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Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 71 из 359While Dracula is no Jude, Stoker's novel of the Count continues to reverberate in the mind long after the more ghoulish and clamorous Varney the Vampyre has grown silent; the same is true of Mary Shelley'shandling of the Thing Without a Name and Robert Louis Stevenson's handling of the Werewolf myth.
What the would-be writer of "serious" fiction (who would relegate plot and story to a place at the end of a long line headed by diction and that smooth flow of language which most college writing instructors mistakenly equate with style) seems to forget is that novels are engines, just as cars are engines; a Rolls-Royce without an engine might as well be the world's most luxurious begonia pot, and a novel in which there is no story becomes nothing but a curiosity, a little mental game. Novels are engines, and whatever we might say about these three, their creators stoked them with enough invention to run each fast and hot and clean.
Oddly enough, only Stevenson was able to stoke the engine successfully more than once.
His adventure novels continue to be read, but Stoker's later books, such as The jewel of Seven Stars and The Lair of the White Worm, are largely unheard-of and unread except by the most rabid fantasy fans.* Mary Shelley's later gothics have similarly fallen into almost total obscurity.
*In all fairness it must be added that Bram Stoker wrote some absolutely champion short stories-"The Squaw" and "The Judge's House" may be the best known. Those who enjoy macabre short fiction could not do better than his collection Dracula's Guest, which is stupidly out of print but remains available in the stacks of most public libraries.
Each of the three novels we've been discussing is remarkable in some way, not just as a horror tale or as a suspense yarn, but as an example of a much wider genre: that of the novel itself.
When Mary Shelley can leave off belaboring the philosophical implications of Victor Frankenstein's work, she gives us several powerful scenes of desolation and grim horror- most notably, perhaps, in the silent polar wastes as this mutual dance of revenge draws to its close.
Of the three, Bram Stoker is perhaps the most energetic. His book may seem overlong to modern readers, and to modern critics who have decided that one should not be expected to devote any more time to a work of popular fiction than one might devote to a made-for-TV movie (the belief seeming to be that the two are interchangeable), but during its course we are rewarded-if that's the right word-with scenes and images worthy of Dore: Renfield spreading his sugar with all the unflagging patience of the damned; the staking of Lucy; the beheading of the weird sisters by Van Helsing; the Count's final end, which comes in a hail of gunfire and a scary race against darkness.
Dr.
What the would-be writer of "serious" fiction (who would relegate plot and story to a place at the end of a long line headed by diction and that smooth flow of language which most college writing instructors mistakenly equate with style) seems to forget is that novels are engines, just as cars are engines; a Rolls-Royce without an engine might as well be the world's most luxurious begonia pot, and a novel in which there is no story becomes nothing but a curiosity, a little mental game. Novels are engines, and whatever we might say about these three, their creators stoked them with enough invention to run each fast and hot and clean.
Oddly enough, only Stevenson was able to stoke the engine successfully more than once.
His adventure novels continue to be read, but Stoker's later books, such as The jewel of Seven Stars and The Lair of the White Worm, are largely unheard-of and unread except by the most rabid fantasy fans.* Mary Shelley's later gothics have similarly fallen into almost total obscurity.
*In all fairness it must be added that Bram Stoker wrote some absolutely champion short stories-"The Squaw" and "The Judge's House" may be the best known. Those who enjoy macabre short fiction could not do better than his collection Dracula's Guest, which is stupidly out of print but remains available in the stacks of most public libraries.
Each of the three novels we've been discussing is remarkable in some way, not just as a horror tale or as a suspense yarn, but as an example of a much wider genre: that of the novel itself.
When Mary Shelley can leave off belaboring the philosophical implications of Victor Frankenstein's work, she gives us several powerful scenes of desolation and grim horror- most notably, perhaps, in the silent polar wastes as this mutual dance of revenge draws to its close.
Of the three, Bram Stoker is perhaps the most energetic. His book may seem overlong to modern readers, and to modern critics who have decided that one should not be expected to devote any more time to a work of popular fiction than one might devote to a made-for-TV movie (the belief seeming to be that the two are interchangeable), but during its course we are rewarded-if that's the right word-with scenes and images worthy of Dore: Renfield spreading his sugar with all the unflagging patience of the damned; the staking of Lucy; the beheading of the weird sisters by Van Helsing; the Count's final end, which comes in a hail of gunfire and a scary race against darkness.
Dr.