Less ubiquitous than the 1925 abridgement, this original and uncut version of Stoker's last novel is no less surreal and just as shocking for having been written by the same man who penned Dracula, one of the greatest horror novels of all time. It's inane, self-contradictory, badly plotted, and poorly written; it is so bizarre, in fact, that it becomes, in its own way, weirdly fascinating. Lady Arabella March is the White Worm, a legendary antediluvian snake of enormous size; the last of her kind, she has existed for millenia in England where, as the story begins, she can be seen in her tight-fitting white dresses openly angling for a profitable marriage with the psychopathic owner of a neighboring estate. This madman, however, is more interested in much more delicate Lilla Watford, with whom he periodically engages in hypnotic battles of will -- that is, when he isn't monomanically transfixed by the huge kite he has set flying above his castle. Meanwhile, a couple of fellows from another nearby estate -- one an old diplomatist, the other a young buck from Australia -- having stumbled onto Lady Arabella's secret spend their days plotting her long overdue death. The impetus for the abridgement appears to have been Stoker's use of racial epithets for an ugly and mean-spirited (yet pathetically amorous) African character. That, and perhaps a simple desire to shorten the book, for not much of consequence is removed; rather, the hack job is confined mostly to removing paragraphs here and there throughout. The oddest edit is one involving the monster: an entire sequence is cut in which the monster pursues our intrepid heroes into a river, where it is mistaken for a white whale. As director Ken Russell used little more than the idea of a woman who could transform herself into a giant snake for his 1988 adaptation, it is impossible to know whether his inspiration was this book or the abridgement. Read at your own risk.
+1/2
Less ubiquitous than the 1925 abridgement, this original and uncut version of Stoker's last novel is no less surreal and just as shocking for having been written by the same man who penned Dracula, one of the greatest horror novels of all time. It's inane, self-contradictory, badly plotted, and poorly written; it is so bizarre, in fact, that it becomes, in its own way, weirdly fascinating. Lady Arabella March is the White Worm, a legendary antediluvian snake of enormous size; the last of her kind, she has existed for millenia in England where, as the story begins, she can be seen in her tight-fitting white dresses openly angling for a profitable marriage with the psychopathic owner of a neighboring estate. This madman, however, is more interested in much more delicate Lilla Watford, with whom he periodically engages in hypnotic battles of will -- that is, when he isn't monomanically transfixed by the huge kite he has set flying above his castle. Meanwhile, a couple of fellows from another nearby estate -- one an old diplomatist, the other a young buck from Australia -- having stumbled onto Lady Arabella's secret spend their days plotting her long overdue death. The impetus for the abridgement appears to have been Stoker's use of racial epithets for an ugly and mean-spirited (yet pathetically amorous) African character. That, and perhaps a simple desire to shorten the book, for not much of consequence is removed; rather, the hack job is confined mostly to removing paragraphs here and there throughout. The oddest edit is one involving the monster: an entire sequence is cut in which the monster pursues our intrepid heroes into a river, where it is mistaken for a white whale. As director Ken Russell used little more than the idea of a woman who could transform herself into a giant snake for his 1988 adaptation, it is impossible to know whether his inspiration was this book or the abridgement. Read at your own risk.
3 Comments
Bookstooge
1/1/2017 07:12:20 am
Happy New Year!
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Brian
1/1/2017 12:00:13 pm
Happy New Year!
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bookstooge
1/1/2017 04:00:48 pm
I'm only putting up reviews and not doing much interacting there. March is my deadline for stopping altogether :-( Leave a Reply. |
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