In a horror sort of mood

[louiselux]

I had a book related mishap this week. I started reading Weaveworld by Clive Barker, thinking it was his Imajica. (They have similar covers, shhhh). I read about four chapters, thinking 'this isn't as good as I remembered, and where the hell's the hermaphrodite assassin anyway? Also, carpets? What?'

Anyway, Weaveworld (weaveworld refers to a magical world in a carpet) is interesting although it has random moments of gyno-paranoia that left me quite traumatised. Some of the imagery is just-- yeech. But well, this is Clive Barker I suppose. It's not gripped me enough to finish it.

Moving on, 'In Search of Dracula' by Raymond T McNally and Radu Florescu arrrived today. It's a seveties version with a lurid cover! It was only 39p, compared to the £15 for the more recent one with an Edward Gorey cover.





Rarrrgh! He bites you.



Although there are surely more learned works, I'm hoping for the low down on Vlad Tepes - not so much the impaling as about his complicated relationship with his brother Radu, and the activities of his apparent nemesis, Mehmet III, who kept Vlad's head preserved in honey after his death. It's a strangely compelling story.

As an aside, I watched Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula recently. Weirdly, it makes perfect sense if you see it as a tribute to Roger Corman, especially if you go to IMDB and find out that Coppola worked as assistant director for Corman during the Hammer Horror years. I have to admit I squeed and then continuted watching the film through new, Hammer oriented eyes. There's something about the colours and the sets and the art direction that is deeply deeply evocative of Corman's Hammer films. I must've watched a Hammer horror film every Friday night for years when I was little, as probably did most of the UK population in the 70s.

***

In other news, bidding for my fiction services ends at midnight (GMT) tomorrow.

Comments

[lydia-petze.livejournal.com]

Apart from Imajica, which was great, I've found every other thing Barker has written to be a disappointment. I think he's extremely overrated, to be frank.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

I think I agree with you. I liked Imajica and so kept on picking up his others as they came out, hoping. But they never really satisfied me in the way Imajica did. Although, have you read Mister B Gone, his latest? I did enjoy that.

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

I was amused by all the fear of the vagina in Weaveworld but I rather liked the main character.

Watching Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula in the theater was a lot of fun. I could feel the whole audience squirming during the shaving scene and Harker's first major molestation by the brides.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Yes, vagina-fear, and fear of what comes out of it too. I admit it was all a bit too much for me to take seriously after a while.

Armed with my new knowledge, I'd love to watch it now on the big screen - that must've been quite an experience. So lurid!

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

I kind of reached that "oookay" point on Weaveworld too.

Quite! I would have been happier if my parents hadn't been with me though. *g*

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Ahaha, I bet. I remember the tombstone scene with Lucy was extremely lurid indeed!

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. Outdoors in a graveyard with a partner who qualifies for necrophilia and bestiality?

[avierra.livejournal.com]

Is Weaveworld the one with the Menstruum? If so, yeah, I couldn't finish it either. One vampire writer I like(d) a lot is Brian Lumley, and his Necroscope series. His vampires are a bit different take on the subject, but quite gothic and lurid as well. I believe he also write H.P. Lovecraft pastiches, but I haven't read any of those.

I adore Hammer films. Oh sexy, sexy, evil Christopher Lee, how he figured in my adolescent fantasies... >.>

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

I have a Brian Lumley book but have never got round to reading in, partly because of the incredibly cheesy cover. I might give it a go then, if you like him.

Oooh, yes, Christopher Lee's Dracula. How did he manage to be hot? Looking back it just doesn't make sense. It's probably a mark of his acting ability that he bought the character to life so much.

[kisarazumama.livejournal.com]

In Search of... is pretty good, but awfully general--too much space wasted on the tie-in with Stoker and the vamp mythos) If you'd like to get more in-depth without having to read Romanian, I'd suggest Florescu & McNally's follow-up book, Dracula: Prince of Many Faces. Much more historical work in that one.

As far as we were able to determine in 20+ years of reading on the topic, Vlad simply never forgave Radu for (a) choosing a different means of coping during their childhood in Turkish captivity (--conveniently forgetting, I think, that he, Vlad, was a relatively tough age seven or eight when they arrived in Egrigoz, while Radu was about four and "no taller than a bouquet of flowers" in their father's heartbreaking phrase) (b) turning out gay and (c) ending up a better liked, more successful and longer-reigning prince of Wallachia than he did, not always in that order. By all accounts, Radu was a natural diplomat and a charmer just about from birth, and when Vlad's hard-line anti-Ottoman stance had the country exhausted, Radu's long history of personal friendship with the Turks (he was Mehmet's lover, of course, but he was also genuinely open-minded and and appreciated the scholarship and civilization of Turkish society) allowed him to forge a compromise deal that got Wallachia off a lot more easily than most countries under Ottoman dominion. All Vlad, however, could see was his pretty little brother submitting to the Infidel in a lot more ways than one. (There's no explicit documentation of Vlad's reaction to the Radu-Mehmet relationship, but I'd bet anything he was utterly outraged, uptight SOB that he was.)

But maybe you knew all this already...it's never safe to get me started. (As you might guess, it's been a topic of intense study in my house for a long time, as these stacks of books can attest. (It's one of our long-time sighs that though Radu is known to have been a world-class looker--he wasn't called "Radu the Handsome" for nothing--no portrait of him seems to exist, and even a a scholar as thorough as Kurt Treptow ended up having to rely on an artist's conception. What a shame.)

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

I'm so incredibly pleased that I have an expert on this on my flist! I know the basic outline of their story, which you outline above, but I am so keen to hear more, seriously, anything you want to share. Tips for further reading would be much appreciated and obviously your own thoughts on them. I'm totally fascinated by all of three of these people.

I suppose Radu looked somewhat similar to Vlad, only prettier? I'd like to see the artist's interpretation.

[kisarazumama.livejournal.com]

My pleasure.
Radu cel Frumos by Octavian Ion Penda (http://s133.photobucket.com/albums/q64/kisarazu-mama/?action=view&current=radu-imagecopy.jpg)
Sorry it isn't a better scan.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Even though it's rather small, I think I can detect a family likeness there. The fanart below is pretty too.

[kispexi2.livejournal.com]

the activities of his apparent nemesis, Mehmet III, who kept Vlad's head preserved in honey after his death. It's a strangely compelling story.

I smell slash!

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha.

God, yes. It sounds like the slashiest story ever. I need to know more about these people!!

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

Vlad the Impaler (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/history/vlad/index_1.html) - this is a long page on his career; and here's a dodgy fanart picture of Radu! (http://thenumber42.deviantart.com/art/Radu-the-Handsome-70669825)

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Radu is hot, even pulling a frowny face. Maybe he is wondering why his brother has to be so utterly horrid to everyone.

[kisarazumama.livejournal.com]

Damn, that's nice. =)
How i wish my late-lamented had known that anyone else cared.