The Lord of the Rings Mythology Explained in 10 Minutes, in Two Illustrated Videos

in Education, Literature | November 18th, 2015

As a lover of fan­ta­sy and sci­ence fic­tion, but by no means a know-it-all fan­boy, I know what it’s like to come to a fic­tion­al uni­verse late. It can seem like every­one else has already read the canon, seen the movies, and mem­o­rized the genealo­gies, ori­gin sto­ries, mag­i­cal arcana, num­ber of ancient blood feuds, etc. For exam­ple, I grew up steeped in Star Trek but nev­er watched Dr. Who. Now that British sci-fi show is seem­ing­ly every­where, and I find myself intrigued. But who has the time to catch up on sev­er­al decades of missed episodes? Some peo­ple may have felt sim­i­lar­ly in the last few years about The Lord of the Rings, what with the num­ber of J.R.R. Tolkien adap­ta­tions besieg­ing the­aters. If you haven’t read any of those books, Mid­dle Earth—for all its air of medieval leg­end and Norse myth—can be a very con­fus­ing place.

Thanks to Peter Jackson’s films, for bet­ter or worse, Tolkien’s books have even more cul­tur­al cur­ren­cy than they did in the 70s, when Led Zep­pelin mined them for lyri­cal inspi­ra­tion, and “Fro­do lives” graf­fi­ti appeared on over­pass­es every­where.

This brings us to the videos we fea­ture here. Pre­sent­ed in a rapid fire style like that of motor­mouth YA nov­el­ist and video edu­ca­tor John Green, “The Lord of the Rings Mythol­o­gy Explained” is exact­ly that–two very quick tours, with illus­tra­tions, through the com­plex mytho­log­i­cal world of Mid­dle Earth, the set­ting of The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy, The Hob­bit, and oth­er books you’ve maybe nev­er heard of. These videos were made before the final install­ment of Jack­son’s inter­minable Hob­bit tril­o­gy, but they cov­er most major devel­op­ments before and after the events in short book on which he based those films.

I’ll say this for the effort—Tolkien’s world is one I thought I knew, but I didn’t know it near­ly as well as I thought. Like most peo­ple, frankly, I haven’t read the source­book of so much of that world’s gen­e­sis, The Sil­mar­il­lion, which gets a sur­vey in the first video at the top of the post. I’m much more famil­iar, and you may be as well—through books or films—with the mytholo­gies of The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy prop­er, cov­ered in the video above. If these two thor­ough explain­ers don’t sat­is­fy your curios­i­ty, you can like­ly have fur­ther ques­tions answered at one of the videos’ sources, Ask Mid­dle Earth, a site that solic­its “any ques­tion about Mid­dle Earth.” Anoth­er source, the work of com­par­a­tive mythol­o­gist Ver­lyn Flieger, who spe­cial­izes in Tolkien, also promis­es to be high­ly illu­mi­nat­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Map of Mid­dle-Earth Anno­tat­ed by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

“The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor” Presents Three Free Cours­es on The Lord of the Rings

110 Draw­ings and Paint­ings by J.R.R. Tolkien: Of Mid­dle-Earth and Beyond

J.R.R. Tolkien Snubs a Ger­man Pub­lish­er Ask­ing for Proof of His “Aryan Descent” (1938)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Charles Dickens (Channeling Jorge Luis Borges) Created a Fake Library, with 37 Witty Invented Book Titles

in Books, Letters, Literature | November 17th, 2015

dickensshelf

I don’t know about you, but I’ve sort of always asso­ci­at­ed Charles Dick­ens with the kind of humor­less moral­ism and didac­tic sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty that are hall­marks of so much Vic­to­ri­an lit­er­a­ture. That’s prob­a­bly because the work of Dick­ens con­tains no small amount of humor­less moral­ism and didac­tic sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty. But it also con­tains much wit and absur­di­ty, inven­tive char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and rich descrip­tion. While nov­els like the short Hard Times, pub­lished in 1854, can seem more like thin­ly veiled tracts of moral phi­los­o­phy than ful­ly real­ized fic­tions, oth­ers, like the strange and whim­si­cal Pick­wick Papers—Dick­ens’ first—work as fan­ci­ful, light­heart­ed satires. The big, bag­gy nov­els like Great Expec­ta­tions, Bleak House, and A Tale of Two Cities (find in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks) man­age to skill­ful­ly com­bine these two impuls­es with his own twist on the goth­ic, such that Dick­ens’ work is not over­whelmed, as it might be, by ser­mo­niz­ing.

For all of this tidy sum­ma­tion of that giant of Vic­to­ri­an let­ters, one adjec­tive now comes to mind that I would nev­er have pre­vi­ous­ly thought to apply at any time to the writer of A Christ­mas Car­ol: Bor­ge­sian, as in pos­sessed of the scholas­tic wit of 20th cen­tu­ry Argen­tine writer Jorge Luis Borges. I’m not the first to note a resem­blance, but I must say it nev­er would have occurred to me to think of the two names in the same sen­tence were it not for an extra-cur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ty Dick­ens engaged in while out­fit­ting his Lon­don home, Tavi­s­tock House, in 1851. Let­ters of Note’s sis­ter site Lists of Note brings us the fol­low­ing anec­dote:

[Dick­ens] decid­ed to fill two spaces in his new study with book­cas­es con­tain­ing fake books, the wit­ty titles of which he had invent­ed. And so, on Octo­ber 22nd, he wrote to a book­binder named Thomas Robert Eeles and sup­plied him with the fol­low­ing “list of imi­ta­tion book-backs” to be pro­duced.

You can see the complete—completely Borgesian—list below. Borges is of course well known for invent­ing titles of books that have nev­er exist­ed, but seem like they should, in anoth­er dimen­sion some­where. His inven­tion of alter­nate real­i­ties, and pub­li­ca­tions, man­i­fests in most all of his sto­ries, as well as in odd­i­ties like the Book of Imag­i­nary Beings. Like Borges’ made-up books, Dick­ens’ con­tain just the right mix of the self-seri­ous and the ridicu­lous, so as to make them at once plau­si­ble, cryp­tic, exot­ic, and hilarious—both Pick­wick­ian and, indeed, pro­to-Bor­ge­sian.

His­to­ry of a Short Chancery Suit
Cat­a­logue of Stat­ues of the Duke of Welling­ton
Five Min­utes in Chi­na. 3 vols.
Forty Winks at the Pyra­mids. 2 vols.
Aber­nethy on the Con­sti­tu­tion. 2 vols.
Mr. Green’s Over­land Mail. 2 vols.
Cap­tain Cook’s Life of Sav­age. 2 vols.
A Car­pen­ter’s Bench of Bish­ops. 2 vols.
Toot’s Uni­ver­sal Let­ter-Writer. 2 vols.
Orson­’s Art of Eti­quette.
Downeast­er’s Com­plete Cal­cu­la­tor.
His­to­ry of the Mid­dling Ages. 6 vols.
Jon­ah’s Account of the Whale.
Cap­tain Par­ry’s Virtues of Cold Tar.
Kan­t’s Ancient Hum­bugs. 10 vols.
Bow­wow­dom. A Poem.
The Quar­rel­ly Review. 4 vols.
The Gun­pow­der Mag­a­zine. 4 vols.
Steele. By the Author of “Ion.”
The Art of Cut­ting the Teeth.
Matthew’s Nurs­ery Songs. 2 vols.
Pax­ton’s Bloomers. 5 vols.
On the Use of Mer­cury by the Ancient Poets.
Drowsy’s Rec­ol­lec­tions of Noth­ing. 3 vols.
Heavyside’s Con­ver­sa­tions with Nobody. 3 vols.
Com­mon­place Book of the Old­est Inhab­i­tant. 2 vols.
Growler’s Gruffi­ol­o­gy, with Appen­dix. 4 vols.
The Books of Moses and Sons. 2 vols.
Burke (of Edin­burgh) on the Sub­lime and Beau­ti­ful. 2 vols.
Teaz­er’s Com­men­taries.
King Hen­ry the Eighth’s Evi­dences of Chris­tian­i­ty. 5 vols.
Miss Bif­fin on Deport­ment.
Mor­rison’s Pills Progress. 2 vols.
Lady Godi­va on the Horse.
Mun­chausen’s Mod­ern Mir­a­cles. 4 vols.
Richard­son’s Show of Dra­mat­ic Lit­er­a­ture. 12 vols.
Hansard’s Guide to Refresh­ing Sleep. As many vol­umes as pos­si­ble.

As Fla­vor­wire reports, design­er Ann Sap­pen­field cre­at­ed her own fake book­bind­ings with Dick­ens’ titles (see some at the top of the page, cour­tesy of the NYPL). These are part of a New York Pub­lic Library exhib­it called Charles Dick­ens: The Key to Char­ac­ter that ran in 2012–13. You can read Dick­ens orig­i­nal let­ter to Thomas Robert Eeles in The Let­ters of Charles Dick­ens here.

via Lists of Note/Fla­vor­wire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Dick­ens Gave His Cat “Bob” a Sec­ond Life as a Let­ter Open­er

Charles Dick­ens’ Hand-Edit­ed Copy of His Clas­sic Hol­i­day Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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100 Novels All Kids Should Read Before Leaving High School

in Books, Education, K-12, Literature | November 12th, 2015

to-kill-a-mockingbird-book-cover1

Last year, a Slate essay called “Against YA” by Ruth Gra­ham irked thou­sands of read­ers who took offense at her argu­ment that although grown-ups “bran­dish their copies of teen nov­els with pride…. [a]dults should feel embar­rassed about read­ing lit­er­a­ture writ­ten for chil­dren.” Whether we label her arti­cle an instance of sham­ing, trolling, or just the expres­sion of a not-espe­cial­ly con­se­quen­tial, “fud­dy-dud­dy opin­ion,” what it also served to highlight—as so many oth­er thought­ful and not-so-thought­ful online essays have done—is the huge sales num­bers of so-called YA, a lit­er­ary boom that shows no signs of slow­ing. Young adult fic­tion, along with children’s books in gen­er­al, saw dou­ble dig­it growth in 2014, a phe­nom­e­non in part dri­ven by those sup­pos­ed­ly self-infan­tiliz­ing adults Gra­ham faults.

The grown-ups read­ing teen books do so, Gra­ham writes, because “today’s YA, we are con­stant­ly remind­ed, is world­ly and adult-wor­thy.” Maybe, maybe not, but there is anoth­er ques­tion to ask here as well, whol­ly apart from whether the age 30–44 cohort who account for 28 per­cent of YA sales “should” be buy­ing and read­ing YA books. And that ques­tion is: should young adults read Young Adult fic­tion? And what counts as Young Adult fic­tion any­way? A 2012 NPR list of the “100 Best-Ever Teen Nov­els” includes the expect­ed Har­ry Pot­ter and Hunger Games series (at num­bers one and two, respec­tive­ly), as well as more “lit­er­ary,” but still obvi­ous, choic­es like John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars and S.E. Hinton’s clas­sic The Out­siders.

It also includes Dou­glas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Frank Herbert’s Dune, Ursu­la K. Le Guin’s Earth­sea series, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahren­heit 451. It what sense do all of these very dif­fer­ent kinds of books—some very com­plex and chal­leng­ing, some very much less so—qualify as “teen nov­els”? Per­haps some of the fuzzi­ness about qual­i­ty and appro­pri­ate­ness comes from the fact that many “Top-what­ev­er” lists like NPR’s are com­piled by read­ers, of all ages. And enjoy­ment, not edi­fi­ca­tion, usu­al­ly tops a gen­er­al read­er­ship’s list of cri­te­ri­on for “top”-ness. How­ev­er, what would such a list look like if strict­ly com­piled by edu­ca­tors?

You can find out in anoth­er top 100 list: the 100 Fic­tion Books All Chil­dren Should Read Before Leav­ing Sec­ondary School – Accord­ing to 500 Eng­lish Teach­ers (cre­at­ed at the request of Britain’s Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion for the Teach­ing of Eng­lish and TES mag­a­zine). There’s a good bit of crossover with the read­er-cho­sen NPR list; the Har­ry Pot­ter books come in at sixth place. Both lists fea­ture clas­sics like Harp­er Lee’s To Kill a Mock­ing­bird. But the teacher-cho­sen list also includes more “adult” writ­ers like Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, and Toni Mor­ri­son. One teacher quot­ed in an Express arti­cle describes his own cri­te­ria: “It’s always a bal­anc­ing act in the books that teach­ers select. Do you go for some­thing that stu­dents will enjoy and lap up and read, or do you go for some­thing that will help them cut their teeth?”

There seems to be a good bal­ance of both here. You can see the first ten titles below, with links to free online ver­sions where avail­able. The com­plete list of 100 books for teenagers is here.

1 Nine­teen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell (Ama­zon)

2 To Kill A Mock­ing­bird, by Harp­er Lee (free eBook)

3 Ani­mal Farm, by George Orwell (free eBook)

4 Lord Of The Flies, by William Gold­ing (Ama­zon)

5 Of Mice And Men, by John Stein­beck (Ama­zon)

6 The Har­ry Pot­ter series, by J K Rowl­ing (Ama­zon)

7 A Christ­mas Car­ol, by Charles Dick­ens (free eBook)

8 The Catch­er In The Rye, by J D Salinger (Ama­zon)

9 Great Expec­ta­tions, by Charles Dick­ens (free eBook)

10 Pride And Prej­u­dice, by Jane Austen (free eBook)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books

The Best Books of 2012: Lists by The New York Times, NPR, The Guardian and More

74 Essen­tial Books for Your Per­son­al Library: A List Curat­ed by Female Cre­atives

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Dostoevsky Draws Doodles of Raskolnikov and Other Characters in the Manuscript of Crime and Punishment

in Art, Books, Literature | November 10th, 2015

Raskolnikov Svidrigailov

Like many of us, Russ­ian lit­er­ary great Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky liked to doo­dle when he was dis­tract­ed. He left his hand­i­work in sev­er­al manuscripts—finely shad­ed draw­ings of expres­sive faces and elab­o­rate archi­tec­tur­al fea­tures. But Dostoevsky’s doo­dles were more than just a way to occu­py his mind and hands; they were an inte­gral part of his lit­er­ary method. His nov­el­is­tic imag­i­na­tion, with all of its grand excess­es, was pro­found­ly visu­al, and archi­tec­tur­al.

“Indeed,” writes Dos­to­evsky schol­ar Kon­stan­tin Barsht, “Dos­to­evsky was not con­tent to ‘write’ and ‘take notes’ in the process of cre­ative think­ing.” Instead, in his work “the mean­ing and sig­nif­i­cance of words inter­act rec­i­p­ro­cal­ly with oth­er mean­ings expressed through visu­al images.” Barsht calls it “a method of work spe­cif­ic to the writer.” We’ve shared a few of those man­u­script pages before, includ­ing one with a doo­dle of Shake­speare.

Crime and Punish Doodles

Now we bring you a few more pages of doo­dles from the author of Crime and Pun­ish­ment, a nov­el that, per­haps more so than any of his oth­ers, offers such vivid descrip­tions of its char­ac­ters that I can still clear­ly remem­ber the pic­tures I had of them in my mind the first time I read it in high school.

My visu­al­iza­tions of the angry, des­per­ate stu­dent Raskol­nikov and the sleazy socio­path­ic Svidri­gailov do not exact­ly resem­ble the faces doo­dled at the the top of the post, but that is how their author saw them, at least in this ear­ly, man­u­script stage of the nov­el.

The oth­er faces here may be those of Sonya, police inves­ti­ga­tor Por­firy Petro­vich, recidi­vist alco­holic father Semy­on Marmelodov, and oth­er char­ac­ters in the nov­el, though it’s not clear exact­ly who’s who.

Crime and Punish Doodles 2

Dos­to­evsky had much in com­mon with his nov­el­’s pro­tag­o­nist when he began the nov­el in 1865. Reduced to near-des­ti­tu­tion after gam­bling away his for­tune, the writer was also in des­per­ate straits. The sto­ry, writes lit­er­ary crit­ic Joseph Franks, was “orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived as a long short sto­ry or novel­la to be writ­ten in the first per­son,” like the fever­ish novel­la Notes From the Under­ground. In Dos­to­evsky’s man­u­script note­books, “exten­sive frag­ments of this orig­i­nal work are to be found here intact.”

Franks quotes schol­ar Edward Wasi­olek, who pub­lished a trans­la­tion of the note­books in 1967: “They con­tain draw­ings, jot­tings about prac­ti­cal mat­ters, doo­dling of var­i­ous sorts, cal­cu­la­tions about press­ing expens­es, sketch­es, and ran­dom remarks.” In short, “Dos­to­evsky sim­ply flipped his note­books open any time he wished to write,” or to prac­tice his cal­lig­ra­phy, as he does on many pages.

Crime and Punish Doodles 3

The pages of the Crime and Pun­ish­ment note­books resem­ble all of the man­u­script pages of his nov­els in their orna­men­tal hap­haz­ard­ness. You can see many more exam­ples from nov­els like The Idiot, The Pos­sessed, and A Raw Youth at the Russ­ian site Cul­ture, includ­ing the sketchy self por­trait below, next to a few sums that indi­cate the author’s per­pet­u­al pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with his trou­bled eco­nom­ic affairs.

Dostoevsky Self Portrait

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky Draws Elab­o­rate Doo­dles In His Man­u­scripts

Dos­to­evsky Draws a Pic­ture of Shake­speare: A New Dis­cov­ery in an Old Man­u­script

The Dig­i­tal Dos­to­evsky: Down­load Free eBooks & Audio Books of the Russ­ian Novelist’s Major Works

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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An Animated Kurt Vonnegut Visits NYU, Riffs, Rambles, and Blows the Kids’ Minds (1970)

in Animation, Literature | November 10th, 2015

Kurt Von­negut nev­er grad­u­at­ed from col­lege, but that did­n’t stop him from vis­it­ing col­lege class­rooms, or from giv­ing com­mence­ment speech­es (nine of which were pub­lished last year in a vol­ume called If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?: Advice to the Young). If you’ve expe­ri­enced a Von­negut speech, you know he had a ten­den­cy to riff and ram­ble. But he also enter­tained and edu­cat­ed. Above, the lat­est video from Blank on Blank cap­tures the essence of a Von­negut class­room vis­it, ani­mat­ing a talk the author gave to a class at NYU on Novem­ber 8, 1970. Top­ics include: the para­noia that goes into writ­ing and the exhaus­tion it brings about, his child­hood in Indi­ana, the death of his par­ents, and his odd con­cept for a new short sto­ry called “The Big Space Fuc%,” which fea­tures a war­head filled with sperm. It leaves the kids a lit­tle stunned.

The full talk orig­i­nal­ly aired on WBAI 99.5 FM New York and now resides in the Paci­fi­ca Radio Archives. You can lis­ten to the full, unedit­ed tape below.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? For exam­ple, John Malkovich read­ing Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons? Or James Fran­co read­ing Slaugh­ter­house-Five? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

Hear Kurt Von­negut Read Slaughterhouse-Five,Cat’s Cra­dle & Oth­er Nov­els

Kurt Von­negut Cre­ates a Report Card for His Nov­els, Rank­ing Them From A+ to D

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The Emily Bronte Sand Sculpture

in Art, Literature | November 10th, 2015

emily bronte sand

Cre­ative com­mons image by Tim Green on Flickr Com­mons

In the town of Brad­ford, near Leeds in the UK, they’ve import­ed more than 30 tons of sand to build nine sand sculp­tures across the city, as part of what’s called the Dis­cov­er­ing Brad­ford project. Above, you can see one that caught our eye, thanks to the Vin­tage Anchor twit­ter stream. It’s a life-size sand sculp­ture of Emi­ly Bron­të, cre­at­ed by Jamie Ward­ley, an artist who belongs to the col­lec­tive, Sand in Your Eye. Bron­të was born in Thorn­ton, a short hop, skip and a jump away from Brad­ford. For more cul­tur­al­ly-inspired sand cre­ations, see the Relat­eds below.

via Vin­tage Anchor/Keigh­ley News

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Meta­mor­pho­sis of Mr. Sam­sa: A Won­der­ful Sand Ani­ma­tion of the Clas­sic Kaf­ka Sto­ry (1977)

Lewis Carroll’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, Told in Sand Ani­ma­tion

The Meta­mor­pho­sis of Mr. Sam­sa: A Won­der­ful Sand Ani­ma­tion of the Clas­sic Kaf­ka Sto­ry (1977)

13-Year-Old Char­lotte Bron­të & Her Broth­er Wrote Tee­ny Tiny Adven­ture Books, Mea­sur­ing 1 x 2 Inch­es

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Hear Arthur Miller Read From Death of a Salesman, His Great American Play (1955)

in Literature, Theatre | November 6th, 2015

1949’s Death of a Sales­man is one of the most endur­ing plays in the Amer­i­can canon, a sta­ple of both com­mu­ni­ty and pro­fes­sion­al the­ater.

Play­wright Arthur Miller recalled that when the cur­tain fell on the first per­for­mance, there were “men in the audi­ence sit­ting there with hand­ker­chiefs over their faces. It was like a funer­al.”

Robert Falls, Artis­tic Direc­tor of Chicago’s Good­man The­ater, brings the expe­ri­ence of dozens of pro­duc­tions to bear when he describes it as the only play that “sends men weep­ing into the Men’s room.”

Small won­der that the tit­u­lar part has become a grail of sorts for aging lead­ing men eager to be tak­en seri­ous­ly. Dustin Hoff­man, George C. Scott, and Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man have all had a go at Willy Loman, a role still asso­ci­at­ed with the tow­er­ing Lee J. Cobb, who orig­i­nat­ed it.

(Willy’s wife, Lin­da, with her famous grave­side admo­ni­tion that “atten­tion must be paid,” is con­sid­ered no less of a plum part.)

On Feb­ru­ary 2, 1955, Arthur Miller joined Salesman’s first Mrs. Loman, Mil­dred Dun­nock, to read selec­tions from the script before a live audi­ence at Manhattan’s 92nd Street YMCA. In addi­tion to read­ing the role of Willy Loman, Miller sup­plied stage direc­tions and explained his ratio­nale for pick­ing the fea­tured scenes. The Pulitzer Prize winner’s New York accent and brusque man­ner make him a nat­ur­al, and of course, who bet­ter to under­stand the nuances, moti­va­tions, and his­tor­i­cal con­text of this trag­i­cal­ly flawed char­ac­ter?

Miller told The New York­er that he based Loman on his fam­i­ly friend, Man­ny New­man:

Man­ny lived in his own mind all the time. He nev­er got out of it. Every­thing he said was total­ly unex­pect­ed. Peo­ple regard­ed him as a kind of strange, com­plete­ly untruth­ful per­son­al­i­ty. Very charm­ing. I thought of him as a kind of won­der­ful inven­tor. For exam­ple, at will, he would sud­den­ly say, “That’s a love­ly suit you have on.” And for no rea­son at all, he’d say, “Three hun­dred dol­lars.” Now, every­body knew he nev­er paid three hun­dred dol­lars for a suit in those days. At a par­ty, he would lie down on his wife’s lap and pre­tend to be suck­ing her breast. He’d curl up on her lap—she was an immense woman. It was crazy. At the same time, there was some­thing in him which was ter­ri­bly mov­ing. It was very mov­ing, because his suf­fer­ing was right on his skin, you see.

If Miller and Dunnock’s per­for­mance leaves you hun­gry for more, you can see her and Lee J. Cobb reprise their roles on tele­vi­sion in a 1966 CBS pro­duc­tion. See Act 1 above, and Act 2 here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Camus Talks About Adapt­ing Dos­toyevsky for the The­atre, 1959

Hear Antonin Artaud’s Cen­sored, Nev­er-Aired Radio Play: To Have Done With The Judg­ment of God (1947)

Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade Pushed the Bound­aries of The­ater, and Still Does

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, is now play­ing in New York City . Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Horror Legend Christopher Lee Reads Bram Stoker’s Dracula

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Literature | November 6th, 2015

Did Bram Stoker’s world-famous Drac­u­la character—perhaps the most cul­tur­al­ly unkil­l­able of all hor­ror mon­sters—derive from Irish folk­lore? Search the Gael­ic “Droch-Fhoula” (pro­nounced droc’ola) and, in addi­tion to the req­ui­site met­al bands, you’ll find ref­er­ences to the “Cas­tle of the Blood Vis­age,” to a blood-drink­ing chief­tain named Abhar­tach, and to oth­er pos­si­ble native sources of Irish writer Bram Stok­er’s 1897 nov­el. These Celtic leg­ends, the BBC writes, “may have shaped the sto­ry as much as Euro­pean myths and Goth­ic lit­er­a­ture.”

Despite all this intrigu­ing spec­u­la­tion about Dracula’s Irish ori­gins, the actors play­ing him have come from a vari­ety of places. One recent incar­na­tion, TV series Drac­u­la, did cast an Irish actor, Jonathan Rhys Mey­ers, in the role.

Hun­gar­i­an Bela Lugosi comes clos­est to the fic­tion­al character’s nation­al­i­ty, as well as that of anoth­er, per­haps dubi­ous source, Roman­ian war­lord Vlad the Impaler. Pro­tean Brit Gary Old­man played up the char­ac­ter as Slav­ic aris­to­crat in Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s some­what more faith­ful take. But one too-oft-over­looked por­tray­al by anoth­er Eng­lish actor, Christo­pher Lee, deserves much more atten­tion than it receives.

In ten low-bud­get films made by British exploita­tion stu­dio Ham­mer, Lee por­trayed the mon­strous-yet-seduc­tive blood-suck­ing noble­man as a very prop­er Eng­lish­man with “a cer­tain las­civ­i­ous sex appeal”—begin­ning with 1958’s Hor­ror of Drac­u­la (see a trail­er above) and end­ing with 1973’s The Satan­ic Rites of Drac­u­la. I find Lee’s Drac­u­la so mem­o­rable that I was delight­ed to hear the audio above of him read­ing an adap­ta­tion of the nov­el, in ten parts. The video begins with titles and an estab­lish­ing shot from the Ham­mer films, then segues to images from a 1966 Drac­u­la graph­ic nov­el, the source of the “pret­ty faith­ful” adap­ta­tion by Otto Binder and Craig Ten­nis, for which Lee wrote an intro­duc­tion.

The audio here was also record­ed in 1966 by the book’s edi­tor Russ Jones. Comics blog­ger Steven Thomp­son remarks that “since Drac­u­la is made up of a series of let­ters, jour­nal and diary entries, the writ­ers here log­i­cal­ly take a more straight­for­ward route of telling the tale while main­tain­ing the episod­ic feel quite well.” Rather than the voice of Count Drac­u­la, Lee reads as the nov­el­’s epis­to­lary nar­ra­tor Jonathan Hark­er, and the Drac­u­la in the art­work, drawn by artist Al McWilliams, “bears more than a pass­ing resem­blance here to actor John Car­ra­dine,” a notable Amer­i­can actor who played the char­ac­ter in Uni­ver­sal’s House of Franken­stein and House of Drac­u­la. Nonethe­less, Lee’s voice is enough to con­jure his many excep­tion­al per­for­mances as the pro­to­typ­i­cal vam­pire, a char­ac­ter and con­cept that will like­ly nev­er die.

Schol­ar and writer Bob Cur­ran, a pro­po­nent of the Irish ori­gins of Drac­u­la, argues in his book Vam­pires that leg­ends of undead, blood-drink­ing ghouls are found all over the world, which goes a long way toward explain­ing the endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of Drac­u­la in par­tic­u­lar and vam­pires in gen­er­al. We’ll prob­a­bly see anoth­er actor inher­it the role of Stok­er’s seduc­tive­ly creepy count in the near future. Who­ev­er it is will have to mea­sure him­self against not only the per­for­mances of Lugosi, Car­ra­dine, Old­man, and Mey­ers, but also against the debonair Christo­pher Lee. He would do well, wher­ev­er he comes from, to study Lee’s Drac­u­la films close­ly, and lis­ten to him read the sto­ry in the adap­ta­tion above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Lee (R.I.P.) Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and From “The Fall of the House of Ush­er”

Christo­pher Lee Nar­rates a Beau­ti­ful Ani­ma­tion of Tim Burton’s Poem, Night­mare Before Christ­mas

Watch Nos­fer­atu, the Sem­i­nal Vam­pire Film, Free Online (1922)

Hear Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” Read by the Great Bela Lugosi (1946)

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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