The boys wrap up their discussion of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and come away somewhat ambivalent: this is clearly a work of importance, imagination, and invention, but it feels…unfocused. We posit that the undeserved press and social pressure clouds what is otherwise an incredible meditation on creation: what are a creator’s responsibilities to their creation, and what effect does the fulfillment (or neglect) of those responsibilities have upon the created?
Tag: Horror
Episode 84: “Unnatural Intimacy,” or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Part I
Neither of the lads had read Stoker’s classic gothic novel, published in 1897, and they suspect that many readers are in the same boat. Over 100 years of vampiric pop culture have made Stoker’s masterful compiling of folklore fade into the background, but the book that launched a thousand bites is bracing, inventive, funny, haunting, and innovative. Chris and Jesse talk about atmosphere, forced intimacy, the anxieties of Victorian society, and the grand missed opportunity of Dracula’s cancelled cooking show.