Bram Stoker's novel, and at first I was really excited about seeing such a lavishly executed new annotated Dracula, but I pretty quickly decided that I didn't like it nearly as much as the old Leonard Wolf edition, or especially the Leatherdale Dracula Unearthed annotated versions.  See here for previous post on these editions.
The reason why is partially an underlying premise of Klinger's annotation, and partially what his annotations actually consist of, but before I get into either I have to explain why I am particularly fond of annotated versions of books I like.
I like annotations because they explain to me either things about the book that I wouldn't otherwise understand (definitions, terms, background historical facts, photos, etc.) and also because they explain to me where the author got various parts of the book, i.e. where the ideas came from, where the plots came from, who the characters or scenes may have been based on.  In a book like Dracula where so many things came together in Stoker's mind (some of which he likely - even certainly - wasn't even aware of) telling me where his did his research, what his sources were, what influences worked on him, what his models were is of immense interest to me.
For example, my recollection is that recent scholarship makes clear that Stoker not only did not base Dracula on Vlad Tepes, but he was not even aware of the "Impaler" and simply renamed his fictional count Dracula instead of Wampyr when he discovered the name as being that of a nobleman of the area very very late in the writing process.  (The errors show - the historical Dracula had nothing to do with Transylvania - he was a Wallachian prince).  But because we know his sources we now known that he was not aware of the horrifically cruel nature of his count's namesake.  It is just a coincidence that the name he chose had a background that paralleled the character.  He could just as easily have named the count Hunyadi or Corvinus.  Today the count's identity as Dracula and the convenient connection to one of history's darker figures is well-established, but it was nearly not so.
Klinger's first conceit (as I think he put it) is that, as he did with his annotated Sherlock Holmes, he assumes that the story relates a real event, i.e. that Stoker was recounting a true story, so that Klinger refers to the story as the "Harker Papers".  That Holmes was a real person is part of the Sherlockian world, I understand, and is where Klinger gets this approach.  And there is an interesting basis for the extension of that to Dracula - when Stoker revised the book and published a subsequent abridged edition, he claimed as much in the foreword, saying that he'd changed the names, but that he knew all the persons involved.  Fine and good, as far as that goes, but the annotator goes much further, not only accepting that the story is true and only the names have been changed, but that Stoker actually changed the story, under pressure from Dracula himself (who he posits wasn't actually killed, but returns to lend a hand to Stoker's telling of the story).  This does a great deal of damage to the purpose and benefit of an annotated book.  For one thing, Klinger's assumption that not only was the story true, but that Stoker's revisions in the subsequent (slightly abridged) text were intended to help conceal who Dracula is, what his powers are, and what and where things happened and to whom, means that from the very beginning, the annotations are explaining not the book Stoker wrote, but the fictional account Klinger is supporting.  I'm not saying it isn't an interesting story, and certainly a new twist on the story is to be admired, but it made clear early on that Klinger's annotations were not going to be about the book I knew, and thus weren't going to add to what I knew about it.  I can see adopting that the story is true, but even so (and I think doing that cuts the annotator off from explaining where Stoker conceived the various parts of the story, as well as why and how) I don't think you toss out the text of the book and make up a back story and then annotate with that in mind.  You lose something making it "real" - you look the fascinating story of how Stoker studied at the British Library, collecting information on a variety of unrelated topics, and weaved them into his story, dropping some and adding others as the novel evolved.  The story I related about the sheer coincidence of the count's name having an interesting historical antecedent loses all value because the one thing Klinger tells us it true beyond doubt is that the count's name cannot be Dracula.  Well where's the fun in that?  That Dracula isn't even about Dracula?  I have to admit here that Tolkine does the same thing in the appendices to Lord of the Rings, noting in passing that he changed all the names of the hobbits - Sam and Ham were really Ban and Ran, for example.  But somehow, I can forgive him for that, partly because he's not telling me the story's fake as well, and conceals a different War of the Ring.  Actually, his son Christopher really does that.  I better drop this line right now or I'll go nuts...
The second problem with this book was the other characteristic of the annotations (especially as the book went on).  There were certainly useful annotations that, for example, told you the various arguments for which cemetery was the model for Lucy's tomb, and what's happened to The Spaniards and Jack Straw's Castle, but more and more the annotations simply heckled the actions of the characters or Stoker's possibly changing of the "real" story and what motives he had to do so (for Klinger everything was done under pressure from Dracula on Stoker post-story).  The effect was very much of having some guy in the seat next to you complaining that a real person would never do that, and how stupid something was, and so forth. Some of that is helpful, of course, but to have every action dissected and nitpicked is just plain annoying - especially when the nitpicking is not of the story, or the author, but of a fictional story created by the annotator.  I got headaches just trying to keep straight whether Klinger was complaining about something a character did, what Stoker said a character did, what Stoker said a character did, but the character probably didn't based on what's in the working notes (or Klinger's idea of what Dracula told Stoker to say or not say), and what Stoker had once said a character did, but no longer said in the abridged text, and why.  See my confusion?
So, while I commend the annotator for his work, and it is a beautiful edition, I really prefer an annotation that talks about the book as a work of fiction, and not one that assumes it as fact, and builds a fiction around that - and then annotated the fictional story.  This may make the story more attractive for Sherlockians,but it really didn't do much for me.  The next time I'm reaching for an annotated D, it'll be either the Wolf I searched so long for, or the Leatherdale.  I was glad to get this one finished.

The Angry Angel - Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

I've enjoyed Yarbro's Saint-Germain series and especially her Magnificat, so I thought it would be interesting to see her take on the Dracula legend - specifically the back stories of Dracula's three "brides", who play a minor role in Stoker's book.  This book follows the first, Kelene, who starts as a refugees from Salonika fleeing Ottoman soldiers in the late 1400s and ends up as a vampire in Dracula's castle. 
The book is very well-written, and I liked the characters both of Kelene and Dracula.  Dracula, in particular, is well-written, with a hard edge that never goes away, as you would think it might in a story such as this.  Dracula is also significantly different from the accepted character, in that he is explicitly not Vlad Tepes, who is referred to but called a member of the "cadet branch" of the Dracula house.  Rather he goes back to late Roman  times, and is a much older line of the house who led the Dragon Legion in defending his provinces in eastern Europe when the empire did not have the resources to send Roman armies to do the job. Of course Stoker never said that Dracula was Vlad Tepes, but only that he was a noble named Dracula who fought the Turks, so it's an original idea that the "real" Dracula was a much older figure who might be outside the historical record entirely.  I look forward to reading the other two books of this series to see what else Yarbro comes up with about her "angry angel."

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America - Erik Larson

This was my first audiobook - I got the CDs of the abridged version read by actor Tony Goldwyn.  I thought the book was very, very good.  The only real flaw was that the connection between the great fair and the mass murderer was not in the end a good one.  Holmes killed before the fair, and after the fair, and his killings during the fair were not even at the fair, but rather back at his hotel, albeit of fairgoers.  So even the title - the devil "in" the White City, was never precisely correct.
The connection worked fairly well (pun not intended) through the days leading to the fair, but during the fair itself, Holmes' activities were not coming to a crescendo.  On the contrary, he continued after the fair, and the great story of his arrest and the discovery of the murders was a lengthy coda after the story of the fair had come to a close.  Yes, he was killing people - a lot of them - proximate to the fair's location, but most of his murders (at least the known ones) really had no connection to the fair or to fairgoers.  The connection might as logically have been with late 19th century medicine in Chicago.  That having been said I enjoyed both stories, and pulled out my book on the World's Columbian Exposition this morning to see what all the fuss had been about.  And it was still amazing that such a thing ever took place, especially given the obstacles that Burnham faced in executing it.
I do have to point out that the version I listened to was read by Tony Goldwyn, who was terrific.  He was especially able to carry off the sections about Holmes, where he emphasized the seductive character of the man, and the horror of what he was doing.  He also convinced me that I need to listen to more audiobooks.  Despite having XM stations by by hundreds, plus radio plus CDs and course lectures, I listened spellbound from Marshall to Waco to Austin to Dallas - then immediately plugged in a second of three more I bought in Austin.  This is good stuff, Maynard.

The Dracula Dossier: A Novel of Suspense - James Reese

This book is a well-executed riff on the Dracula ouevre - probably the first which does not involve vampires at all.  The conceit is that it's a set of papers left by Stoker several years before writing D which detail his encounter (with several other Victorian personages) with a possessed American doctor who commits the Jack the Ripper murders.  His experiences in this episode provide details and ideas and phrases that later show up in Dracula, especially in the vampire hunters' pursuit of Dracula around London.  Reese's command of the historical details of Stoker's life is impressive.  He covers Stoker's love/hate relationship with his employer Henry Irving, his relationships with various other players, and constantly drops in useful footnotes that explain what Stoker is talking about 9and frequently what Stoker is conspicuously not talking about).
Still, the book dragged on for a while before finally finishing up, and I started to get a little tired of the story.  The possession was presented with a definite supernatural angle that made is consistently difficult to really enter into the spirit of the book.  Chasing an insane butcher around London is one thing - chasing a doctor whom Stoker knows firsthand to be not actually mad but simply possessed by the spirit of an Egyptian demon is another.  

A Room With a View - E. M. Forster

I became interested in reading this a few weeks ago after the New York Times' travel section described its connection with Florence, a city Jamie and I have visited a couple of times.  The book itself is a really well-done send-up of the strict mores of Victorian English society, and that was interesting, but it was pretty hard work working my way through it.  I bought the Merchant Ivory production of it at the same time, and am curious how they dealt with the story.
Really hated this edition of the book by Seven Treasures - it's oversized and has a really obnoxious cover, given the book.

Now Hear This: The Story of American Sailors in World War II - Edwin P. Hoyt

This book is supposed to be not a narrative of the naval war, but instead a series of stories reflecting the life and experiences of American sailors in World War II.  Thus while the stories are essentially in chronological order, they don't follow traditional dramatic arcs, where players enter the scene, fight a grand battle, then exit, and you rarely see what happens before or after.  It's far more common for the story to follow a sailor from enlistment through various postings - perhaps a battle or two, or maybe not - then on to the next story ending up with returning home after the war.  There is a greta deal of tedium, minutiae, and lack of understanding of what is going on or the part the sailor is playing in the war.  In other words, you get a far better understanding of what life was like for the average sailor.
What the book offers a useful perspective, it really isn't much of a story, and Hoyt has to add a lot of context to what's happening which provides what little overall structure the book has.  But when he does that, you lose the day to day sailor's perspective of what's happening, so there is a constant tension between immersing yourself in the tedium of the sailor's life and understanding the overall context of the war.  It's a useful book - but not a particularly interesting one.