Algo en la sangre

by David J. Skal

Coincidiendo con el 120 aniversario de la publicación de "Drácula" y con los 170 años del nacimiento de su autor, Es Pop publica la primera biografía de Bram Stoker disponible en castellano. Aunque destinado a ser recordado por su legendario conde transilvano, Stoker fue un prolífico escritor, periodista y crítico teatral; pupilo de Lady Jane Wilde y rival romántico de su hijo Oscar, mano derecha del actor más importante del siglo XIX, Henry Irving, y agente y amigo íntimo del novelista más popular de su época, Hall Caine. En este incisivo retrato psicológico y cultural, David j. Skal nos descubre toda una vida dedicada a abordar las grandes cuestiones de su tiempo: una era marcada por las enfermedades, actitudes enfrentadas hacia el sexo y el papel de los géneros, innovaciones científicas sin precedentes, temores atávicos y revoluciones filosóficas. La pugna literaria de Stoker con estas y otras cuestiones quedó destilada en un moderno cuento de hadas que 120 años más tarde continúa aterrando y fascinando por igual.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Horror, Vampires, Audiobook, LGBT

669 pages, Hardcover

First published October 26, 2015

About the author

David J. Skal became fascinated with monsters at the height of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when indestructible monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man provided a "nuclear security blanket" for a whole generation of youngsters.

Active as an editor and reporter on his high school newspaper, he was granted a journalism scholarship to Ohio University, Athens, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1974. His work as film critic, arts reporter, arts editor and assistant managing editor of the Ohio University Post, one of the country's leading college papers,led to his three-season appointment as publicity director of the University-operated Monomoy Theatre on Cape Cod. Following his graduation, he served as a public affairs intern in the office of National Endowment for the Arts chairman Nancy Hanks, and went on to the position of Publicity Director at the Hartford Stage Company, where he oversaw all media relations while the regional company fund-raised, built and opened a major new facility in downtown Hartford. In 1978, he was staff writer for the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, with responsibility for the content of all printed materials. From 1979-1982 he was Publications Director of Theatre Communications Group, a national service organization in New York City. From 1982 to 1992 he was president and creative director of David J. Skal Associates, Inc. (later Visual Cortex Ltd.), a Manhattan-based, nationally oriented design and marketing consultancy with clients ranging from the Metroplitan Opera to regional theatre, dance and music organizations.

A published writer of short fiction since his early college years (he was one of the youngest students ever admitted to the celebrated Clarion Writers Workshop in fantasy and science fiction), he authored three well-received science fiction novels: SCAVENGERS (1980), WHEN WE WERE GOOD (1981) and ANTIBODIES (1987). His long-standing interest in Dracula and his extensive contacts in the theatre world led to his first nonfiction book, HOLLYWOOD GOTHIC: THE TANGLED WEB OF DRACULA FROM NOVEL TO STAGE TO SCREEN (1990), followed by THE MONSTER SHOW: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF HORROR (1993). Many other books followed, including V IS FOR VAMPIRE (1995); DARK CARNIVAL: THE SECRET WORLD OF TOD BROWNING (1995,with Elias Savada); the Norton Critical Edition of Bram Stoker's DRACULA (1996, co-edited with Nina Auerbach); SCREAMS OF REASON: MAD SCIENCE AND MODERN CULTURE(1997); and the monumental anthology VAMPIRES: ENCOUNTERS WITH THE UNDEAD (2001, the largest such illustrated/annotated compendium ever published.

Skal began his work as a documentary filmmaker writing and co-producing segments for the A&E Network's award-winning series "Biography," and contributed scripts chronicling the lives and careers of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Jr. and Angela Lansbury (with whom he had worked during his theatre career). In 1999, he wrote, co-produced and co-directed a behind-the-scenes chronicle of the Academy Award-winning film GODS AND MONSTERS. The same year, he was tapped by Universal Studios Home Video for a series of twelve original DVD documentaries exploring the legacies of the studio's classic horror and science fiction films. His DVD work has continued with Disney Home Video's "Jules Verne and Walt Disney: Explorers of the Imagination" (2003) and the feature commentary for Warner Home Video's special-edition release of Tod Browning's FREAKS (2004).

His current projects include CITIZEN CLONE: THE MORPHING OF AMERICA (Faber and Faber, 2005)and CLAUDE RAINS: AN ACTOR'S VOICE, a biography based on the acclaimed character actor's never-published reminiscences, written in collaboration with the actor's daughter, Jessica Rains.

David Skal is a member of the Authors Guild. He lives and writes in Glendale, California.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

”I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is.”
---Count Dracula



I’ve never known much about Bram Stoker. He always seems to be in the shadow cast by his most famous book, merging with the castle wall of Dracula’s lair or blending with the wallpaper of John Seward’s house. A majority of people, even those who have never read a book or watched a movie influenced by Dracula, will recognize the name of the most famous vampire. They won’t necessary know Bram Stoker, but they will know Count Dracula.

I picked up this book hoping I’d have a better idea of what influenced Stoker. Who was he privately? ”A massive and muscular and almost volcanic personality” with a special “genius for friendship,” unknown to all…. Where is Bram Stoker in Dracula? Is pieces of himself in Jonathan Harker or in Mina or in Van Helsing or how about Dracula? What did Stoker care about? The problem is he is shrouded in mystery. Key batches of letters are missing that would have revealed much about the inner turnings of this writer. He devoted most of his life to being the private secretary of one of the most famous actors of the day, Henry Irving. Irving was so highly thought of in his time that he was the first actor knighted.


This photograph of Henry Irving and Bram Stoker says it all for me. Stoker is almost blending with the background.

Stoker devoted so many hours a day to Irving’s business that one wonders how he ever had the time to write. His father had been a dedicated government servant for his entire working life at Dublin Castle, so Stoker had the perfect role model for being the man behind the scenes who keeps the workings oiled and allows the man with the power to never worry about the minutiae of existence. What books would he have written if he’d had the fortitude to throw off the yoke of certain money and survived by the wit of his pen and the horrors of his mind?

Stoker squeaked into Trinity College and overlapped with another famous writer while there named Oscar Wilde. Both ended up moving to London, but they had something much more dear in common. They both sought the hand of the same woman. Florence Balcombe was the woman ”who might have married the creator of Dorian Gray but chose the author of Dracula instead.” Wilde was a charming and witty man, certainly more outgoing than what we know about Stoker. Was she too overwhelmed by Wilde? Was Stoker a better risk, given that he never gave up steady work to write? Regardless, there are some signs that she always regretted her decision to marry Stoker over Wilde. I’m sure, if they argued, that she might have thrown at him how much more prestigious it would be to be the wife of the author of Dorian Gray rather than the wife of the author of the vulgar Dracula.

”Honestly, she could barely stand the book. In another life, she might well be collecting royalties from The Importance of Being Earnest and basking enviably in the reflective brilliance. Having to depend on Dracula was rather like being Mina Harker, forced to guzzle blood from an open wound.”

*Sigh,* I wish I could go back in time and buy Stoker a pint and give him a reassuring pat on the back.


A sketch of Florence Balcombe by Oscar Wilde.

Given the scandal that erupts around Oscar Wilde, which culminates with him going to jail for indecency, you would think a woman would feel like she might have dodged a bullet. Interestingly enough, Dorian Gray was entered into evidence against Wilde. The only time I know of that imaginary characters testified against an author. Funny, or maybe not so funny if you are the man slighted, but Florence kept all her correspondence with Wilde, but must have burned her correspondence with Stoker. There was also a bit of intrigue involving a gold cross that Wilde gave Florence with his name on it, which seems to be lost. He demanded it back but, being Wilde, demanded that she give it back to him at the same place he gave it to her. It seems the exchange never happened, but the cross was also not part of Florence Stoker’s or Oscar Wilde’s estate. A small mystery, and what a find it would be for a literary collector.

Stoker read Leaves of Grass while at college, and the lyrical poetry had a profound impact on him. He wrote fanboy letters to Walt Whitman, but did not send them. He was most impressed with his ”frank discussion of sex, and not just ordinary male-female sex, but seemingly endless references to affectionate male-male camaraderie and ‘manly love,’ including men kissing and embracing, and perhaps even more, given all the blunt talk about ‘man-balls’ and ‘man-root’ along the way.” I could almost hear the small explosions in Stoker’s mind across the arc of time as the possibilities of what he was reading awakened and rewired some of what he believed. He did eventually find the courage to send those letters, and when Henry Irving went to America on tour, Stoker did get a chance to finally meet his boyhood idol.


What a dramatic picture of Walt Whitman. It gives me chills.

Stoker knew most of the important people of his era. He was best friends with Hall Caine, one of the most celebrated writers (practically unread today) of his time, and even dedicated Dracula to him. There has been speculation that the manuscript of Dracula was a mess until either Caine or another editor cleaned it up for publication. The piles of piles of correspondence with Caine are missing as well. David J. Skal can only speculate that Florence burned those, too. At Stoker’s orders? Or out of spite? She did not like Caine or his influence on her husband. Caine was a homosexual, and the sexless marriage that seemed to exist between Florence and Bram may have indicated a preference that did not involve a vagina.


Great photo of Hall Caine.

Was Stoker a homosexual? Hmmm, good question. The evidence is sketchy. There are hints, but no semen crusted evidence or anything definitive in his own writing to indicate that he had a preference. He may have very well been bi-sexual. He died in 1912 after a series of strokes and much speculation that tertiary syphilis contributed to his early death. I think it was Stoker’s son, Noel, who speculated that 25% of the males of the Victorian time period had syphilis. An alarming statistic, but with the number of prominent men from that era who are known to have had syphilis, that speculation might be true.

Does it matter if Stoker was homosexual? Not to me, except for the influence such a suppressed desire might have on his writing. While working at the Lyceum Theatre, he had ready access to the red light district and the choice of female or male prostitutes for his own comfort. He certainly didn’t seem interested in his wife after a few years into the marriage.

Unfortunately, there is just not much known about Stoker. David J. Skal did the best he could with the information available, but this book really takes on a life much larger than Bram Stoker. I learned a lot about the history of the era, the workings of the theatre and actors, Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, and Hall Caine (I didn’t even know he existed.). If you are picking this book up to learn more about Stoker, you might be disappointed. There is more rational speculation, than hard, solid facts about his life. He was a private man, a behind the scenes man, and one wonders if he ever fully realized the influence his book had on Victorian readers. The book continues to have a huge impact on readers to date, not to mention movie watcher, and theatre attendees. The level of significance of such gothic tales as Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Dracula is not hard to calculate, given their prominence to this day. They certainly have left a lasting impression on me.

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[Sean Gibson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Skal’s biography of Bram Stoker is as lurid as Stoker’s most famous creation. But, if Dracula is the epitome of creepy gothic, Stoker’s life was the pinnacle of Page Six. It’s one of the (many) great contradictions of the Victorian era that their understanding of gender and sexual fluidity is far more nuanced than our own, but their intolerance toward homosexual—or perceived homosexual—activities was even more extreme.

Stoker was an archetypal Victorian man in many ways—strong and virtuous and industrious, manly to a fault, but also struggling with his own sexuality and unable to express in public the feelings he poured out in private letters to the likes of Walt Whitman. And, whoa, nelly—did he pour out some feelings. Let’s just say that ol’ Bram very much desired to Sing the Body Electric while combing through every single one of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Whitman, apparently predisposed to being the object of heroic worship from handsome young gents, seemed inclined to allow Stoker to pursue that desire. Alas that they only met once.

Skal doesn’t shy away from the tawdriest aspects of Stoker’s life. You get the feeling he’d hyperventilate if proof came to light that Stoker and Oscar Wilde frequently got together to (euphemism alert) celebrate each other’s strength. As it stands, he draws as many connections between the two as he can, no matter how tenuous. The one real connection between them—Wilde’s brief engagement to the woman who would later become Stoker’s wife—isn’t nearly dishy enough to satisfy Skal’s insatiable appetite for Victorian gossip.

Notwithstanding his tendency to be a clatterfart, Skal displays impressive scholarship. He leaves no stone unturned in examining every aspect of the life of a man who left little in the way of a personal written record (not very Victorian in that regard, I suppose). But, be warned, Dracula aficionados: there was very little romance in the writing of Dracula. Skal does whatever he can to try to manufacture some, but its origin story is as prosaic as its villain is timeless and immortal.

Even for a Dracula fanatic and lover of all things Victorian, the pace slackens here and there as the author dives deep into the minutiae of Stoker’s life, most of which was spent placating famed thespian and noted grumpypants Henry Irving. Still, worth slogging through if you really need to get your Stoker on.

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a Bram Stoker shaped hole at the centre of this book. For a biography that claims to explore the inner world of the man himself, I learned an awful lot about almost everything else in his life except him. Partly, no doubt, that is because Stoker was a very private man and his descendants have protected that privacy; partly because Dracula may now be regarded as a genuine classic and a staple of popular culture but in his day it was very much a sleeper hit; partly because so much of his life both personal and professional was devoted to his idol and employer Henry Irving; and partly, dare I say it, because the author seems more interested in Oscar Wilde than his subject.

David Skal's central 'exploration' is that Stoker was a repressed homosexual, who sublimated his desires into a conventional but sexless marriage, a youthful infatuation with Walt Whitman, strong male friendships with men such as Hall Caine, and a lifelong devotion to the charismatic and domineering actor Henry Irving. As a result of this, Skal persistently contrasts Stoker's life with that of Oscar Wilde, his 'out' twin, one might call him, who grew up in Dublin like Stoker, attended the same university, courted the same woman and moved in very similar theatrical and literary circles. As a result of this parallel there is as much of Wilde to be found in this book as Stoker. Indeed, if one condensed the pages to their component parts, I would go so far as to call this a triple biography - of Stoker, of Dracula and of Oscar Wilde.

That doesn't make for a bad read - far from it, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, at the same time that it frustrated me. Skal is a good writer and he keeps the pace moving at a lively clip. He has a fine turn of phrase and real understanding of the period. But that said, there is an immense amount of extrapolation and speculation when it comes to Stoker's inner life and motivations, and it's a unstable premise on which to base an entire psychological biography. And unfortunately the company Stoker is forced to keep in this book makes his own personality pale by comparison; utterly overshadowed in life by Henry Irving, here he is elbowed aside by the flamboyance of Oscar Wilde and the endless un-death of his own creation, Dracula. Poor Bram Stoker is not even the star of his own biography, and for that if nothing else I found this book an enjoyable, entertaining disappointment.

[Liz Kittencat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aún no sé si darle 3.5 🌟 o 4, por lo entretenido (David J. Skal escribe de una forma muy amena) y lo bien documentado que está. Ya lo decidiré en las siguientes semanas.

Es un libro algo "chismoso", centrado en la sexualidad supuestamente ambigua de Bran Stoker, mediante su contraste con Óscar Wilde (su doppelganger según el autor) así como a través relaciones como la que sostuvo, en medio de una sociedad reprimida y finisecular, con Walt Whitman y Hall Craine.

Este libro tiene como cualidad principal ser una gran recreación de época, descrita de una manera muy afín con la novela gótica. Está lleno de detalles macabros y escabrosos (como la descripción de la muerte de Óscar Wilde o la epidemia de tifus que azotó Irlanda al mismo tiempo que la Hambruna de la patata), lo cuales le dan un carácter singular a su narración, sin ser derechamente sensacionalista (aunque a mí, que soy sensible a las pandemias y a los temas que involucran catástrofes sociales, me abrumó por momentos).

Así mismo, por sus páginas desfilan una gran cantidad de personajes famosos (como Sarah Bernard o Dante Gabriel Rossetti) y múltiples sucesos (Los asesinatos de Whitechapel, el Escándalo de la calle Cleveland etc.) que a primera vista no tienen una relación directa con Stocker, pero que si sirven para los propósitos del autor. La idea es que tanto Drácula (como novela y personaje) y su creador son fruto de esta sociedad llena de luces, sombras, arte, horror y muerte.

David Skal realmente acierta con la descripción de un fin se siglo decadente, contestatario y presionado por los cambios culturales y sociales. Desde ese punto de vista, me parece notable y provee de detalles realmente interesantes. Si buscan algo así, un retrato de finales del XIX con sus poetas, criminales, revolucionarios y videntes, este es su libro.

Sé que muchas personas se han mostrado disconformes con el poco material que en realidad abarca la vida y la producción literaria de Stocker, algunas que ya se mencionan más sucintamente en "American Gothic" (libro que recomiendo si quieren saber cómo se escribió Drácula y cuál fue su destino teatral y fílmico). Es verdad que la mitad del libro claramente describe (de una manera deliciosa, debo agregar) la época, llenándonos de detalles jugosos que aquellos que gozamos de ese tipo de retrato bien documentada y Nerd, amamos. Pero... es que no se puede hacer más con los pocos datos y papeles que existen actualmente de su vida y David Skal lo sabe después de años de investigación. Su respuesta a este escollo fue delinear la vida de Stocker a partir de las personalidades de la gente con las que se relacionó (en especial las de renombre como Óscar Wilde y Henry Irving) y de la influencia en su desarrollo mental e intelectual de la cultura y sociedad de la época, de ahí la cantidad enorme de detalles en ambos tópicos. Este recurso puede gustar o no, pero no sé puede negar que es ingenioso y proveer de un gancho fuerte con que interesar a los lectores.

Extrañé una descripción más detallada de la relación de Florence (su esposa) con Stoker y realmente me frustra que no hayan más datos de la enfermedad que lo aquejó los primero 7 años de su vida. Me gustó se manera especial, la descripción sobre el libro de Bram "En el país se las sombras", el cual es un conjunto de cuentos nos habla del país del Rey de la muerte. Su relación con el cuentos de hadas macabro y la niñez me interesó muchísimo.

Ahora bien, la biografía es bastante especulativa. Hay muchos "tal vez" o "pudo ser", pero que se basan en ideas y pistas sólidas. Aún así, hay que entender que está es una biografía no un documento histórico, por lo cual un contraste personal de información siempre es necesario. Además, hay que considerar que un trabajo de este tipo, siempre incluye la visión y posturas definidas del escritor y esto queda claro a través de sus hojas ¿Fue Stoker homosexual? ¿Murió de sífilis? ¿Donde encontró su inspiración para Drácula? Etc

Bien, como retrato de época y semi biografía de Óscar Wilde es sorprendentemente entretenida y completa, pero como biografía de Bran Stoker es más bien limitada y monofocal, aunque insisto no hay más datos con los que trabajar . En todo caso la recomiendo, por los variados detalles y lo entretenido de la pluma del autor, aunque me gustó mucho más Hollywood Gótico.

[Viola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Faktiem un interesantiem notikumiem pilna rakstnieka B. Stokera biogrāfija. Iesaku visiem, kurus interesē vēsturiskais fons un notikumi, kas rosināja Stokera iztēli "Drakulas" tapšanas proccesā.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun, fact-filled account of the life and work of the author of my favorite book! If only Stoker had lived to see Dracula become what it is today, I think he would be happy to see it. It's a shame, though, that he did not devote more time to his literary career as he did to the theatre. If he had, he might have been a sort of 19th century Stephen King.

My only complaint about this book is that the author spends way too much time talking about Oscar Wilde in it. Sure, I get that they were acquaintances, but I bought this book to read about Bram Stoker, not Oscar Wilde. That's why I only gave it four stars instead of five.

That being said, I enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to any fan of Dracula.

[Rebekah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Skal’s book, Something in the Blood, is not really a book about Bram Stoker at all. It is, in fact, a book about vampires, and, beneath that, a book about Oscar Wilde.

It does not surprise me that Skal would include Oscar Wilde in a Bram Stoker biography. Both Stoker and Wilde were born in Dublin around the same time, had attended Trinity College, and courted the same woman, Florence Balcombe (Stoker would be the one to marry her). These are interesting similarities and, in a book about Stoker, well worth noting. Yet Skal spent a large portion of the book focusing on Wilde’s love affairs, Wilde’s court case and time in gaol, Wilde’s relationship with Florence Balcombe and his wife, Constance Holland; and Wilde’s supposed vampirism and physic visitations from beyond the grave. It surprises me that Skal, obviously more interested in the life of Oscar Wilde, did not choose to write this biography on Wilde rather than Stoker.

Even after Stoker’s death (brushed over in a mere paragraph, whereas Wilde’s demise took a page to explain) Skal’s book went on for eighty pages, detailing Florence Stoker’s infatuation with the dead and publically outed Wilde and how she fixed her hopes on could have beens (what would have happened if she had married Wilde, after all?) and sought an interview with Wilde’s surviving son, Vyvyan Holland. Little is said of Stoker’s actual son, Noel, who flits the biography like a ghost, saying nothing and hardly visible.

Most of the book, however, focuses on Dracula, and incidents in Stoker’s childhood that might have inspired this-or-that event or character, about edits, about possible other writers, and, of course, the multitude of movies and plays based off of Dracula. As someone less than interested in vampire movies, this chapter was mostly skimmed—I honestly don’t care about Bela Lugosi. I read this book to learn more about Bram Stoker, but I was foiled in the attempt.

As for scholarship, I was profoundly disappointed that Skal frequently referenced Neil McKenna’s sensationalist and badly researched book The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde as gospel truth, and even more disturbed by his anti-woman bias throughout the book. The first chapter focuses on Bram Stoker “languishing” in women’s clothing (including a picture of Oscar Wilde in women’s garb in his infancy to demonstrate the point). Women’s clothing, Skal insinuates, led to the many men turning to homosexuality—ignoring the fact that it was custom back then, and there are just as many men who spent their toddler years in dresses who turned out to be straight as gay. Clothes do not determine gender identity or sexual attraction, although it can be an indicator of it (but I must say, wearing pants has never made me masculine or a lesbian, so I am not sure why Skal stresses the point about dresses). Unfortunately, this “Bram Stoker as a gay man” plotline was abandoned after Skal made his point about dresses and manliness; Skal insinuates an affair with Hall Caine (“Hommey-beg”) but mostly Stoker appears to live a celibate life until his death, when Skal implies his death was syphilitic. (I will give him, though, that this theory is not new and was not perpetrated by him. I would, however, like to paraphrase House: It’s never syphilis.)

The anti-woman bias continues, especially as Skal shows women suffering under the patriarchy and seems to imply that they are aggressive (blaming Stoker’s mother for many of his neuroses—Freud, anyone?), annoying (a la Henry Irving’s estranged wife), or simply misguided, as in the case of Hester Dowden. Skal never denounces this view, which would have been appreciated by me, his outraged feminist audience who just wanted to read a book about the life of Bram Stoker and got badly researched Oscar Wilde factoids, a history of Dracula in film, and every so often, a glimpse of Stoker himself.

[James Hold · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. Too long, too boring, too much unnecessary detail. The author is too obsessed with Stoker's sexuality.

[carl theaker · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you held this book up to a mirror, there would be no reflection.

Little is known about Bram Stoker’s upbringing, or his personal life as an adult, but this does not stop Author David Skal from holding up a coat hanger, or perhaps I should say crucifix, and filling out a figure, draping clothes and capes over it, bringing Stoker’s life to us….entirely on speculation! Various events are described, books, Stoker, the creator of ‘Dracula’, might have read, people who may have influenced Bram’s thoughts, the stories are interesting, however they all maddeningly conclude with … “ of course We’ll never know !”

It’s all guesswork.

For a livelihood, Stoker was the business manager of the era’s most famous actor, Sir Henry Irving, the best friend of the all time English selling author Hall Caine, so if he were alive today, he would be on every talk show and People magazine cover sharing anecdotes with us. He was also friends with many other authors or personalities of the day. His wife was Oscar Wilde’s first girlfriend. So it’s an interesting contrast, his public life can be easily traced, what went on behind the scenes baffles biographers.

The result is ’Something in the Blood’ takes us on a pop culture adventure through Victorian England as Skal, has to tell us about something, which is the story all around Stoker. The tale includes a sort of biography on Henry Irving, and especially Oscar Wilde, who is a contemporary and most importantly, a much more interesting character than Stoker, as well as who really was Jack the Ripper?

The Victorian era was known for the close friendships that occurred, so close it was customary for the family to destroy all correspondence that might not have reflected well on the family at the time after someone died. So another page filler is that every one of these friendships, or even acquaintances, is closely examined for signs of homosexuality, man, woman or vampire, no one escapes ! Until the usual conclusion : “Well there is no proof, or even evidence, so we’ll never know.”

At almost 600 pages, which includes plenty of illustration and photos, I paused, gee are there bios on Hemingway or Dickens this long ? Skal goes on tell you the fates of ’Dracula’ through the publishing process and the various battles to make it into a movie, a play, then movies, the intersection with Bela Lugosi’s life as well as the many other actors that played Dracula on the stage and on the big screen.

I’ve read ’Dracula’ a few times over the years, and have what I think is a ‘normal’ interest in the subject of Vampires having loved all those monster movies as a kid, so I thought this was a good read, If you want to take this volume on, you also would have to have something in your blood to make it a good read for you.

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was glad to receive this audiobook from the publisher on CD, because using the CD player in my car makes what is for me a long commute that much easier. This book in particular wasn't much of a boon, however; I pass on my audiobooks to my boss, whose commute is twice mine. This one went with the warning that, given the sometimes plodding writing and the near-monotone of the narrator, it might be a driving hazard. I don't think the narrator will literally prove to be a soporific – but then again, this might be a good thing to pop in the CD player on those nights I suffer from insomnia. James Patrick Cronin was not by any means a terrible narrator – but… well. Oh dear.

Knowing next to nothing about Bram Stoker (apart from his appearance in the too-short-lived "Houdini and Doyle"), and despite the book description on LibraryThing, I was a little surprised by the prevalence of the author's concentration on Stoker's sexuality. Gay? Straight? Bisexual? It's a little funny, really, because the answer to any or all of those questions could be yes. Or no. Or maybe. Or "Depends". We don't know. Without the man around to question, we have no way of knowing. Of course, even if we had the man here we might not get any answers without thumbscrews and constant repetition of the song "Easy Street".

For a big chunk of the early part of the book Skal dwells on how children's gender was blurred for a big chunk of the 19th century (and back to the Renaissance), how until the age of seven or eight boys and girls both wore skirts and long ringleted hair and whatnot, with "breeching" – putting boys into breeches, of course – happening around the same time a child would be moved out of the nursery. This obviously had an effect on Bram Stoker's sexuality, along with the fact that he was immobilized for several of his earliest years by some mysterious illness.

And, see, here's the thing. I don't buy his take on all of this. Boys wore dresses up to a certain age; that was the way it was. For everyone, or at least everyone of a certain class and above. It would have been impactful to a boy's psyche or whatever if they diverged from the custom, wouldn't it? From anything I've seen, it wasn't so much that boys were looked at as girls when they were small; boys and girls were simply dressed the same. And after all, no one in the children's spheres would have been looking at them as something unusual because they were small boys wearing dresses, since this was the universally accepted custom. I think I can safely say that millions of boys who wore dresses when little grew up to be psychologically well-adjusted and certain of their sexual preferences.

This book is every bit as much the story of Oscar Wilde as it is of Bram Stoker. I have in the space of listening to it gone from absolutely no association between the two men to hardly being able to think of one without the other. And, too, in its latter half the concentration is almost as much on Henry Irving, who was Stoker's employer and object of worship for decades, as on Stoker himself.

Skal also dwells on some of Stoker's poetry, in which viewpoint is ambiguous. Is he writing from a woman's POV? Is he writing as a gay man? Is it significant? I grew a little annoyed with this part, because – in part – to me it means that the author has never listened to much Irish music. I have listened to a lot of Irish music – and I can't count the number of times I've heard male singers performing songs that tell a woman's story in the first person, and vice versa. It's not quite the same thing as writing something, but growing up on (if you will) androgynous music might well make it something that a young man might try out.

Also … I mean, I'm seriously considering writing a book about Benedict Arnold, and who knows – I might want to couch it in the first person. That doesn't make me a male 18th century Loyalist, or even remotely similar to one.

Or he might have been a deeply closeted gay man writing to a poet who showed every sign of being homosexual. There's no way to know.

I smiled when I heard the following:

And he could hardly be the only literary man in London taken aback when The Picture of Dorian Gray was hauled into court and used against the author. Never before or since has a work of fiction – supernatural or not – been presented as evidence in a nonliterary criminal proceeding. There was a ghostly surreality to the notion that imaginary characters, having no substance beyond the words and ink with which they were constructed, might be called to testify about events in the real world. The idea itself was the stuff of a weird tale.

Because in so many ways this sort of "evidence" is heavily relied upon throughout this book. (It also made me think of how Shakespeare's writing is "called to testify" about who really wrote the plays and poems.) It's not a court of law or a criminal proceeding, but Dracula and all the other brainchildren of both Stoker and Wilde are held up to the light and examined minutely, but only with the lens of looking for hints of their authors' sexual orientation. Flailing about for a way to put it into words, I finally remembered the parable about the blind men and the elephant. Skal, groping within the pages, puts his hand in something wet and sticky and thinks something other than blood: aha, he says, I know what an elephant is now.

It's not that the subject is the concentrated focus of the book; there is no concentrated focus of the book. It's extremely scattershot. Ellen Terry, and Henry Irving's wife, and Oscar Wilde's mother, and the entire history of the Lyceum Theatre, the transcriptionist for Stoker's work, and a good many other people and places and things in Stoker's periphery each get a great deal of attention. It seemed like each CD I slid into the player was half Stoker, half … everything else.

There is a bit about the origins of Dracula, and whether inspiration really was taken from Vlad Tepes or not, and so forth. (Answer, unsurprisingly: maybe.) And - Spoiler Alert: there is no final conclusion reached in the book as to Stoker's orientation, as is to be expected given the entire sparsity of evidence. However, as the narration went on my irritation grew. What passes for evidence for Stoker's homosexuality was … specious. To wit:

- He was dressed as a girl for much of his boyhood, and this marked his outlook.
My complaint: See above.

- He loved Walt Whitman's poetry and wrote the poet a passionate fan letter, including some thought-provoking phrasing.
My complaint: When he first read the poetry and wrote to Whitman he was in his early to mid-twenties. It's not inconceivable that he was experiencing a turbulent period of questioning who and what attracted him – but to my mind it's also not inconceivable that he was just extremely passionate, as people of that age are prone to be. Lord knows I wrote some passionate stuff around then. And it's possible to love Whitman without being a gay man, isn't it? I mean, I'm pretty fond of Uncle Walt, and, as Uhura once said, "sorry – neither".

- After the birth of his son, he and his wife seem to have had a sexless marriage.
My complaint: Well, that's really not so unusual for the period. Florence Balcombe Stoker was a difficult woman, who never quite forgave the universe for letting her marry the mildly famous Stoker instead of the wildly famous (albeit all but openly gay) Oscar Wilde. She was never warm and cuddly at the best of times, with anyone, and physicality apparently troubled her; the whole business of pregnancy was disgusting to her. In a vacuum, it's just as plausible that avoidance of further pregnancies was the reason for avoiding sex as anything else; in fact, on the whole she's more likely the one who nixed sex than Bram. In fact, how do we even know for certain they didn't have sex, all the time? It's not like they blogged about it, after all; this was a time when "private life" lived up to the label.

- He apparently died of syphilis.
My complaint: This is the worst of all. First, there's no concrete evidence that he had syphilis. One of the most common symptoms of syphilis is that syphilis has no common symptoms – it can manifest in all sorts and kinds of ways, which is one of the reasons it comes up so often in historical forensic explorations. Over a hundred years after his death, we have absolutely no way in the world to know for certain without time travel whether he did or did not have it. (And if I were able to travel in time, this question would not be high on my list of Things To Find Out.)

And anyway, say he did have the disease. Apparently a horrifying percentage of the British population had it, male and female. It was, after all, a time when the prevailing attitude was that the wife was for running the household and providing an heir. Sex was to be found elsewhere. And those who weren't wealthy enough (or ballsy enough, so to speak) to keep a mistress went to prostitutes. And the very definition of prostitute means someone who has sex with many people. Any one of those people might infect a prostitute, who would in turn then infect – oh, my search history can get colorful, remind me to clear my browser history – 30-60% of those she (or he) had sex with, and so on. So he could have gotten it from, literally, anyone who had slept with anyone else: male friend; female prostitute; male prostitute; heck, if we want to think creatively he could have gotten it from his wife. Anyone.

It's intensely frustrating that this book says, at the same time, both "this is so" and "we can't possibly know". What with the Victorian tendency to edit their correspondence (i.e., burn anything that might be remotely intriguing to future historians), the Victorian oddness about actually keeping private things private, and the other Victorian tendency toward bowdlerization and euphemism, "we can't possibly know for sure" is true for just about everything. In the end, I don't really feel I "know" Bram Stoker any better than I did when I began this.

What kept popping into my mind as the author pulled this bit or that out of Dracula and Stoker's other writing – and Wilde's, and so many others – was, simply, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar". (Quote, correlating Dracula and Oscar Wilde: "Both depended on the bodies of the young and the vital to procure the fluids that satisfied their unconventional appetites.") There doesn't always have to be an underlying meaning, intentional or not. Another quote, this time from Tolkien: "I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence."

Why can't Dracula just be about a bunch of people trying to kill a vampire?

I received this audiobook from the publisher via LibraryThing for review.

[Jose Lomo Marín]

Mi interés por este libro tuvo mucho más que ver con la admiración que siento hacia el trabajo del traductor Óscar Pálmer Yáñez, que con el propio autor del libro, al que apenas conocía. Pálmer es también el alma mater de Es Pop Ediciones, la editorial responsable de la edición española de Algo en la sangre, y fue el responsable de la versión anotada de Drácula publicada por Valdemar en 2005, donde ya ofrecía unos anexos muy suculentos sobre la vida de Bram Stoker y los vericuetos que rodearon la concepción de la novela de vampiros más popular de la historia. Así que esperaba que esta biografía traducida y publicada por él fuera de primer nivel, y así ha sido. En las 670 páginas de esta edición se resume todo aquello que puede saberse a día de hoy sobre el creador de Drácula, que es menos de lo que se pudiera esperar, debido al carácter discreto del personaje y a ciertas circunstancias familiares. Por otro lado, Stoker escribía mucho, a menudo de forma compulsiva, y nos legó un material muy interesante, aunque se da la circunstancia de que ese material puede resultar incluso más interesante cuanto menos tenía que ver con él mismo, y más con aquello que le rodeaba. Tal vez por esto, el libro tenga mucho más de repaso a la realidad victoriana y ciertos personajes ilustres de la cultura de la época, que de biografía en sentido estricto. Puede sorprender la extensión que se dedica a recorrer la historia de Oscar Wilde, o la del popular actor Henry Irving, entre otros, en comparación con la del biografiado, pero es que no se me ocurre una manera mejor de enfocarlo, siendo Stoker una de esas figuras que hacen su trabajo a la sombra de otros, o en comparación y admiración de aquellos que dejaron realmente una huella en su época. Y es que Stoker consiguió la inmortalidad, en cierto modo, a la sombra de su propia creación, y si no fuera porque a Coppola le dio por añadir su nombre al título de su particular versión cinematográfica en 1992, serían muy pocos los que reconocerían el apellido del autor en relación al título de su novela más eterna. Creo que cualquiera que se sumerja en la lectura de Algo en la sangre con la idea de entender lo que pasaba en el mundo durante la concepción de Drácula, la disfrutará con deleite, mientras quien busque exclusivamente una aproximación absoluta a la figura de Bram Stoker podría sentirse aturdido entre tantos circunloquios. Sea como sea, recomendable, tanto en su fondo como en su forma.

[Jaime · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very disappointed with this book. I got to know more about his parents and acquaintances than Bram Stoker himself. Hard to follow his biography since the author goes all over the place with some not so reputable facts and some assumptions. Was looking forward to read about Bram Stoker life and how he got to create 'Dracula', but very little chapters deals with this topic.

Might need to look other books about him. Very disappointed!

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I'm supposing that "something" was syphilis, since it's pretty clear that's what would eventually kill Stoker. (And Skal tells us that syphilis was a disease that 25% of English men carried in those days.) Anyway, a very unusual biography that probably, given its overwhelming reliance on speculation and numerous digressions that have little to do with the subject, should receive a lower rating. That said, "Something in the Blood" is never less than engaging, as Skal creates a larger context to supply what we don't know about Stoker. If you don't know the man, recreate his world, which was the world of Theatre and the Arts in Dublin and London. It didn't come easily. Stoker started out life confined mostly to his bed with a mysterious illness that lasted 7 years. After that he would grow into formidable athlete. He also loved the theatre, and would moonlight as a critic, while working a day job as a civil servant in Dublin. His enthusiastic reviews for the performances of Henry Irving caught that actor's eye. He would later (curiously) offer Stoker, who had no previous experience, the job as Irving's manager when Irving took over London's Lyceum Theatre. Stoker would hold that job until Irving's death 27 years later. Stoker would marry the beautiful Florence Bascombe, who had been Oscar Wilde's supposed love interest. But who was the real Bram Stoker? Irving spends much time speculating on the nature of Stoker's sexual nature, but it mostly just produces smoke rather than fire. However, there is a fascinating long letter that Stoker would send to Walt Whitman. Skal informs the reader that this is the first time it has ever been printed in full. In it Stoker, in a roundabout way, sees himself as a kindred soul to Whitman. It's a touching letter, even more so when you find out that Stoker didn't mail it until years later. So it's also sad, because when he finally did send a letter, Stoker's life had become more buttoned-down. Stoker would eventually meet Whitman, but by that time Whitman's health was a mess.

Speaking of messes, there is Oscar Wilde, who Stoker knew well. His tragic fate is recorded here in detail (it was a rather small universe). And then there's Dracula, a book that took Stoker 7 years to write. Skal even suggests Stoker may have had editorial help in order to complete it. Why 7 years? Stoker was always working, so finding time to actually research and write the book was difficult. There's nothing deep about the Dracula itself, Stoker simply wanted to make money, but Dracula would turn out to be one those rare works that would take on life of its own, one that would extend beyond the actual text of the novel. Stoker always wrote, but in the case of Dracula Stoker probably had an eye on Irving's health, and what life would be like once theatre managing days came to a close. The final fourth of the book is spent on the various Draculas (stage and screen) that followed Stoker's passing. Skal spends much of the book strongly suggesting that Stoker was possibly a closeted homosexual. But who knows? Stoker, like many famous people in those days, destroyed correspondence, so it's hard to get a handle on his various relationships. I found Stoker's sudden decline and death to be a sad one. Still, Stoker comes across as a mostly hard-working, likable man, but he never gets much beyond an unknowable cipher, especially when compared to his great literary creation.

[S. Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Dracula never ends. Not in my life, or in yours.” writes David Skal in the opening pages of Something in the Blood. I can attest to that. I have been obsessed with the story of Dracula ever since I stole the book from my mother’s dusty bookshelf when I was but ten years old. It is a story that I hold sacred and there is nothing that will ever compare; it is timeless and as much a part of me as my own blood.
I cannot help but to think of this vampiric tale, and by association, the man who wrote it, quite fondly. Over the years I’ve attempted reading other titles by Bram Stoker, with varying degrees of success, but it is the tale of Dracula by which I measure all his other stories, and indeed, all stories, period.

However fond I am of the creator of this iconic bloodsucking fiend, I am, however, somewhat conflicted about Something in the Blood. As one reviewer succinctly put it: “…there’s a Bram Stoker-shaped hole at the heart of the book.” And wow, is there ever. The book’s author delves into the lives of everyone who has ever touched Bram Stoker, no matter how obscure or insignificant. And though neither obscure nor insignificant, I would venture to say that at least half this book is about Oscar Wilde (and his alleged syphilis! Whee!)

”I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is.” Thusly is Jonathan Harker greeted by the Count after his first nights’ stay in the castle. And so, we, too, learn much of the changes and deaths and rushes of humanity that occurred during the course of Bram Stoker’s life. After the final page, I can say with some amount of authority that I have a pretty good picture of the time during which Stoker lived, and the history and culture of that time, as well as the people with whom he chose to surround himself and those by whom he was inspired. And perhaps having learned these things, it may be interesting to give Dracula another read? I may notice things that had before entirely escaped my attention!

David Skal writes with a wry humor that serves as a skillful punctuation to the information and stories he shares, but never overwhelms the reader with it. He lets the facts and data and anecdotes tell the story. It’s a lengthy, rambling story with plenty of digressions, but if you are a fan of Bram Stoker’s stories, especially, of course, Dracula, then I think you will enjoy learning the the story of the man who wrote it, and the life that he lived.

[Bryan Ball · Rating 5 out of 5]

 

Bram Stoker

 A number of years ago, I read "Death Makes a Holiday" by David J. Skal. A cultural historian, critic and writer, Skal has made something of a career writing in an academic but immensely readable way about the horror genre, and the holiday and real life people that surround the world of the macabre. I loved and devoured "Death Makes a Holiday," a gripping history of the holiday we now know and celebrate as Halloween, and I always wanted to go back to his writing sooner. I finally did this summer, and I so regret not doing so sooner. 

"Dracula The Definitive Edition" with illustrations by Edward Gorey 

 I have loved "Dracula" since before I read the novel. Horror, the macabre, and scary stories that bump in the night have intrigued me from my earliest memories, and I was always drawn to the blood sucking count from Transylvania. I first read Bram Stoker's 1897 novel in the seventh grade, for a book report assignment in which we had total freedom to read any (approved, though not held to rigorous standards) book. I remember laying in my bed reading through the words and happenings and Jonathan Harker's travels and the Count holding him captive and the vampire brides and the nighttime sea voyages and the graveyard by the sea and Carfax Abbey and Mine and Lucy and Dr. Van Helsing. I knew I was not understanding everything I read, but what I read I loved. Count Dracula has become a cultural legend, eternally living in countless books, films, television programs and beyond, at a level few other fictional characters have. I've always been interested in Bram Stoker, the monster's creator, but knew precious little of his life. I picked up David J. Skal's massive "Something in the Blood" this summer, and instantly fell into its mesmeric, almost vampiric spell. And it is absolutely one of the best biographies I've ever read.

Whitby, North Yorkshire, England; inspiration for "Dracula" 

 This book is many things. A biography of Bram Stoker. A meticulously researched study of the writer's life, giving full social, political and cultural context of his time. And a studied look at how the novel lived on after Stoker's death, and it's journey into stage and screen adaptations-- and beyond. From the early chapters were Skal details the upbringing of his parents and the birth and childhood of Stoker-- as he recounts amaizng histories of plagues and burial practices and the literature young Bram would have had access to and read-- I knew this was something special. 

Bela Lugosi as Dracula in Universal Studio's 1931 film 

     As someone who considered themselves a student of history, who works often in the field of genealogy, I as greatly sympathetic to the historian's dilemma; how to tell history, what is known, by accurately retelling the facts and responsibly presenting informed hypotheses when appropriate, and when details are lacking. This is not an easy task, but it is one that Skal balances beautifully. In this book, we are told the facts of Bram's life; his family, his mother, Florence the woman he would later marry, and a nearly unbelievable cast of characters that include the major artists of his time such as Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde. Many times of his years, facts are scarce, but Skal presents them, and the possibilities, probabilities and the fact that we often may never know the truth for certain in a masterful way. 

Frances Balcombe, as drawn by Oscar Wilde

 This is very much the case when it comes to Stoker's wife, Florence, and his reported sexuality. Much of the correspondence between Florence and her former suitor, Oscar Wilde, is lost to history, but what remains offers endlessly interesting possibilities about the nature of their relationship. Likewise, when it comes to Stoker's much rumored sexuality, there is a plethora of lines to read between. The letters young Bram writes to Walt Whitman after reading his work, on male love, reads, even with the most conservative of caution to consider the time they were written in, like someone coming out of the closet. One can only wonder what Whitman and Stoker discussed when the met at multiple points during the American tours of the Lyceum theater Stoker; though, of course, we'll never know. 

Count Dracula and Jonathan Harker in BBC One and Netflix's "Dracula" (2020)

 We will also never know the true nature of Stoker's decades long friendship with the writer Hall Caine. Many of Stoker's letters to Caine appear to have been lost (perhaps even discarded by Florence), but it begs thought exactly how deep the two men's relationship was (and the man who Stoker famously dedicated "Dracula" to.) This is especially interesting when the homosexual subtext in the novel is examined; the lusting Count Dracula has for Jonathan Harker, and the fear of that forbidden. Gender and sexual variance is a theme explored by Stoker not just in "Dracula," but in numerous others of his fiction works, and the examination of these issues, as well as race and culture, are discussed at length in the book and never fail to be anything but engrossing. 

Hall Caine

 Stoker's novel, as Skal points out at length, has endured because "Dracula" plays out many of humanity's most enduring issues and fears; life and death and triumphing over death, religion, the Other and fears of what is not us; the fear behind romance and seduction. Bram Stoker wrote a novel, well over 100 years ago, that masterfully explores these themes-- all while being a tremendously entertaining, satisfying and frightening read. 

Henry Irving and Bram Stoker

     While much of Stoker's life will likely forever be lost to history, the story of the sickly boy who loved stories, and grew up into athletic intellectual who found himself in the work and friendship of writers like Walt Whitman, appears, the stuff itself of great fiction. Stoker, this man who made a living working his life for actor Henry Irving and his theater (a man who Stoker idolized, but often treated him like little more than a servant beneath his celebrity; a servant who was, in the spare time he had, writing work that make him and his work immortal) lived an uncanny and endlessly interesting life, and Skal's brilliant book is a-- while a commitment-- a must read for any serious fan of "Dracula" and the all the novel and character have spawned in popular culture.  

 

Bram Stoker, 1882.

[César · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detrás del vampirismo está la certeza de que, por muchos siglos de existencia que arrastres, por muchos poderes excepcionales que poseas, siempre necesitarás del otro. Por mucho que uno se eleve sobre la condición mortal, el prójimo es insoslayable, imprescindible, recipiente que contiene la esencia sin la cual no hay más opción que el polvo.

El autor traza una semblanza de la victoriana Inglaterra convirtiendo a Stoker en hilo conductor y galvanizador de la atmósfera de su tiempo. Por estas páginas asoma el folclore y la religión, el darwinismo, la homosexualidad, la sífilis, la hambruna, la dramaturgia, el mesmerismo y otras pseudociencias que encontraron abono en la mente asediada por un materialismo aplastante.

Skal une los puntos entre Stoker, Hall Caine, Henry Irving y Walt Whitman, sobre cuyo mapa de relaciones se insinúa el amor viril como motor de las mismas. Oscar Wilde es el secundario de lujo en esta narración, convertido en mártir de la causa, chivo expiatorio con el que acallar el escándalo social de quien no quiso amar en la sombra.

Y, prueba de la existencia de los vampiros, me veo obligado a interrumpir de abrupta manera esta modesta reseña. Me asalta un grupo de ellos, ávidos de congéneres en los que beber.

[Berna Labourdette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una estupenda biografía de Bram Stoker, con muchísima información no sólo de su vida y la ya conocida relación con Henry Irving (su Drácula personal) sino también con una oblicua relación con Oscar Wilde, quien tendría muchas similitudes con el periplo de Drácula en la novela. Mucha información inédita y una tarea titánica de abordar temas como la sífilis en la época victoriana, la posible homosexualidad de Stoker, influencia de Egipto y las epidemias de cólera de la época, entre otras. Excelente. 

Uno de los dos mejores libros que leí el 2019.

[Zulfiya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked all the ramblings of the book, whether they are about sex and gender, Victorian morality, psychiatry, and the nature of art.

The book gets three stars because some of these ramblings went way too far and had hardly anything to do with the literary motifs of Dracula. They were entertaining and engaging, but I always wondered if they were pertinent to the subject matter.

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A needless chapter on Oscar Wilde that's barely connected to Stoker and a chapter on what happened to the story of Dracula after Stoker's death extended this bio more than it can stand. Stoker is lost to view for long stretches, though this is partly because he left so few original papers. The writing style is serviceable.

[Patrick Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew nothing about Bram Stoker's biography, but the scope of his career, his interactions with fellow literary luminaries, and his possible secret life was absolutely shocking! What a neat story.

[Sophia Alexis Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

A ton of new information (and super helpful toward my thesis)
I'm not one to enjoy biographies but the audio for this made it a nice reading time!
3.5 stars out of 5

[Rodrigo Tello · Rating 2 out of 5]

Se me quedó algo atragantado. Cansa un poco que el autor continuamente vuelva al tema de la supuesta homosexualidad de Stoker, una y otra vez, y deje de lado los temas que atañen estrictamente a la obra. Tiene algunos pasajes interesantes pero en resumen, el libro se arruina por una monotonía que encuentro exasperante.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pros:
- lots of niche facts about queerness in the 1800s
- a broad picture of the time in which Bram Stoker lived
- part of the above, but Skal does a great job of filling out Bram Stoker's personal life with who he interacted with, what he was influenced by, the pop culture of the time, etc.
- the writing is very minimalistic in the sense that the author doesn't belabor the text itself and lets the content speak more so than the prose
- letters in their entirety! Okay this might just be a me thing but I HATE when an author references a letter that someone wrote and then summarizes or quotes it briefly. We get Bram Stoker's letter to Walt Whitman in its entirety, only broken up briefly by the author to add some context. Similar letters appear scattered throughout the book giving the reader a wonderful sense of how Stoker comported himself in life

Cons:
- sometimes the net is cast too wide, especially for readers already familiar with the Victorian period, and every period feature (ex: Christmas pantomimes) is described in detail and at length. This is a great feature for someone who has no working knowledge of popular culture in Victorian Dublin and London, but as I have read a bit within the periods, at time this dragged the narrative heavily
- the last chapter is, in my opinion, unnecessary. It covers the wide range of adaptations and how and why they were picked up or dropped and thoughts on why they deviated from the original text, but quite frankly, it was the least interesting because it felt like things that you could just understand from knowing how theatrical productions and movies work. I sped read through this and it still felt far too long
- it is a long book and it feels like it
- Stoker himself feels like an afterthought (which he intended himself to be) with more said about the personalities that he surrounded himself with, than who he himself was

Overall:
I (mostly) enjoyed my time reading this, and a lot of the footnotes were my favorite parts. Honestly, just skip the last chapter and this will be a fascinating deep dive into Bram Stoker's world, but don't expect to find out who Stoker is himself, because even in almost 600 pages his personality is buried beneath the weight of those he surrounded himself with

3.5/5

[Bailey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I understand that its difficult to write a biography on Stoker since there is little biographical information on him but rather attached to others. And I think analyzing Stoker's possibly ambiguous sexuality along with its connections to Dracula and the ideas of sexuality in the 19th/20th century was not a bad idea. The links of vampirism and anxieties of sexuality can't be separated. But to frame all of Stoker's sexual fluidity through Freudian psycho-sexual analysis is outdated and a little gross. Why are we blaming someone's possible attractions on their mother? That idea has no basis in reality.

I also think there was too much detail on the life of Oscar Wilde. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to do more research on his life. But Wilde's death received a whole described chapter while Stoker and his wife Florence got about three sentences each.

I appreciated the details of the Victorian world wrapped around Stoker's life, it helped paint a realistic picture of the 19th/20th century world. Both the dark gothic aspects and the real horrors that affected marginalized people. In particular the horrible criminalization of homosexuality was heartbreaking. But that did not mean I appreciated the direct quotation of slurs (and the N word read aloud...)

Ultimately, this book had the right idea, with very informative research on what is known in Stoker's life. But Skal's scraping of the bones of Stoker's private life in making assumptions of sexuality with a Freudian lens made the execution weak.

[Vakaris the Nosferatu · Rating 3 out of 5]

all reviews in one place:
night mode reading ;
skaitom nakties rezimu

About the Book: David J. Skal attempts to tell us about Bram Stoker’s life, his bed-ridden childhood and an illness of seven years that mysteriously went away. Of his a tad odd family, his work in literature and theater. How vampire Count Dracula came to be, and what he became, evolving through the years, outliving the author himself.

My Opinion: This was supposed to be a biography of Bram Stoker with great interest in Dracula, as title would imply. Instead it was a biography of any and all, sometimes in very great long-winded detail, gothic horror author of Stoker’s times. Sometimes the connection was clear, other times we got to read of a friend’s wife and her life after her husband has died. It’s interesting if you’re curious of how one was supposed to navigate the nuances of literature in Victorian England to not end up in jail. But if you’re just here for Bram, this is too heavy of a book to read.

The book is spread too wide to only have Bram Stoker’s face on the cover. I give it a 3 out of 5 for what was a very heavy and hefty read. If you just want Bram Stoker’s biography, read the authors word at the back of “Dracul” book by Dacre Stoker.

[Scott Delgado · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is documented that Bram Stoker was a very private man and there isn't much information on him. This is proven true by this long book which is very short on Stoker. I would say about 45% of this book is about Bram Stoker. Maybe 40% of this book is about OSCAR WILDE. The other 15% consist of information on Henry Irving, Hall Caine, and the various Dracula films made after the death of the supposed subject of this book.

The book is well-written. It's just that for a large book with a picture of Bram Stoker on the cover as well as the words "The man who wrote Dracula," I expected the book to be about Bram Stoker. What the books gives is some details about Stoker, some speculation, and then a lot of information about people who were associated with Stoker. The book was better than the Milicent Patrick biography,
"The Lady From The Black Lagoon," but it suffered some of the same issues--a biography that contains no more information on the actual person than a long Wikipedia page.

Since Bram Stoker was a private man, this may be the best biography there is on the man. So for that, have it. Just know that you will have to sift through a lot of information about others to get details about the author. I think I learned more about Oscar Wilde than I did Stoker. I like Oscar Wilde, but I feel as if I was tricked into reading a book about him when my intention was to read about someone else.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think this was the best book for audio, but it was fascinating. I have an annotated Dracula and I think this book is a great companion to it. I want to get this in print and keep it with my annotated Dracula.

Let's face it, what we know about Bram Stoker, we know. This isn't a detailed life story of Bram Stoker as much as an annotated bio of his life. Piecing together things we know, things he or others wrote, piecing together what we know about Oscar Wilde and what was happening then. It is a fascinating portrayal of the times of Bram Stoker and how it connects to what we know about him. It also is a slice of LGBTQ+ history and how the community lived in mid to late 1800 Ireland.

Then, ultimately how all of this created what we read in Dracula. All of the influence, references, imagery, etc. I'm taking a star away from the audio. It was not a great audiobook. It only kept me because of my intense interest but I desperately wanted to add a flag to pages and consult my annotated Dracula.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is rambling and speculative, and not really a proper biography, but I think Skal has to some extent earned the privilege of writing and publishing whatever he wants to about Dracula, at this point in his career. And if he wants to do is speculate about Stoker's potential romance with Hall Caine (and the hypothetical love letters which Florence Stoker could have burned, if they had existed - ooh, do tell us more about your historical RPF story! I would read that), then so be it.

A lot of the theorizing comes very much as a stretch, and I don't think the weight Skal gives to Wilde as a shadow figure in Stoker's consciousness can really quite be warranted (this biography gives a lot more time to Wilde than to Irving), but Skal also is indeed dealing with some new materials to which we haven't otherwise had access, and that's fun. In all the theorizing, Skal's commonsensical voice comes through, as does his delight in trivia and connections. If someone likes Skal's other history-cultural criticism books, I would say this is an enjoyable addition, but it doesn't have anywhere near the focus and exuberance of one of his earlier works like Hollywood Gothic.

[Brenton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pretty well-written and engaging biography of Bram Stoker. Certainly, David J. Skal is an authority on the subject. This book is a little long and the points were there will inevitably be repetitions feel like copy and paste moments rather than new interpretations of the same material. There is a lot more about Stoker's friends and their lives then one might expect. We actually don't know very much about Bram Stoker and his interior life, and so you will get about as much as possible in this book. However, because so much of it is conjecture , I do wish the author had been more careful about laying out what his method was for making the connections that he did make.

[Alba · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sería un 4'5 en realidad.
Me pareció muy interesante y tiene un montón de curiosidades, no solo de Bram Stoker y su entorno, también de como era la sociedad.
Está escrito de una forma muy dinámica, y que tenga las notas a pie de página y algunas imagenes a lo largo del libro ayudan mucho a la lectura, aunque es cierto que algunas partes se me hicieron un poco pesadas.
Una cosa que me sorprendió fue la importancia de otros personajes de la época que hay en el libro, pero que tienen cierta influencia en como llegó Stoker a crear un personaje como Drácula.
En general fue una lectura muy entretenida y con la que puedes apreciar cuáles eran los mitos y verdades detrás de la historia de Drácula.