Skip to main content

Dracula's Guest

 Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker was section that was supposed to have been cut from the novel.  The event in the short story happens on Walpurgis Night, April 30th near Munich.  In the novel on the same night, Jonathan Harker was near Dracula's castle in Transylvania.


In the short story, Johan, is an adventurous Englishman on business.  He strays off the beaten against the advice of the carriage driver.  Where he comes across some ruins and soon learns that he should have listened.


This short story shows off Bram Stoker's writing style very well.   Like Dracula the story filled vivid and active descriptions.  Science fiction owes a lot to Stoker's writing style and to the novel 'Dracula.'


It is easy to see why this portion was cut out.  It moves too fast for the Dracula story.  In the novel, there was a build up before showing the monster.  This was so that Stoker could build the world in the story.  The short story showed a monster right away and went right into the legendary characteristics of the monster.  So if this was an earlier draft, then it is easy to see why it was cut for carriage ride Harker was give by Dracula in the novel.


Dracula's Guest was originally published in Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories in 1914.  The Audio program I listened to was narrated by James Mio.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

18 November 2020

Song mood: Mysterious Ways by U2. Currently I’m listening to The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan.  I’ve listened to a couple of novellas that she wrote where her detective Cormac Reilly briefly shows up in and liked them.  This is the first book with her star detective.  Between McTiernan and Trevor on who writes better suspense, I would say hands down McTiernan.   A person who writes mysteries as a genre follow a set of conventions so that the reader isn’t in a state of confusion.  One great example is putting dates before each section or series of sections.  Literary writers don’t follow conventions and the confusion at times come from the writing.  Where I say, let the characters mislead the reader not the writing itself. I am enjoying The Ruin .  It’s nice to get back to a solid mystery. I continue to walk at the lake.  Although, it’s a modified path where I get around 2.5 miles instead 4 miles.  I still need to figure out what to do for exercise in the winter.  I want to get a rowing m
1 comment
Read more

Anticipated Books of 2021

For me, the two most anticipated books are both by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.  The first one is Certain Dark Things to be released 7 September and the second is Velvet is the Night to be released 17 August.  Both are after my birthday so they can’t be my birthday book.  Which is too bad.  Garcia proved she could very write well with Mexican Gothic .  I’m inclined to believe she is the best writer out there. Currently I’m listening to Untamed Shores , Garcia’s thriller that was released last year.  It is similar to Mexican Gothic except without the elements of horror. Speaking of the birthday book, I finally chose the one.  And this time there will be no hiccups.  This year’s birthday book will be: The Album of Dr. Moreau by Daryl Gregory.  The book is set to be released on 18 May.  Three months before my birthday and if the book is to be pushed out, I think it would about a month or so.  It’s a murder mystery that involves a boy band formed by the animal people from The Island of Doctor
Post a Comment
Read more