Nosferatu the Vampire

by Paul Monette

A daring modern version of the classic story. Werner Herzog's Dracula is not the one you remember, but it's one you will never forget.

Nosferatu is Count Dracula:the pale, wraithlike figure with the seeking mouth. Lucy Harker if the alluring and courageous woman who realizes, in mounting terror, that the only way to defeat a vampyre is to giver of herself, totally, from darkness to dawn.

Love and innocence, sensuality and death, passion and sacrifice - all are explored with hypnotic intensity in NOSFERATU, a major event of world cinema, and now, with Paul Monette's tingling novel, a literary event as well.

Genres: Horror, Vampires, Fiction, Fantasy

172 pages, Paperback

First published March 28, 1979

About the author

Online Guide to Paul Monette's papers at UCLA:
http://findaid.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/...

In novels, poetry, and a memoir, Paul Monette wrote about gay men striving to fashion personal identities and, later, coping with the loss of a lover to AIDS.

Monette was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1945. He was educated at prestigious schools in New England: Phillips Andover Academy and Yale University, where he received his B.A. in 1967. He began his prolific writing career soon after graduating from Yale. For eight years, he wrote poetry exclusively.

After coming out in his late twenties, he met Roger Horwitz, who was to be his lover for over twenty years. Also during his late twenties, he grew disillusioned with poetry and shifted his interest to the novel, not to return to poetry until the 1980s.

In 1977, Monette and Horwitz moved to Los Angeles. Once in Hollywood, Monette wrote a number of screenplays that, though never produced, provided him the means to be a writer. Monette published four novels between 1978 and 1982. These novels were enormously successful and established his career as a writer of popular fiction. He also wrote several novelizations of films.

Monette's life changed dramatically when Roger Horwitz was diagnosed with AIDS in the early 1980s. After Horwitz's death in 1986, Monette wrote extensively about the years of their battles with AIDS (Borrowed Time, 1988) and how he himself coped with losing a lover to AIDS (Love Alone, 1988). These works are two of the most powerful accounts written about AIDS thus far.

Their publication catapulted Monette into the national arena as a spokesperson for AIDS. Along with fellow writer Larry Kramer, he emerged as one of the most familiar and outspoken AIDS activists of our time. Since very few out gay men have had the opportunity to address national issues in mainstream venues at any previous time in U.S. history, Monette's high-visibility profile was one of his most significant achievements. He went on to write two important novels about AIDS, Afterlife (1990) and Halfway Home (1991). He himself died of AIDS-related complications in 1995.

In his fiction, Monette unabashedly depicts gay men who strive to fashion personal identities that lead them to love, friendship, and self-fulfillment. His early novels generally begin where most coming-out novels end; his protagonists have already come to terms with their sexuality long before the novels' projected time frames. Monette has his characters negotiate family relations, societal expectations, and personal desires in light of their decisions to lead lives as openly gay men.

Two major motifs emerge in these novels: the spark of gay male relations and the dynamic alternative family structures that gay men create for themselves within a homophobic society. These themes are placed in literary forms that rely on the structures of romance, melodrama, and fantasy.

Monette's finest novel, Afterlife, combines the elements of traditional comedy and the resistance novel; it is the first gay novel written about AIDS that fuses personal love interests with political activism.

Monette's harrowing collection of deeply personal poems, Love Alone: 18 Elegies for Rog, conveys both the horrors of AIDS and the inconsolable pain of love lost. The elegies are an invaluable companion to Borrowed Time.

Before the publication and success of his memoir, Becoming a Man, it seemed inevitable that Monette would be remembered most for his writings on AIDS. Becoming a Man, however, focuses on the dilemmas of growing up gay. It provides at once an unsparing account of the nightmare of the closet and a moving and often humorous depiction of the struggle to come out. Becoming a Man won the 1992 National Book Award for nonfiction, a historical moment in the history

Reviews

[Grady Hendrix · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1979, overheated German director, Werner Herzog, decided to remake 1922′s NOSFERATU, collaborating (for the second time) with possibly insane actor Klaus Kinski and 11,000 rats. Realizing that a movie this over-the-top required a novelization full of heaving bosoms, fevered brows and bulging breeches, Avon Books hired Paul Monette, winner of the National Book Award, to write the novelization.

Monette's novel is full of overheated prose of the highest order, baked in the oven of hysteria until its nouns and verbs are a thick, bubbling crust barely concealing an overflowing fever pie whose adjectives and metaphors ooze out and run down its side. After reading Nosferatu you realize that Monette was the only writer who could have novelized Ken Russell’s films like The Devils and Tommy. Instead, we live in an inherently unfair universe in which he only went on to novelize the ultra-macho MIDNIGHT RUN, PREDATOR and SCARFACE.

I’m not sure who the target audience was for this sweaty, clammy-palmed adaptation of a European art horror sexual shocker flick. Given that some of Avon’s bestselling paperbacks of the time were The Thorn Birds, Jonathan Livingston Seagull and I’m OK – You’re OK, you figure they must have regretted missing the segment of the market that wanted twisted, Bavarian sex-horror dripping with metaphors and freaky body symbolism. But, apparently, however, Avon was thrilled with Monette’s novelization because three years later they published his horror novel, Lightfall, also about a woman coming under a strange, evil (and possibly very horny) influence.

Read more:
http://www.gradyhendrix.com/novelized...

[Michael Sorbello · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jonathan Harker is sent away to Count Dracula's castle to sell him a house in Virna, where he lives. But Count Dracula is a vampire, an undead ghoul living off men's blood. Inspired by a photograph of Lucy Harker, Jonathan's wife, Dracula moves to Virna, bringing with him death and plague.

Rich with delightful gothic imagery and atmospheric horror, but honestly ends up feeling like the footnotes version of Bram Stoker's Dracula. It doesn't really add anything unique or interesting to the original story (with the exception of the ending which was probably my favorite thing about the book,) but other than that it only strips away most of the things that made it a classic. Dracula has no character here, he's reduced to a one-dimensional monster that doesn't feel nearly as powerful, charming or threatening. Mina (called Lucy in this version,) is reduced to a fainting damsel when she was the strongest character that held the group together in the original story. Van Helsing does absolutely nothing of importance in this version of the story which is completely uncharacteristic for him. The only person that felt in character was the lovable Dr. Renfield, he was as wacky and hilarious as always.

Much like the movies, the only thing it has going for it in my opinion is the glamorous gothic cinematography and the haunting atmosphere. It's lacking in character, story and personality. There's no sense of danger or urgency. There's no drama, tragedy or building terror. I understand the appeal of Nosferatu, but I honestly can't see why anyone would choose it over the original gothic-horror masterpiece created by Bram Stoker.

***

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[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an adaptation of Herzog's 1979 remake of the classic 'Nosferatu'. Novelizations of movies rarely work, but when they do, they can sometimes outshine the films they're intended to publicize. This is one of those. Monette plays with the language in surprising ways, portraying a lush and sensual vampire reality that, frankly, deviates from the screenplay, adding elements of the original silent classic and some new surreal touches, making for a blend of romance, horror and just plain weirdness. This Dracula is a living symbol of the plague: a rodentlike, hairless cadaver clinging to life by murdering the innocent. He is a monster, a lonely man who has forgotten how to be human. His very presence causes suicide and madness and decay, and he is bearing down on a provincial German village, with a pyramid of coffins full of sour earth and diseased rats. It's not for everyone, but I think it manages to top the over-the-top Anne Rice quite nicely. My only regret is that they used Stoker's original character names, when the story is so far removed from his Dracula that even the similarities stand out by their very oddness. Disturbing, melodramatic stuff, maybe a bit excessive, but it really sucks you in (pun intended) to the inevitable tragedy. Yes, there is a resolution, but you get the sense that there will be no real survivors - it's just a matter of time.

[kumori]

someone should also novelize Robert Egger's Nosferatu, just saying

[Marti Martinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, Monette. I stated that the last book I just read, Taking Care of Mrs. Carrol, was signed by the author at a book signing at the venerable Lambda Rising in DC. When I got to the desk and handed him the book, I winked and said, "I really wish I could have brought my old copy of Nosferatu instead of being forced to buy a new book!" He put his head back and laughed, and recounted the fact he wrote it under contract in a tight time schedule. He got misty about his deceased lover and told me he was typing furiously and his lover put a hand on his shoulder; Paul said he turned his head to look and his lover was wearing plastic vampire teeth!

Now to the review. I must, right away, agree with the reviewer who called this book "lush". With descriptions, Monette was sonorous in sound, tactile in touch, dazzling in sight, succulent in taste, and redolent in smell. Everything was seen in my mind's eye.....and it was decades before I saw the Herzog remake of the movie. The dialog is sometimes melodramatic; they were in 1850's Germany. (I read The Sorrows of Young Werther; a LOT worse!) Finally having seen the flick --which I also enjoyed, yay for Bruno Ganz!-- I can say they are pretty much faithful to each other. The book is actually eerie and tense in some spots, just as is the film. The only author who has terrified me is John Saul, but Nosferatu is NOT that kind of book. I recommend BOTH the Monette book and the Herzog film.

This is another summer beach or poolside read with a nice strawberry margarita, or a late autumn read.....in a power outage.....at dusk.....under a blanket.....with candles.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel based on Werner Herzog's remake of the classic silent movie by Murnau, and a masterpiece in its own right.

[Eli Bishop · Rating 3 out of 5]

So it turns out there's a novelization of Werner Herzog's 1979 film based on F.W. Murnau's 1922 film loosely based on Dracula. Both of those movies are brilliant, and it's no surprise that the book isn't, since novelizations are produced for strictly commercial reasons—and this particular movie has fairly little in the way of dialogue or plot, it's all about the tone and the performances, so any attempt to pad it out to book length can't help looking like just that: padding. No one really wanted to make this book, and probably few people wanted to read it.

However, there are plenty of writers who could've approached this gig as a straightforward exercise in "Describe what happens in the movie, and make up some extra stuff of the same kind, plus maybe some things the director didn't have the budget for." Paul Monette doesn't exactly do that. There's certainly plenty of excess verbiage in a faux-19th-century style, as he describes this German town and various details of the characters' backgrounds that don't really matter but make it seem more like a novel; yet you get the sense that there's a point of view there, and every so often a genuinely good and surprising sentence will show up, and it's an effort he wasn't required to make, he just felt a little more inspired right then. My favorite of these is when Lucy Harker (the most pure-hearted woman in the world) decides she's not at any risk of losing her soul, because to be a vampire you need "a cast of mind she simply didn't possess—a sense of secrecy and guilt, of longing without a name, of terror to live in time." There are things going on in that ambiguous and allusive sentence that are both perfectly appropriate for the story and also clearly the work of a queer writer who had been closeted until just a few years earlier. At such times you can see the author briefly imagining what his own supernatural novel might be like, if he wrote one.

While he clearly hasn't seen the film—these books are usually based on early script drafts, and the plot is the same in this case, but this more ferocious characterization of Dracula has nothing in common with Klaus Kinski's strikingly sad performance—Monette gets at some of the same themes that I think Herzog had in mind, so there's some imagery about nature being out of balance, and some dry satire of the conformist townspeople, and a clear sense that what really seals Jonathan Harker's fate is just wanting a little more money. So anyone expecting an action-packed horror story with some kind of romance angle (which, by the way, the back cover copy tries to play up by totally giving away the ending) will be confused and disappointed, which is also true of the film, and in that sense mission accomplished! Monette also seems to know the Murnau film and throws in some nice details from that, like how Dracula's handwriting is just a bunch of unintelligible symbols; or maybe Herzog had that in the script and cut it, I don't know.

I haven't read Monette's later work, the stuff he's known for, which only started after his partner's death and his own illness. Apparently he didn't like any of his earlier books, not the more personal novels and I'm sure not the four novelizations he wrote for 20th Century Fox and Universal: this, and Scarface, and the SF/action Schwarzenegger vehicle Predator (read this review), and the cop comedy Midnight Run—all totally unsuited to [my impression of] his style and concerns, but I presume the main criteria for authors of these things are "Tells a story, doesn't need a lot of copyediting, turns in the job on time." I can't imagine how he would've approached Nosferatu—with its apocalyptic scenes of a community being destroyed by a semi-supernatural plague, presided over by an ancient demented aristocrat and the mad businessman who serves him—if he'd written it a few years later in the time of AIDS and Reaganism. But presumably this book helped him to pay the rent in 1979 and I'm fine with that.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the novel Dracula to unauthorized movie adaptation, to a 1979 remake with the Dracula names reinstated due to lapse of copyright and then back to a novel. I find the mere existence of this novelization so ridiculous that of course I had to read it.

It's OK. With the 1979 movie being light on dialog with the location shooting being one of the biggest features of the film author Paul Monette had a lot of blanks to fill in. A lot of it I found interesting like the inner thoughts of Dracula and an expanded look at the devastation brought to Wismar by the plague rats. Monette also fleshed out the town of Wismar itself and in the process made the townspeople thoroughly unlikeable. So much so that it made me think of Peter Benchley's Jaws where you end up half rooting for the shark because all the characters kinda suck. If the uptight citizens of Wismar weren't ravaged by the plague it looked like they were a few years away from turning into the town from Hot Fuzz.

[Jason Kron · Rating 4 out of 5]

The language was a little flowery for my taste, but it was still very, very good.

[Brent · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this made me scream in my head, "Why not just read the Stoker version?!?". This version lacked the passion, desperation and despondency of the original. It wasn't until at the very end that any shock was produced by the horrific event of which should be a Gothic romance.

[Carmella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lushly written, entertaining treat.

[Avis F. · Rating 3 out of 5]

i thought i was placing a hold on the movie. turned out it was the book. the book was good overall. very vampirey
on a side note: the houston public library needs to update their app

[Joshy p · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creepy and fucked up. Some passages went on a little too long but an enjoyable read with some nice writing. There was also some really fucking vivid and powerful scenes. The boat full of rats travelling to wismar and the doctor walking through the house with the stake were two of my fav.
Just eeks out a 4 star rating. Probably because for a book based on a screenplay is it way better written than it has any right to be. Dope.

[MARIOS · Rating 5 out of 5]

A haunting and poetic retelling of the Dracula myth, filled with eerie atmosphere and emotional depth. Paul Monette captures the tragic beauty of Herzog’s vision, transforming it into a literary experience. A dark, dreamlike tale of love, sacrifice, and horror that lingers long after the final page.

[Gr1972 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 out of 5

[Kirby · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's the novelization of a screenplay of a remake of an unlicensed film adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula!

That is all.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because of a book recommendation. I found it to be uninspired, and dragged a bit. Was that because I already knew the story? Don't know.

[bluetyson]

isbn,original

[Beauregard Shagnasty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written horror adaptation.