Stoker, Conrad and Cooper

Bram Stoker's Dracula

I read this novel so many years ago that I sometimes confuse the plot line with the hundreds of movies made about the Count and his minions. I have decided not expound on any passages or scenes in case I am yet again confused. Confusion and all, the book is nevertheless chilling. When I read the novel at about the age of twenty, it dawned on me that maybe Dracula was having sex with his victims while he was drinking their blood. Knowing everything when you are twenty,(wink) I told my mother this revelation and she said sarcastically, "You really think so?" I think these themes of rape and exploitation of the vulnerable are why this book continues to repulse and seduce readers and is why it is the best horror classic ever written.

Whitby in the north of England was the inspiration for Stoker's setting and I traveled there on two occasions in my twenties. The town is Gothically gorgeous. It is a fishing village nestled between two bluffs along a rocky coastline where it always seems to be raining. The beautiful ruins of an ancient abbey stand vigil on one of the cliffs overlooking the town. I was so taken with the landscape that I used it as the template for Kilkerry in my first novel Beyond the Cliffs of Kerry. It is not hard to imagine Mina seated on one of the benches by the abbey in a trance waiting for the Count. Believe me, my imagination raced when I walked along cliffs. Bram Stoker's Dracula will continue to hypnotize and seduce readers too for centuries to come.

The Leatherstocking Tales-Last of the Mohicans and more-James Fenimore Cooper

For years I avoided James Fenimore Cooper, not being interested in Colonial America or frontier adventures. Maybe it was because of all the poorly done Disney serials from the 1950s and 1960s about Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. They always seemed to be geared to boys not girls and presented such a wholesome, patriotic stereotype of the brave frontier scouts and warriors that it was enough to make you wanna gag.

Little did I know that years later, a movie based on one of Cooper's novels would take me by storm and influence the direction of the rest of my life. Michael Mann's film "The Last of the Mohicans" did what well done movies should do, entertain, educate and inspire people to revisit the classics. This is just what happened to me and a multitude of other fans who saw this movie and fell in love with this action packed drama made in the 1990s (Daniel Day Lewis' machismo had a lot to do with it too).
Last of the Mohicans is the second or third book in a series about Nathaniel Bumbo aka Hawkeye and and his adventures on the American frontier. The first book was my favorite, entitled The Deerslayer and is about a young Hawkeye and his relationship with a ship's captain and his daughter who live on a large raft in the middle of Lake Glimerglass in Upstate New York. It is filled with action and some graphic violence and even a bit of romance.
Like every other book written in the early 19th Century, The Leatherstocking Tales are not easy reads and frequently you will see gargantuan differences between the movie screenplays and the books, but if you enjoy the action and adventure of a frontier setting, these are the novels for you. The Leatherstocking Tales are wonderful bits of Americana and fascinating chronicles of life on the Appalachian frontier. 

Heart of Darkness-Conrad

About a year ago I read Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad and swore that I would never read another novel by this author. At that time I found him boring, pretentious, and self serving. It seemed as if Conrad, like many of the so-called "greats", spewed words just for the sake of spewing words, paying no attention to good story telling. I still feel this way about Lord Jim but I have since read Heart of Darkness and I have changed my mind about Conrad.

With some of these classics it sometimes helps me to listen to them in audiobook format. It helped me cut through a lot of the excess bull and follow the story...or maybe Heart of Darkness just had more storyline. I don't know, but I thought it was truly great lit and will stay with me for years and years. In a nut shell it is the story of a man who sells his soul to the devil and the words "The horror, the horror!" at the end of the book will raise the hair on my arms for the rest of my life.
I also avoided the movie "Apocalypse Now" thinking it was just another bandwagon Vietnam movie of the eighties, but my English major daughter told me that it was based on Heart of Darkness. Hollywood did an excellent adaption of the book even with changing the setting and a few of the scenes. Sometimes it really is worth giving an author another try.