Reeling Back

My dearest Daughter.
  Thank you for insisting that I finally read Dracula. As you most certainly know, today (November 8) is the anniversary of author Bram Stoker’s 1847 birth in the Dublin suburb of Clontarf. There appears to be truth in the claim that the Irish “have a way with the words.” Much to my delight, I found his novel far more readable than I’d expected of a work first published in 1897. The story told in the book is actually quite different from the plot of its authorized stage adaptation, the 1924 stage play produced after Stoker’s widow granted a licence to Irish actor-playwright Hamilton Deane, an old acquaintance of her late husband from his days as a London stage manager. The book is written in the epistolary style, a technique that 18th century novelists used to make their fiction more real. In the case of Dracula, Stoker shares with the reader entries from his characters’ journals, diaries, letters and, in something of a surprise, phonographic recordings. It certainly deserves its reputation as a work of literature, unlike so many of the potboiler pop culture artifacts that have taken the vampire count’s name in vain (vein?).
  — Your loving Father.
P.S. Today, I am adding six feature films inspired by Stoker’s work to my Reeling Back archive (with links to each following the Afterword to this dispatch). Astute social commentary is a bonus feature in African-American director William Crain’s horror comedy, 1972’s Blacula.