What are you up to this summer? Come read a 125 year old novel very slowly with me and the rest of the internet!
Okay, so in May of 2021, Matt Kirkland, a web designer who does all kinds of weird projects for fun, started a substack called Dracula Daily, which parcels out the original 1897 book to your inbox. Dracula is an epistolary novel, composed of letters, newspaper accounts, diary entries, a guy talking into his own dictaphone like he’s making himself a little podcast, etc. and Dracula Daily emails you the day’s entries on the month and day the book says they were written, giving you some approximation of the events of Dracula in real time.
This substack was moderately popular last year, claiming a few thousand subscribers, but Kirkland decided to run it again in 2022 and for some reason it immediately took off. As of May, the sub was nearing a quarter of a million subscribers and a frenzied, hyper-obsessed fandom has sprung up seemingly overnight.
This whole phenomenon is the most amazing thing ever to me. This fandom could do anything in the world, and they’re choosing to microdose Dracula. They are spending their one wild and precious life impatiently waiting for the next installment of a book that’s been freely available since 1897 (literally free! long out of copyright! You could google it and read it all today!), and they’re also creating the most purely hilarious content I’ve seen on the internet for a long time. I love them with passionate abandon.
The thing is, if you’re just looking to read Dracula, I think this might be a terrible way to do it. The events of Dracula begin in May and end in November but the book itself wasn’t written to be serialized like some of the other famous novels of that era so the entries don’t necessarily tell good stories or have satisfying endpoints in themselves. The book begins with the diary of Jonathan Harker, a real estate lawyer from England sent by his superior to Transylvania to help a mysterious client purchase an English estate. Your first day’s reading is one of Jonathan’s diary entries, where he duly records that: he’s eaten dinner, it contains paprika, he’s never had paprika, he sleeps poorly, he eats paprika again for breakfast. That’s it. Any sense of creeping dread that Stoker builds in the book sputters out when you’re reading it in bits and pieces over many days and the lack of momentum is exacerbated by the fact that long periods of time can pass between entries. In June in Dracula world, Jonathan was trapped in Dracula’s castle with no means of escape and no paper on which to write so in our world there were no emails for around two weeks. In itself, it’s probably not a great way to read.
HOWEVER. It is absolutely a great way to experience Dracula as long as you’re reading along with the fan community. Every entry is remixed, joked about, drawn, and studied. That very boring entry about the Hungarian paprika spawned fan art of travel blogger Jonathan Harker, Jonathan Harker in a little apron making his little recipes, jokes about the queer dreams he’s having from the paprika, jokes about British people eating spices, readers trying to find the original recipe he would have eaten, etc etc. Substack annoyingly won’t embed tumblr, which is where all the best posts are, but I’ve linked some of my favorite posts from the early days below and I encourage you to click through if you need a laugh.
The part where Jonathan slowly realizes that no one else lives at Dracula’s castle, that his impression that there were servants and other human beings there was wrong and in fact he is alone in a strange country, trapped in a castle with only his unnatural host should be chilling:
I had hardly come to this conclusion when I heard the great door below shut, and knew that the Count had returned. He did not come at once into the library, so I went cautiously to my own room and found him making the bed. This was odd, but only confirmed what I had all along thought—that there were no servants in the house. When later I saw him through the chink of the hinges of the door laying the table in the dining-room, I was assured of it; for if he does himself all these menial offices, surely it is proof that there is no one else to do them. This gave me a fright, for if there is no one else in the castle, it must have been the Count himself who was the driver of the coach that brought me here. This is a terrible thought; for if so, what does it mean that he could control the wolves, as he did, by only holding up his hand in silence.
The moment Harker truly sees the horror of Dracula, not just suspicions and premonitions but the incontrovertible moment when he sees he is unnatural and evil, is when he sees Dracula crawl out a castle window and along the walls:
What I saw was the Count's head coming out from the window. I did not see the face, but I knew the man by the neck and the movement of his back and arms. In any case I could not mistake the hands which I had had so many opportunities of studying. I was at first interested and somewhat amused, for it is wonderful how small a matter will interest and amuse a man when he is a prisoner. But my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over that dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow; but I kept looking, and it could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall.
What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man? I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me; I am in fear—in awful fear—and there is no escape for me; I am encompassed about with terrors that I dare not think of...
The first appearance of a vampire’s mirror thing AND crucifix thing, sizzling flesh, eerie absences:
I only slept a few hours when I went to bed, and feeling that I could not sleep any more, got up. I had hung my shaving glass by the window, and was just beginning to shave. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder, and heard the Count's voice saying to me, "Good-morning." I started, for it amazed me that I had not seen him, since the reflection of the glass covered the whole room behind me. In starting I had cut myself slightly, but did not notice it at the moment. Having answered the Count's salutation, I turned to the glass again to see how I had been mistaken. This time there could be no error, for the man was close to me, and I could see him over my shoulder. But there was no reflection of him in the mirror! The whole room behind me was displayed; but there was no sign of a man in it, except myself. This was startling, and, coming on the top of so many strange things, was beginning to increase that vague feeling of uneasiness which I always have when the Count is near; but at the instant I saw that the cut had bled a little, and the blood was trickling over my chin. I laid down the razor, turning as I did so half round to look for some sticking plaster. When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat. I drew away, and his hand touched the string of beads which held the crucifix. It made an instant change in him, for the fury passed so quickly that I could hardly believe that it was ever there.
"Take care," he said, "take care how you cut yourself. It is more dangerous than you think in this country." Then seizing the shaving glass, he went on: "And this is the wretched thing that has done the mischief. It is a foul bauble of man's vanity. Away with it!" and opening the heavy window with one wrench of his terrible hand, he flung out the glass, which was shattered into a thousand pieces on the stones of the courtyard far below. Then he withdrew without a word. It is very annoying, for I do not see how I am to shave, unless in my watch-case or the bottom of the shaving-pot, which is fortunately of metal.
maybe not quite as eerie.
So it’s funny, right, but it’s also strangely educational about things beyond paprika (though I have learned a lot about paprika!). I’ve read a theory based in history about why Jonathan misquotes Hamlet, an exploration of the effect of Oscar Wilde’s sodomy conviction on the novel, and a post I have lost about how Bram Stoker’s legal career led to Dracula focusing so much on home ownership (being able to keep vampires out if you own a home, being able to travel freely if you own your grave dirt: all propaganda for the real estate industry?).
It’s a rich experience! And if nothing else, I am thrilled to see people realize that, canonically, Dracula has a Sam Elliott mustache.
You are an evil person if you attack people reading books to kids
Teen Vogue did an interview with Kyle Chu, also known as Panda Dulce, the drag queen whose children’s story hour at a local library was interrupted/terrorized by an attack from the Proud Boys.
KC: I have a background in social work, and they say when you encounter a traumatizing event, the stress cycle doesn’t complete in your body and you’re not able to resolve it. That’s how I feel. It feels like it just happened to me. More than two days later, I still feel like I’m in that room. I’ve had trouble sleeping. Everyone’s asking if I’m okay and the answer is I’m not.
But I want to be clear: I’m not a victim. Queer people are resilient and creative and resourceful and we’re going to be fine. The [Proud Boys] have obviously never met a drag queen, because drag queens don’t do obscurity. We’re not going to shrink back into the shadows simply because their myopic worldview fails to comprehend the diversity that is our world.
The community has been strong, but it’s shameful that this strength is needed! Reading to children is an act of kindness and community, and the attempt to pervert that into something else is disgusting. The attacks on the queer community, from censoring books to attacking Pride events, are disgusting.
On a similar but smaller note, Casey McQuiston, the author of Red, White and Royal Blue, has removed all of the Harry Potter references from new editions of the novel. The Tiktok explaining why was taken down but it looks to have been done in solidarity with the trans community, which certainly makes sense to me. I no longer read Rowling or recommend Harry Potter to anyone because of her toxic and dangerous public advocacy against trans people. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a public figure torpedo their legacy as enthusiastically as she has, but it’s gross and damaging.
I don’t read audiobooks but I did read these articles and threads about audiobooks which made me appreciate audiobooks
Xiran Jay Zhao (author of Iron Widow, one of my favorite reads last year) tweeted recently about having to rerecord the audio for their latest book after finding out that, despite publisher assurances, the narrator they chose didn’t know how to pronounce Mandarin.
Other authors of color joined them in sharing stories about how difficult it was to find a narrator who was appropriate and could also do accents or languages that were vital to their books.
Vulture had an article on the art of audiobook narration and how a bad reader can completely change a book.
It’s easy to hear why. Part of it is that tone of wide-eyed astonishment you hear, with all of its phony inflections. Part of it is the way Harris is always pulling focus to the wrong words. And part of it is just her unwillingness to read the thing straight. The words get swallowed up in her acting so that all you hear is what’s happening in the plot. The way the story is told just disappears. White’s writing becomes wholly unlike itself — becomes, in fact, generic. Harris is effectively editing E.B. White. Thanks to her revisions, he becomes a ghostwriter of his own work.
Books and food, an unbeatable combination of things I enjoy
I was intrigued by this Oddfellows ice cream/Penguin Random House collaboration, but as far as I can tell, it’s just new flavors named after book genres and some promotional posts by authors.
Some good authors promoting it though!
DID YOU KNOW Taco Bell has its own literary magazine? It’s called Taco Bell Lit Quarterly and they’re accepting submissions through the summer! You must mention Taco Bell in the story; they pay $100 if your submission is accepted.
I can’t top the Taco Bell lit magazine, so I’ll end it there. I hope you enjoy your long weekend if you have one! I’ve been building my summer reading list but as usual, it’s spiraled completely out of control.
What are you reading?
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