Frankenstein is An Ass

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I’ve finished Frankenstein or A Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Victor Frankenstein is, without doubt, the most self-centered, whiny and ineffectual protagonist I can remember reading about. I’m sure there are other, more annoying heroes out there in fictiondom but I’ve been lucky enough to have avoided them. Once Frankenstein has created his creature he does little else than brood over his misfortune, faint and take to his bed when faced with tragedy and then moan some more. I kept wanting to smack him. Smack him, kick him and pour cold water on his head.

I know, it’s not a modern novel. It’s written in the style of the time. It’s an allegory. It’s metaphorical. It’s a classic. I don’t care. Allegory and metaphor are pretty much lost on me. Sure, I can take apart a story and tell you what it all “means” but that’s vivisection to me. I read a story for the story not for what it all means or for the commentary on society. I read to experience something other than being me. If I want an author’s opinions I read their essays and editorials. As for classic, ask me my opinion of Shakespeare sometime.

After Dracula, Frankenstein is probably the most filmed horror novel. I’ve seen Frankenstein, the True Story; The Bride; Frankenstein Conquers the World; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; The Munsters; Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and probably a few other versions that I can’t remember at the moment. Frankenstein’s creature is a major figure in horror’s supernatural pantheon. I’ve got various versions of the creature in my sketchbook, in story ideas and even one in my gallery. I’ve read a lot more about the novel than I had about Jekyll and Hyde so I was pleased to find parts of it that hadn’t been dragged out and hung in sunshine already. The bit with Felix and the Arabian. Frankenstein’s constant self-pity (the more I read of it the more annoying and therefore funnier it got). The lack of detail of the creature’s creation.

Ah, the creature’s creation. We all know that Frankenstein made his creature by stitching together the body parts of dead men, right? Maybe. Perhaps somewhere in the 1831 revision Frankenstein says he did. Probably somewhere Shelley actually says he did. But, for my purposes, if it isn’t on the page it’s not canon. In the 1818 text Frankenstein never actually says how he constructed the creature. He says he doesn’t want anyone else to repeat his mistake. He says he made it huge, eight feet tall, because the larger size made it easier to work with. If he were simply reanimating a corpse, making it bigger; making it by matching various body parts together wouldn’t make it easier to work with. Unless there were a lot of huge corpses lying around it would actually make it harder. Frankenstein would have to graft bones together, extend muscles, veins, arteries; everything about the creation would be more work than if he were simply trying to reanimate a dead body.

Consider this –
A new species would bless me as its creator and source, many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve their’s. Pursuing these reflections, I thought, that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in the process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.

A new species. Impossible [to] renew life. Bestow animation upon lifeless matter. This sounds more like Frankenstein were creating some sort of golem or homunculus than actually reviving the dead. Something manlike but not a man. Certainly the creature is physically dynamic. This is no mute, lumbering creature. It scales mountains and glaciers with ease; it teaches itself to speak and to read in a year; it can move silently despite its great size.

Then also consider; when Frankenstein prepares to create a mate for the creature he acquires what he needs in London while traveling with his friend Henry Clerval. He and Henry travel around England and Scotland for four months before Frankenstein insists that he has to spend a month on his own and heads off to a desolate island in the Orkneys. It’s unlikely that Frankenstein just picked up the basics in London and intended to supplement the odd arm or leg once he got to the island. The island is five miles from the mainland and has only five other inhabitants. Frankenstein must have had everything he needed with him when he left London. How does one conceal human body parts for from one’s traveling companion for four months?

Whatever the creature is, I’m thinking that it isn’t just a patchwork of corpses. Frankenstein says he frequented graveyards, charnel houses and dissecting rooms. Human bones play a part in the process. But there’s enough undescribed to imagine Frankenstein creating something that is less a hodgepodge zombie and more a fleshy Victorian android – a thing formed from the sorceries of ancient alchemists and the engineering and chemical sciences of the modern era.

Of course, you can only apply so much logic to the novel. Once Frankenstein has brought his creature to life the story is driven by coincidence followed by unlikely coincidence. Hell, it starts with the coincidence of Frankenstein finding Walton’s ship in the Arctic wastes. The creature has Frankenstein’s notes. It’s smarter than its creator and it’s certainly more driven. Why doesn’t it just create a mate for itself? (Besides the stubborn desire to have Frankenstein actually behave responsibly and think about someone other than himself for one goddam minute.) That’s okay. I don’t want to rewrite the novel. Not exactly. I read it looking for something new in an old friend. And what I found is a creature who is weirder and more interesting than the scarred and stitched together fellow I’d grown accustomed to. I’m going to have a lot of fun the next time I attempt its portrait.

Hyde and Stein

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Yup. While I haven’t seen a direct acknowledgement (and, admitted I haven’t looked very hard) the Jekyll and Hyde musical is based on the 1931 film version of the story. The version for which Fredric March won an Oscar. The plot descriptions I’ve found online for the movie match the plot of the musical. The film is supposed to be quite good and rather livelier than the adaptations of Frankenstein and Dracula that came out the same year.

And speaking of Frankenstein, I’ve started reading the Barry Moser illustrated edition. He apparently chose to illustrate the 1818 text. I’ve read somewhere that Mary Shelley rewrote the story after its initial publication. Out of curiousity I checked my Berni Wrightson illustrated edition and discovered that it’s a different version. So I looked around and yes, there’s an 1831 version. So that’s probably what Wrightson used. I doubt if I’ll take the time to thoroughly read this later text – I’m enjoying myself but not to the point of looking forward to plunging back in again very soon after I’m done.

I’m about half way through. It’s easy to imagine the story as a silent film with all the stereotypical overdramatic acting. Frankenstein is a big drama queen prone to fits of melancholy and collapsing in despair and guilt. Justine has been hanged for a murder she didn’t commit and Frankenstein is all despondant and remorseful. Gaah. He has the wit to fashion an artificial human (this version isn’t exactly specific about what he uses in the construction – parts of human corpses is implied but using animal parts or even mechanical substitutes is possible) and yet he can’t think to lie to help an innocent person? He knows that no one would believe him if he told the truth (“A thing I raised from the dead killed my brother!”) but there are certainly a few stories he could have told that might have helped Justine (“I made a horrible enemy in Ingolstadt who swore revenge against me and my family!”). Instead he feels bad. Idiot.

The Story You Don’t Know

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I finished The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde this morning. I’ve seen the musical and Mary Reilly and run into versions of the character in Marvel Comics and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen but this is the first time I read the book. I’d just finished Kidnapped, also by Robert Louis Stevenson, and, having enjoyed that, figured that I might enjoy J&H. I hadn’t had much interest in it before because, y’know, I already knew the story. Even without seeing the musical I’d read enough descriptions of various movie versions of the story that I figured that story couldn’t have many surprises to it.

Fortunately I’m used to being proven wrong. The surprise wasn’t so much in finding more in the novel than I expected, the surprise was in finding less. J&H is a short mystery novel told from the viewpoint of Utterson, Jekyll’s lawyer. It tells of Utterson’s investigation into the identity of Edward Hyde and background of his strange hold over Henry Jekyll. It’s only in the final fifth of the book that it’s revealed that Hyde is Jekyll. There’s no prostitute in love with Hyde, Jekyll has no upstanding fiancee, Hyde is short and young and Jekyll is tall and in his fifties.

I now want to see some of the movie adaptations of the story. I want to see what movie makers brought to story. I’m assuming that the musical was adapted from one of the films. It’s hardly a direct adaptation of the novel. I described it to Nizzibet and she said the plot sounded familiar. No doubt the films were originally adapted from a play – that’s what was done with Frankenstein and Dracula.

I’m interested because I’d like to know what story the filmmakers think they’re adapting. I’m pretty sure it’s not the one I read. The novel is a fertile little thing, ripe with larger possibilities. It could be expanded in so many different ways. Yet, while the story gets remade every few years, it lags far behind Frankenstein and Dracula in sequels. It’s not that I’m especially a fan of sequels, it’s that having sequels is usually a sign that a storyteller sees more possibilities in the character or the original idea. With exception of Abbott and Costello and Alan Moore, I don’t think anyone has seen (heard?) new riffs in J&H.

But take this passage from Jekyll’s “confession” –

Had I approached my discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment while under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have been otherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, I had come forth an angel instead of a fiend. The drug had no discriminating action; it was neither diabolical nor divine; it but shook the doors of the prisonhouse of my disposition; and like the captives of Philippi, that which stood within ran forth.

I get all sorts of ideas from that.

And also consider – the novel ends with Utterson’s reading of the “confession”. The authorities have not been informed. Jekyll, in the form of Hyde, is dead; the body shut up in the laboratory until Utterson returns and gives the servants direction. But is Jekyll/Hyde dead? He created a formula to physically transform himself, might he not also know formulas to simulate death? It seems more likely to me than Hyde, now in possession of their form, killing himself. Hyde is pure evil. Hyde loves life. Jekyll is an ass who didn’t want to take responsibility for his moral flaws.

Also – Jekyll’s “confession” is written after Hyde has taken over, supposed during a brief time when Jekyll is able to be himself again. But Jekyll and Hyde have the same hand writing. We only know what happened second hand through Utterson’s investigations. Hyde could have written the confession as a cover for a much more complicated story.

I can imagine a host of ways to continue or expand the story without having to change a thing that Stevenson wrote. Maybe if I live long enough I’ll get around to it. Long live the public domain!

Too Tempting to Resist

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Rain City Video here in Ballard has been selling off their backstock of video tapes. I really hadn’t wanted to be acquiring any more videos. We’re probably moving in a year (we got confirmation from the landlord on our rent increase which means he’s not selling this year) and there’s no reason to buy new stuff if we just have to move it. Also, with VHS being phased out I wanted to be purchasing DVDs instead of tapes.

I’m not the fan of DVDs that most people (writers on the internet anyway) seem to be. I really don’t care about all those extras. It doesn’t matter to me what the director thought when he was making the film. I’m not really interested in the alternate endings or missing scenes. I don’t want to know how the makeup was created, or the special effects were designed. I know enough of the technical aspects of film making and special effects to be able to guess how an image is created. I’m glad that all that stuff is available I’m just not jonesing for it myself.

The one aspect of DVDs that I do prefer over tapes is the ability to search and watch a film by chapters. With some films it’s not the story I love it’s a just a few moments in the middle of everything else. Being able to go directly to those moments is the biggest appeal of DVD for me.

That and the fact that they take up less shelf space than a video tape. And they stay in their cases when you take them off the shelves. And a DVD takes longer to degrade than a video. Practical things.

Rain City, however, has made buying their older videos more attractive by selling them for less than the cost of a rental. They’ve got a six foot fold out table sitting near the entrance of the store piled high with videos. They used to have just a sales rack selling tapes at $4.95. That’s cheap enough that I’d always look and see if there was something I just had to have. Then they set up the table and the sign – “Tapes $4.95 or five for $15”. The table was stacked three layers high. Irresistable. If I own it I don’t have to worry about late fees. So every couple of weeks I go in and see what they’ve added to the mix. This week they’d upped the ante – “5 for $15, 10 for $25, 15 for $30”.

I couldn’t find fifteen that I wanted. I’m trying to find movies that Nizzibet will want to watch as well. We have date nights, Fridays and Saturdays, and that’s what started me renting movies to begin with. If the movie is something that the Nizz isn’t likely to want to watch then it needs to be something that I’d be willing to put time into in my unscheduled time.

I did find ten – A Better Tomorrow 2 & 3 (subtitled), The Tall Guy, Adaptation, Belizaire the Cajun (which we already have a copy of but the tape is wearing out and the movie isn’t available on DVD yet, Delusion, Miss Congeniality, Open Your Eyes, Undercover Blues and Don’t Look Back. Descriptions of all these movies should be available at the Internet Movie Database, I’m too lazy to provide links right now myself.

We ended up watching Don’t Look Back, a movie with Eric Stoltz as a junkie who steals a bunch of money from some drug dealers and the complications that follow. It’s not a good movie. Good movies are miracles. Once you consider how much money and time and people go into making a movie it’s impressive when one of them turns out to be good, let alone great. But it was a better movie than I expected and it managed to surprise me once or twice and that’s not easy to do.

Now I’ve got find room on one of these bookshelves for all this things. Fuss. Whine.

Vanity Googlage

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This morning I googled “David Ingersoll” (as opposed to “David Lee Ingersoll”). Lots of geneology stuff. Then this and this showed up about forty or so entries down. I’d completely forgotten about this. I’m not even sure what the illustrations look like. The Comic Book Resources entry doesn’t show up until way down the list.

Not that this is important. Just curious. Early on I figured that David Lee Ingersoll was a better public name than just David Ingersoll. I rarely think to look for the short version.

Self obsessed? Only most of the time.

And once again, Permanent Damage visitors, the post you’re looking for is down the page. Look for GLYPH

Uh. Hi!

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Eeek! If you’ve arrived here from Permanent Damage, excuse the mess. I wasn’t expecting visitors. At least not more than the couple dozen folks I would recognize at a supermarket.

The column you’re looking for is further down the page – the GLYPH one.

If you feel like writing me the address is chaosunit@aol.com. Put either David or Glyph or Skook in the subject line or I’m afraid I’ll assume your message is spam and delete it unread. Thanks for stopping by!

Sidewalk or Not?

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Since it appears that we won’t be moving in the next month it’s time to get back to Project Simplification. We want to be ready to move when our lease (still not signed or confirmed) is up. Like most house monkeys we’ve acquired a lot of stuff that we don’t actually need or want that we just haven’t gotten around to getting rid of. Because it might be useful “someday”. Or because it will take an effort to get rid of it.

There’s quite a bit of stuff in the garage that I’d like to sidewalk but the rain has finally come back. Sidewalking is the Seattle custom of putting stuff you don’t want to put effort into getting rid of out onto the sidewalk. Usually a “free” sign is attached to the item. Anyone with a pickup truck could probably furnish an apartment in an hour on a Monday morning. (Saturday and Sunday are the garage sales or the times people get around to cleaning their residences.) Trouble is, it rains in Seattle. So that couch that got sidewalked on a hot clear Sunday afternoon is a squishy sponge by 7 am Monday morning.

Fortunately we don’t have any couches to get rid of. We have them but I’m not one to get rid of any potential nap spot. What I’m more afraid of than having wet furniture sulking in front of the house is that I’ll put something out and then, after staring at it for a few hours, I’ll want it back. Gaaah.

Back Up

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Epilogue.net is back up. It seemed to load pretty fast even over our 56k modem. They won’t be accepting new work for a while yet. Which is fine – I’ve got a lot of illustrations to do that either don’t fit their format or that I wouldn’t want to submit until after they’ve been published by the people who commissioned them. I haven’t had a chance to check the links between here and there yet. I’ll do that later this morning.

Today I should be able to finish one or two of the illustrations for The Road Less Travelled for the next issue of The Black Seal. At least finish them to pre-photoshop stage. Photoshoping is often the trickiest part. It’s easy to get caught up in adding needless effects and flourishes that take a lot of time to produce but do nothing to improve the illustration itself.