I am — Dracula

Beginning a Halloween theme for the remainder of the month, today’s book is An Illustrated History of the Horror Film, by Carlos Clarens.  Softcover 8th printing published 1979 by Paragon Books.  Includes 48 pages of black-and-white photos, and the Cast and Credits of more than 300 horror films.

The author, well known to film buffs as an original and cogent critic, brings his encyclopedic knowledge of films and film makers to this outstanding history and analysis of the horror film.  Whether discussing the erotic aspects of King Kong, examining the works of Val Lewton, contrasting the director’s attitude toward the monster in Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein, … or comparing the various versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Mr. Clarens entertains as he enlightens.  His fascinating study of a popular genre explains both the genre and its popularity. — from back cover.

Dracula (75th Anniversary Edition) (Universal Legacy Series)

From Clarens’s discussion of Dracula:

If Dracula, the film, has retained any power to impress after thirty-five years of repeated showings, it is due in the main to [Bela] Lugosi himself.  It is useless to debate whether he was a good actor or not: Lugosi was Dracula: the actor’s identification with the part is complete.  He may not conform to the [Bram] Stoker description (as does John Carradine, for example), but he left an indelible mark on the role and, consequently, on the horror film as well.  Where [Lon] Chaney remained human and pathetic, Lugosi appeared totally evil.  As Count Dracula, he neither asked for nor needed the audience’s sympathy.  Even Lugosi’s nonvillain roles he imbued with malevolence, as in The Black Cat and The Invisible Ray.  To other roles — mad scientist, necromancer, monster, or mere red herring — he brought a kind of corn-ball, demented poetry and total conviction.  At the height of his popularity, he received as many letters as any romantic screen idol, 97 per cent of which, he announced to the press in 1935, came from women.  Quite effective too was Lugosi’s mellifluous, Hungarian-accented voice, which helped create a barrier of unfamiliarity (and something too ambiguous to be charm) that was as effective in its way as Chaney’s doleful silence before the Sound Era.  There is a world of difference between Christopher Lee‘s hoary, modern-English introduction of himself (in the British remake) and Lugosi’s ominous, remote “I am — Dracula.”  Lee may indeed be the better actor but Lugosi pretty permanently claims the part.  The movies do not often bring about such happy matches. — from The Illustrated History of the Horror Film, by Carlos Clarens (p. 62)

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Also currently in stock at BrainiacBooks.com:

The Independent Film and Video Monthly, May 1998 [cover shows image from Martha Coburn’s film Evil of Dracula]

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Women of Wonder, Writers of Vision

Today’s book is Women of Wonder, the Classic Years: Science Fiction by Women from the 1940s to the 1970s, edited by Pamela Sargent. Softcover published 1995 by Harvest Books/Harcourt Brace.  Cover art by Michael Koelsch.

In the ’70s, Sargent edited three Women of Wonder anthologies, and 18 writers from this original trio (some with new stories) are joined here by three newcomers to the series, to give an eye-opening overview of science fiction and women between 1944 and 1978.  Exploring topics such as prejudice, child abuse, vanity, stereotypes, aging, rape, obesity and insanity, stories by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Zenna Henderson, Kit Reed, Kate Wilhelm, Joan Vinge, the pseudonymous James Tiptree Jr. and others are as disconcerting as they are intriguing.  Judith Merril‘s “That Only a Mother” capitalizes on the fear of nuclear warfare as a new mother deals with the effects of radiation in her own unique way.  Anne McCaffrey‘s “The Ship Who Sang” carries the idea that ships are feminine one step further when a spaceship falls in love with her pilot.  Sargent highlights the history of women in science fiction in an information-packed introduction. In addition, notes about each author and an extensive bibliography will satisfy the curiosity of those wanting additional information on this topic. — Publishers Weekly, 1995.

The other authors represented in this anthology are Eleanor Arnason, Leigh Brackett, Sonya Dorman Hess, Ursula K. Le Guin, Katherine MacLean, Vonda N. McIntyre, C. L. Moore, Joanna Russ, Margaret St. Clair, Josephine Saxton, Lisa Tuttle, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Pamela Zoline.

In her insightful Introduction, which offers an overview of women sci-fi authors from Mary Shelley to the period covered by this book, Pamela Sargent writes:

[S]cience fiction provides a unique opportunity to explore societies and characters that are not limited by our assumptions.  In a world of rapidly changing technology, ethical questions raised by developments in biology and medicine and by increasingly sophisticated mass communication, serious science fiction may be better equipped than any other kind of literature to consider the dilemmas such changes present.  By showing us worlds unlike our own, science fiction can help us to see our own world anew.  At the core of both feminism and science fiction — at least what ideally should be at the core of both — is a questioning of why things are as they are and how they might be different. — p. 20.

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Also currently in stock at BrainiacBooks.com:

The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five (Canopus in Argos: Archives), by Doris Lessing

The Stranger (Animorphs, No. 7), by K. A. [Katherine Alice] Applegate

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Flora Foolery in a Garden of Nonexistent Delights

Today’s book is Parallel Botany, by Leo Lionni.  Translated from the Italian by Patrick Creagh.  Softcover published 1977 by Knopf.

Described by Peter Staler in Time Magazine as “one of the funniest and most brilliant parodies of scientific jargon and scholarship ever published”, Parallel Botany creates a seamless world of imaginary plants, bogus taxonomy, invented science, made-up scientists, and faked  footnotes.

It is a botany alive with wonders, from the Tirillus silvador of the high Andes (whose habit it is to emit shrill whistles on clear nights in January and February) to the Woodland Tweezers (it was the Japanese parallel botanist Uchigaki who first noticed the unsettling relationship between the growth pattern of a group of Tweezers and a winning layout in a game of Go) to the Artisia (whose various forms anticipate the work of such artists as Arp and Calder — and, some believe, the work of all artists, including those not yet born). — from back cover

The protean Lionni, whose meticulous black-and-white “botanical” drawings are integral to this book, was impressively versatile and accomplished.  He held a doctorate degree in economics from the University of Genoa, was an influential advertising artist and art director, and is most known as a beloved author and illustrator of many children’s picture books.  Parallel Botany‘s combination of whimsy and erudition reminds me of Lewis Carroll; others see a similarity to Jorge Luis Borges.

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